Shock, horror!

At least ten years of grey tsunami propaganda has created a political climate of unwise policy planning. No kidding? Instead of pink batts in the ceiling fiascos, we now have grey batts in the attic.

As with everything else, this government can't do anything right. They appeased the welfare-hysteria lobby (who lied and lied about life expectancy statistics and aged care costs and played on Gen X/Y prejudice against baby-boomers), and did a kneejerk reaction by putting up the pension age to 67, and most likely, 70 is just around the corner.

But, oops! We now have a growing aged unemployment problem, which ensures that a lot more 55+ people will have to spend their retirement savings to fund a much longer period of age-prejudiced unemployability, and will have no choice but to beg the government for a pension-funded retirement.

Had the baby-boomer welfare hysteria mongers told the truth about life expectancy - i.e. that living well into one's 80s only applies to people being born now, not to people born 60 years ago (whose average life expectancy is only about 75 years), government planners might have felt they had the time to work out a more viable long-term solution.

So people like me who at 45 have no savings, no investments and no super are just out of luck right? Don't worry if they raise the pension age to 70 most of us manual labourers will have worked ourselves to death by the time we're eligible to claim it.

No JoM, people like you will get the pension.

Those people who have tried to plan for their future retirement will be the ones missing out on any handouts from the Government.

yep, if you were born in the late 1940s or 50s, the chances are you ain't going to make it to 83 for women and 79 for men. Those figures are for those born now, although the medicos could keep you alive in a glass jar without a heart and brain for the next 100 years. No brain? No heart? Ah, that's the Government's mature age policy in action. ALP primary vote at the next Newspoll - any one for 25 per cent?

We should organise a rally. I haven't worked in a permanent job in about 5 years but been lucky to survive on contract work. That has dried up now. I despair about what to do next. I may have to re-train but who will give a new graduate an opportunity to start again at 50 years of age or older? If there are any takers reading this, contact me!

I think there are just not enough jobs. Qualifications don't increase chances of getting work unless you are going into a high demand field and even then, no guarantee. Now there are too many people in my field looking for work and I've been culled out of the pile too many times to think I will ever be successful in finding a job even though I have 15 years experience. Age is a factor but, I also think there are just too many people applying for the same jobs. It's a like having a ticket in the lottery.

We should not be spending money on retraining older workers!

Ever since we discovered that our opposible thumbs were good for holding tools, we have been inventing labour-saving devices. A hundred years ago, most of us were farm workers, producing food. Now, somewhat less than five percent of us work on the land, and, with women joining the work force, we should all be retiring around 35.

The point is, most of what we do is pointless and unnecessary, and any money Australia spends on education will show a far better return on investment if spent on younger people, who can learn quicker, have more stamina, find work more easily, and are more likely than the elderly to cause social problems if left idle.

I would like to see a system where everyone received the dole - you, me, and James Packer; with no means testing; where people were not forced to quickly seek work, and thus more likely to gravitate to positions more to their liking. If we closed ALL loopholes, and taxed ALL income at say, thirty percent, we could sack all of our useless tax consultants, sack CenterLink, and create a Paradise.

P.S. I'm 75, and, apart from a Commonwealth Scholarship, can't recall ever having received government assistance.