It's not just boomers who are discriminated against, basically anyone over 35 is "too old".
With regard to demographic changes none of them are set in stone, there are cycles both long and short which intersect and influence society.
For example:
Who's to say we won't see a different attitude to marriage at some point in the future, men are marrying older and women younger so we could see a trend toward a median age difference of 10 or 15 years in partners.
That's just one scenario which could drastically change society by causing a break in one pattern or trend and establishing another.

Malcolm King has never given any reason why older workers should not be discriminated against, and has not established any justification for policy other than pointing to problems of the government's own making, like the current unsustainable welfare shemozzle.

Malcolm's concern, like the government's, is completely fake. For if it were real, instead of standing outside the employment relation and crying for "policy" (translation: sucking the blood of the productive class) Malcolm would go right ahead and *employ* all the old people he says "employers" should be employing wouldn't he?

Well? According to Malcolm's theory the prejudice against older workers is mere irrational discrimination; they are actually undervalued in the market. This means Malcolm has NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER for not starting up a firm that employs every single one of them, thus making a profit while solving the problem at the same time.

Of course the reason he doesn't do that, is because he fears making a loss, because he knows his own theory is wrong. That's why he's trying to get the government to do it with other people's money.

What is frustrating about the endless stupidity of all socialists is that they refuse to do the minimal brain-work to understand that their interventions make things worse for those in society with the least income, the least skills, and the least capital. It never occurs to Malcolm that all the imposts on business caused by all those prior know-it-all interventionists might have anything to do with the problem he is trying to solve by more of strangling businesses to death.

Malcolm's foundational assumptions are wrong. The solution is to do less, not more of what's causing the problem.

It has been a long time since I’ve heard a reductio absurdist argument from the libertarians. Let me give an example in the same vein for Jardine.

One of the reasons we don’t bayonet babies is that morally, we believe it’s wrong to bayonet babies. Libertarians don’t believe in morality because it can’t be demonstrated objectively or empirically. It’s just another ‘human construct’.

Jardine and his ilk believe that we should bayonet babies because to deny them the right to do so, would be a form of violence against them (the perpetrators).

Notions of merit, employment rights, even objective reality are tendentious concepts for the libertarians – unless the bayonets are turned against them. Then they soon change their tune.

The story is about how to ensure young people are not taxed to death over the next 40 years to pay for the healthcare and pensions of their parents and grandparents.

The story is about how to ensure young people are not taxed to death over the next 40 years to pay for the healthcare and pensions of their parents and grandparents.
Malcolm,
It threfore is vital that we move away from the socialist notion of givng too much now as many of us have been telling the ALP crowd for a very long time. It's only now as we predicted that when it actually starts affecting the do-gooders they too will start objecting.
The ship has only recently been fitted with a rudder & an anchor after drifting for so many years on the ALP ocean. If you're so concerned about the next generation being taxed too much then help push for a flat tax & get some of the billions back that have been paid to useless bureaucrats during the Rudd/Gillard circus.

How has the policy changed since the rout of Labor?

Governments right across the developed world are commissioning reports willy-nilly on their ageing populations, merely as an excuse to keep putting up the retirement age. Australia is no different.

Our younger generations are being brainwashed to fear having to support our so-called ageing population and that there is no alternative to putting up the retirement age. This is nonsense. We CAN support an ageing population and there are plenty of alternatives to putting up the retirement age. It's just a question of priorities.

What young people are not being told is that one day they will BE that ageing population. Most likely they will be forced to work well into their 70s, even their 80s, so that governments can keep on doing what they've always done best - pumping money into propping up corporations and banks, feathering their own nests, and financing tax cuts for the rich.

Killarney
And more government is the solution is it?

BTW who’s “we”?

Malcolcm
So if I don’t agree with you that means I support bayoneting babies?

Hmm. Not sure what you were trying to get at there, but I think we’ll have to file that under amazingly crappy arguments.

Also, if you had bothered to understand what you’re talking about, you would know that libertarianism is based on the non-aggression axiom, which is the principle that no-one has a right to initiate aggression against another. That’s what you’re denying by advocating “policy” i.e. forcing people to obey your policy proposal. Otherwise what you’re proposing would be optional and there would be no policy. (It’s also why you’re contradicting yourself.)

So you’ve got it precisely back to front. Not only is it a false misrepresentation of libertarianism to suggest that it’s incapable, as a moral philosophy, of identifying the moral wrong of initiating aggression against others – that is its entire foundation and objection to your policy proposal. Furthermore you are hoist with your own petard. It’s you who, by advocating the use of “policy” – i.e. initiating aggression – need to show how you distinguish the attacking people that you agree is immoral, from the attacking people that you are advocating.

Go ahead, let’s hear it. Suppose your policy is enacted and an employer refuses to obey? Answer this: at what stage short of actually shooting him do you renounce the use of violence to enforce the policy? (Obviously to defeat the policy anyone will just have to escalate resistance up to that point, and compliance will then become voluntary. Right?)

Now putting aside your attempt at a pathetic diversionary tactic, there are a number of fatal flaws to your argument. Each of the following is a stand-alone refutation.

Firstly, there is no way for you to know better than the employer who is the more suitable candidate for a job.

Secondly, there is also no way for you to know what age discrimination is justified in terms of what is needed to do the job, for example a physical incapacity, and what age discrimination is based on sheer blind prejudice.

Thirdly, even if you could know what is based on sheer blind prejudice, then why isn’t the solution for you to employ them all?

Fourthly if the purpose of the exercise is to stop government taxing young people to support old people, then the problem is being caused by the “government-knows-best” assumption twice over:
a) in government’s deciding that everyone is entitled to a free income for no other reason than turning 65, paid for by everyone else, which it can’t sustain, and
b) all the thousand imposts on business which make it more difficult to employ people in general and older people in particular.

So your answer to the stupidity and unfairness of the government-knows-best assumption is more of the same, and when the stupidity and unfairness of it is proved against you, you launch into histrionic fallacies about bayoneting babies, while simultaneously confusing and mistaking every single fact and principle in issue!

And this guy is actually advising the government on labour market strategy?

Okay Malcolm answer these questions are admit you can’t because you’re wrong:
a) at what stage short of actually shooting people do you renounce the use of violence to enforce the policy you advocate?
b) by what non-arbitrary criterion do you know better than the employer who is the best person for the job?
c) Why don’t you employ every single one of the older workers who, according to you, are being wrongly discriminated against in the market on the ground that, according to you, they represent a huge profit opportunity that everyone else is too prejudiced to recognise?

It’s you whose drivel defies objective reality.

Malcolm and Jardine are debating an issue that has seldom been debated so that's a positive but I believe there are simple solutions out there.
I have tried to convince consecutive governments that a simple program called Maturelink will educate the over 50 job seeker about the Intergenerational Issues being debated here and allow Boomers to move forward.
As an example, after one recent workshop on the Gold Coast, a participant thanked me for enlightening him to the Boomer Dilemma (living longer and not enough Super) so he used his own money to start a business and is now employing others. He was 63.
Maturelink is one idea on www.bonza.com.au and Bush Skills is another that would employ Boomers to teach skills as they travel Australia.
Practical ideas gentlemen that DEEWR and Joe Hockey have examined closely but didn't have the courage to support.

So there is going to be an increased in the elderly population. The suggestion of increasing retirement age, would appeal to some still in the workforce. Many are still physically fit and mentally alert to continue in their current occupation. (My dad was still working in the Dept of Fair Trade at 71, until secondary cancer stopped him).
On the other hand for many, mental or physical well being can start to deteriorate well before the mid-fifties.
So as this is yet another area that cannot be generalized, if the pension age is increased, 'those who can, can and those who cant, cant'.
Perhaps there are those who could happily manage working part-time.
(Kevin Andrews, Susan Ryan)?
How about become part of the 'ten year plan' for aged care. Being employed for say ten to 15 hours a week to spend time with residents in a Nursing Facility,(much needed) a bit of conversation and or comfort. Days when staff numbers are low ie: public holidays and week ends. One person to share a couple of days with around twenty residents, an average of 120 residents per facility, six new part-time staff. Win win situation.
Assist at a child care centre where most of the staff are young and may benefit, aswell as the little ones, from a Grand motherly figure.

Mid 2012 there were 550,000 on newstart, 50,000 were 55+. Guessing the remainder were employable 16 to 55 year olds. The only stats.. I can find for the present are- 3.5% 55+ and 11.8% youth receiving Newstart allowance.

Through the many many $millions being spent now, to find a long term solution for the aging population, (if they come up with 'incentive payments' to employers GGRRRR). Why not target the very large percentage of long term unemployed who arent 'real keen' to get a job ( and No. no incentive cash bonuses of thousands to stay employed for a year and so on) Keep it real.

continued...

The expensive studies by the Govt. revealed that thanks to the aging population, labour will fall from 65% to 60% by 2060. But during their extensive, expensive studies maybe it is possible that they realize the youth of today are the solution to the problem. With an average of around 500,000 on the dole,surely there are positions to be filled even for inexperienced. A compulsory form to be filled by all,stating their reasons for failure to find employment. There will be of course genuine ones but many fraudsters of varying degrees. And these will be the target..

Whichever way you look at it, and whether provision is made by private or public means, the actuarial demography dictates one inescapable premise. The basis and ideal must be that each person can provide for his own retirement, and then some.

The ‘and then some” is because, for whatever reason, not everyone is going to be able to meet the standard and ideal of providing for his own retirement. There will always be a need for some kind of provision for this latter category.

But the important point, and what the stupidity of the socialists keeps failing to apprehend, is that the whole population can’t fall into the exception rather than the rule. At some stage, the rubber has to hit the road. Someone has to be responsible and engage in productive activity. This does *not* include working for DEEWR calling for the expansion of government, encroachments on liberty, and restriction of productive activity; which is properly characterised as parasitic consumption, not production.

While the socialists claim that taxation and regulation are necessary for reasons of an ageing population, the same socialists also claim that nothing could be more important than all the other things they want to spend public [translation: stolen] money on, including industrial relations [translation: criminalising employment], occupational licensing [translation: guilds and monopolies], monetary policy [translation: parasitism], global warming [translation: pious fraud], indoctrinating children, first class air fares for bureaucrats, foreign junketing, and all the rest of it.

Sooner or later, you have to stop attacking and bleeding the productive class and understand that government is the main cause of the problem you’re trying to solve with more government, that government cannot fix it but can certainly make it worse.

For example the government steals 40 percent of the average workers' earnings through it's many taxes, mostly hidden, and then inflates away what's left. What effect do you think that might have on would-be retirees?

Stop calling for more policies! Anyone who cannot identify 10 ways that government is causing the problem, which should be abolished, is not competent to comment.

Some good points jodelie.

Economists predict an economic slowdown which will clip about .5 percent off GDP over the next ten years. There are a raft of national economic issues but Australia's economy is too highly geared and has therefore priced itself (labour wise) out of many international markets. Most of my thinking on this comes from Ross Garnaut - hardly a socialist - but also others across the political spectrum.

One of the key problems is that employment will drop right at the time (we're seeing it now) the Boomers move to retirement. It's a double whammy. Unfortunately it does not always follow that Boomer retirements means more jobs as hiring is multivariate and multifactor.

I agree with you that young people in jobs is the primary issue but equity wise, ensuring those Boomers who want to work on, can work on and those older folk who want to work, find work

Mr King I totally agree that those reaching retirement age, who are still willing and able, absolutely continue on as they are in the workforce.
I have seen many cases of those who have been made redundant, pushed to retire and the consequences sometimes devastating. This is often an abrupt end to a life long dedication to work. Shame, inadequacy, frustration, boredom. Many emotions are experienced that have possibly never existed before. Worse case scenario-complete isolation, withdrawal, etc.. too sad.
Have a look at some of the nicest, most well tended gardens and often there will be an elderly person or couple pottering around. And have been since retirement to fill in some of the voids.

There are many inter related issues one can see in the Australian labour market including skills mismatch, skills incompetence and exclusion of 'human resources' due to age, location and artificially applied 'industry' barriers.

Most would agree it should be about access for all who are competent, vs exclusion and cronyism, all affected by organisational or industry culture.

As easy as it is to exclude (or include) a 55+, anyone can be excluded by the industry 'nomenklatura' by one personal attribute or selection criterion on job descriptions, whether public or private. For example the candidate must be in 'local professional networks' which will exclude outsiders (+ inexperienced & foreigners).

Public sector (permanent) positons being filled by the person who acted temporarily for 3-6 months, to ensure they have front running, and benefit of job descriptions designed for and by insiders, allowing suprerior interview preparation.

International education (and diversity in the student body) is being unnecessarily nobbled by a generation or two of marketing directors (i.e. admin managers) and influencers. Most are incompetent (by definition), short term in outlook, lack essential 21st centurty management competencies, while focus is upon 'international travel' to 'offshore recruitment, professional and networking events' and 'distributing marketing materials' sounds harsh, but they are incapable of informing, let alone devising, digital marketing and SEO, now essential.

International aid and development supported by younger generations (often as volunteers) led by professional middle aged salaried directors in the loop (with mortgages), while there are multitudes of older generation of older professionals whom are more competent, many willing to work as volunteers.

Don't think it is practical to make special rules for the 'oldies' including moi, but better to ensure there is open and fair access to all in the labour market.

*Administrative work/management has been a significant occupation providing employment, job security, promotion and status but this is being gutted by the digital economy (after IT processing revolution of previous decades)..... the most damning evidence is found in job descriptions for what are now know as 'bs jobs' where personal attributes have become the actual tasks of the position....

Andras
“Most would agree it should be about access for all who are competent, …”

The question is not whether “most would agree”, it’s whether it’s true. A majority is just as liable to error as anyone else. They are not infallible; they are not a god.

No doubt most would agree they should be paid above the market rate for their services, but if governments tried to achieve that, and didn’t stop, they would destroy civilisation, which is why tens of millions starved when socialism was attempted. Since even the ignorance of the electorate won’t let the destruction go that far, politicians are stuck instead promising what they can’t deliver, and creating pockets of corrupt privilege, which is what Malcolm is unwittingly arguing in favour of.

Production is not an end in itself.

Malcolm
By the way, what do you call persisting in believing what is demonstrably untrue, because that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?

“I agree with you that young people in jobs is the primary issue but equity wise, ensuring those Boomers who want to work on, can work on and those older folk who want to work, find work”

See how you’re now defining equity so as to exclude ethics and include initiating aggression? And see how you haven’t been able to eliminate the possibility that you would advocate lethal violence to enforce the policies you advocate, or explain how they would be workable without initiating aggression?

Speaking of objective reality, the difference between objective reality on the one hand, and fiction, fantasy, miracles, magic and such like on the other, is that nature imposes limitations on human action. Man must adjust himself to these facts if he is to have any hope of achieving his aims. This is the realm of rationality, of logic. While it is always hard to know whether a proposition is true, logic gives us tools to enable us to know when a proposition is false.

(This is (one reason) why Aristotle was such a genius. He was able to distil out of the stream of human blather the parts, and the workings, that have logically necessary consequences, thus enabling us to connect, through the logos, with objective reality).

Nature doesn’t just impose limitations on human action through physical and chemical laws, but also through economic laws. If you think about it for a minute, this must be true, otherwise there would be no physical limitations on human production possibilities. (It’s true that a lot of economic theory is bullsh!t, but that doesn’t mean that true economic theory is impossible or doesn’t exist.)

Fiction and fantasies, miracles and magic, by contrast, represent man’s *hope* that the natural limitations of objective reality can be suspended for man’s benefit. He either doesn’t know, or he pretends he doesn’t know, the nature of the limitations on human action that are non-negotiable. This is the realm of irrationality. It includes all coercive and political socialism, however called, even if it is democratic, and even if its proponents wrongly call it equitable, or are professional consultants to government departments dealing with employment.

With a rational belief system, as soon as we identify a logical flaw that invalidates it, we reject it out of hand and search for a theory that has better explaining power. With an irrational belief system, even when faced with an unanswerable proof that the theory is illogical, or self-contradictory, or factually incorrect, we ignore the disproofs, and just keep persisting in what cannot be rationally defended. And that’s what you’re doing isn’t it, which is why you can’t answer my questions, because you’re wrong, and so you’re just trying to pretend that it all hasn’t happened. Quite pathetic really, not to mention intellectually dishonest.

It can be proved in more general terms. For example, if your basal assumption were true, that government knows best how to allocate the scarce factors of production to their most valued ends, then it would be true in all other economic processes as well, and full socialism would be possible and more desirable. So you either defend that, or you show why it’s true in some fields but not others. In either case you’re talking what can be irrefutably demonstrated to be bullsh!t. Which is why you can’t answer my question, and just try to slink away from them again.

Specifically as your belief relates to older workers, to be rational, you would need to demonstrate not only that it would be better for older workers considering all the negative consequences, which you haven’t done because you haven’t considered them. If you have, what are they?

But you would also need to show that the values sacrificed to achieve what you wanted were worth it in terms of all other values sacrificed, the bayoneting babies problem, as you so charmingly – or desperately – put it.

The reason you haven’t done that, is because you’re wrong, as a matter of objective reality.

But if I am wrong then what are the answers to my questions?

All
The error you are all making is that it’s not about “competence” in some objective sense. It’s about what satisfaction the consumer/customer is trying to achieve by buying the good or service, and this is a subjective evaluation.

For example suppose someone prefers to breakfast at a café staffed by good-looking waitresses and waiters. From their point of view, this is part of the experience they’re aiming to get by their actions in purchasing breakfast. This is the objective reality that the employer is confronted with. It’s simply not true that you, or anyone other than the customer or employer, knows who is best suited for the job. Nor is there any reason why the customer should not value people differently according to any criterion which, unlike you, avoids initiating aggression.

Dear Mr Jardine,

We have your test results back and we know the problem.

You’re stuck in the undergraduate ethos of your university club and society. Please take 50 mg of Luvox (Fluvoxamine) by suppository every morning.

If the regressive OCD symptoms persist, we recommend an optic nerve/bowel resection to rectify your fecal attitude.

An extra 2% GST would fix a whole lot of unemployment which is about to happen, and a whole lot of company closures. You can't have bigger wages without paying bigger tax.

Malcolm
Wow. We are amazed at the cogency of your arguments.

Since you obviously don’t know what an intellectually honest dialogue would look like, it would look like this:

Jardine:
At what stage short of actually shooting people do you renounce the use of violence to enforce the policy you advocate?

Malcolm:
At no stage, because if I did, at that stage my proposed policy would cease to be enforceable. It would cease to be a policy, because it would become voluntary by the employer simply escalating his non-compliance up to that stage. Now the entire point of my proposal is that compliance with my opinions should not be voluntary, since that’s the situation we’ve got now which I don’t want. Therefore to avoid intellectual dishonesty or the appearance of it, I openly admit that I advocate the use of aggressive violence up to and including shooting people to force them to obey.

Jardine:
Thank you for that admission. That was like drawing teeth wasn’t it?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
By what non-arbitrary criterion do you know better than the employer who is the best person for the job?

Malcolm
I don’t.

Jardine
Well how do you know, either as a general principle or in a particular case, whether an employer’s preferring one person rather than another, is down to legitimate preference, for example age-related fitness for purpose, or illegitimate discrimination?

Malcolm
I don’t.

Jardine:
Do you have any way of knowing?

Malcolm:
No. You’ve proved that. The ultimate criterion is the subjective evaluation of the consumer or employer. Otherwise I would’ve identified what the objective criterion is. I can’t.

Jardine:
So discrimination is just another word for preference?

Malcolm:
Yes, except that the former has a pejorative connotation to it. However as to what that might denote in my argument, that is clearly completely arbitrary. It has no rational or real criterion.

Jardine:
What about you, do you treat all people equally?

Malcolm
No.

Jardine:
Could you if you wanted to?

Malcolm:
No. If you think about it for a sec, clearly that would be neither possible nor desirable.

Jardine:
Why don’t you employ every single one of the older workers who, according to you, are being wrongly discriminated against in the market on the ground that, according to you, they represent a huge profit opportunity that everyone else is too prejudiced to recognise?

Malcolm
Because what I was saying was bulls!t.

Jardine:
So it’s not wrong on the ground that Jardine doesn’t agree?

Malcolm:
No. it’s wrong on the ground that it’s not even consistent with my own theory and argument. Not even I agree with it. If I did, I would make a huge profit from employing all those old people who, according to my theory, are under-valued in the market. Clearly my theory is wrong, as my own actions prove.

Jardine:
The government steals 40 percent of the average workers' earnings through its many taxes, mostly hidden, and then inflates away what's left. What effect do you think that might have on would-be retirees?

Malcolm:
Clearly it would send many people into retirement broke and dependent on government.

Jardine:
Thus negating your basal assumption that government knows better or cares more?

Malcolm:
Yes, that was daft of me. I don’t know what I was saying that for.

Jardine:
With an irrational belief system, even when faced with an unanswerable proof that the theory is illogical, or self-contradictory, or factually incorrect, we ignore the disproofs, and just keep persisting in what cannot be rationally defended. And that’s what you’re doing isn’t it, which is why you can’t answer my questions, because you’re wrong, and so you’re just trying to pretend that it all hasn’t happened.

Malcolm:
Yes. If I could have answered your questions, I would have, but I couldn’t so I didn’t. I thought no-one would notice if I tried to slime out of it.

Jardine:
Quite pathetic really, not to mention intellectually dishonest?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
And that’s why you tried your last diversionary tactic, ad hominem psycho-babble alleging a mental disorder on my part?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
When the disorder was all in your argument?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
If you read it back, it really was quite a display of infantile narcissistic rage with homicidal fantasies, wasn’t it?

Malcolm:
Yes, sorry.

Jardine:
The bit about cutting up bowels has got shades of Pol Pot in it, hasn’t it?

Malcolm:
Yes. Hey, I just noticed something! I was openly fantasising about killing you in my impotent rate at you’re having proved the indefensible irrationality of my argument, and at the same time, I was advocating government control of the means of production!

Jardine:
Fancy that.

Malcolm:
What a coincidence.

Jardine:
Yes. Do you think it might have any connection with your compulsory government indoctrination?

Malcolm:
Oh, I never thought of that.

Jardine:
So we have now established that your assumptions, the theory based thereon, your argument, and article are all…?

Malcolm:
… complete crap.

Jardine:
And in fact I have proved all the same against you in prior articles, haven’t I?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
Which you were similarly unable to answer, and similarly tried to slime out of with fallacious evasions?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
Which makes you…?

Malcolm:
… a complete berk.

Jardine:
Meaning?

Malcolm:
Berkely & Hunt.

Jardine:
Which is…?

Malcolm:
Rhyming slang.

Maybe the debate is over gentleman.. we get the point. You both think your right!

Boomer
IF there were no such thing as reality, or logic, or truth, *then* it would come down to mere opinion. This is the socialists' eternal refuge in demonstrable error and anti-human stupidity. Whenever it is pointed out that their beliefs are self-contradictory, fallacious, and factually incorrect, they have no answer, but pretend that everything's just a matter of opinion or "ideology". In other words they are forced to deny the possibility of rationality itself, because rationality enables us to identify the self-contradiction and fallacies in their false and garbled ideology.

If I am wrong, Malcolm would answer my questions honestly and prove it.

But if Malcolm is wrong, we would see what we are in fact seeing.

Whether public ownership or control of the means of production makes society physically more productive is not a matter of opinion. Those who believe so are simply wrong.