Thirty eight years ? Says who ? I know plenty of people my age who did at least forty eight years. My Italian neighbour's father has been working as a tiler, a bastard of a job, on your knees half the time, and at 84, he's still at it, probably part-time by now.

Thirty eight years. Fair dinkum ? Surely women, even when they have retired, are still putting in the equivalent of half-time hours ? On top of their Baby Boomer full-time jobs for forty years and more ?

Is the writer from Gen Y, by any chance ?

Joe.

I tend to agree with mikk, and I probably wouldn't have commented except for his comment.

I think we probably are seeing the high water mark for the critical mass about now.
I think in coming years there will be more world wars, I think crime is going to be on the increase because of multiculturalism and segregating prisons by race.
I think there's going to be a much greater gap between the rich and poor and with talk of overpopulation it will soon be every man for himself, if it isn't already getting that way.

And as much as the baby-boomers did work really hard and they deserve their retirement they also had their blinkers on in the good years after WW2 and look at whats happened to our country now, the idiot politicians we have and the choices they made.

They have given the country to the Chinese.
You dont sell them the farm, you grow the food on the farm and sell that.
Were all going to starve in a few years now anyway so who cares...
Most of you wont be around for whats coming.

The family home will be factored into pension eligibility, as it should've been already. Why am I paying taxes so people sitting on real estate millions can have pensions, while I don't qualify because I was stupid enough to save into super for my retirement?

It'll be interesting to see how this affects house prices on top of any abolition of negative gearing on investment in non-new housing.

another piece of research that should be done is what percentage of overall taxes funded welfare back in the earlier days, and compare this to today. I think that's where the answer lies, less dependants.

Yes some do start working later, after education, but not many are retiring at all early.

Many are working much longer days, & harder than in my youth, back in the 60s. Apart from the odd trade nights & trade shows, people were rarely home late for dinner, unless they were still at the pub.

I have had a couple of positions where the office phone switched to my home after hours. I would be taking calls regularly to 9.00 PM, & starting them again at 6.00 or earlier. I am not unique in this type of thing.

In the marine industry a normal day was from 6.00AM to 6.00PM, with regular nights till after midnight. For those running accommodation vessels, the crew were effectively on duty 24 hours a day for considerable periods. Many work much harder today.

Yes we have a spending problem. So called public servants, unemployed, the so called disabled, & yes us oldies have all learnt to vote for a living. We put thousands of very dumb people through university, where they are taught by over paid, very dumb others we previously put through universities.

We bring in hundreds of thousands of basically useless people in immigration programs, & are expected to house them as well as our own too lazy to do it for themselves.

Of course this is not sustainable. We are at the "mobs of Rome" stage in our society, & we know what happened to Rome.

I give thanks that I have been lucky enough to avoid disastrous wars, & live through the pinnacle of western civilisation. I doubt my kids, or grand kids will be half as lucky.

Given that we earn roughly twice as much in real terms per average hour worked as people did in 1975, we should be able to comfortably retire at 1975 levels of affluence by working half as long. People who don't regard that as acceptable for themselves can opt to work longer and harder; but those who are happy to work less and have less should be encouraged to do so.