Well, plenty! First and foremost, remove the political cadre, whose only role is to FOREVER PREVENT essential reform and modernity.

We need rationalists not roadblocks and the inevitable talk fest!

We could double the average income tomorrow just by embracing evidence based, SAFE CLEAN AFFORDABLE NUCLEAR ENERGY!

[All that prevents that is political opposition with special interests!?]

Molten salt thorium reactors could halve, halve and halve again the cost of energy in this country! And consequently double, double and double again, the economy! [THE RESOUNDING POLITICAL SILENCE IS DEAFENING!]

And indeed the progressively foregone (bled white) manufacturing sector that needs energy as its lifeblood!

We need the manufacturing sector up off its knees and leading the charge to a prosperous inclusive future, where the population at large, shares in the economic growth, rather than as present, tethered to a failing economy as routinely bled cash cows!

We are shipping jobs and foregone opportunity overseas, as our main export!? Why? Good question and the finger pointing show ponies in our parliaments need to answer it!

And we need old folk who've retained their marbles and ability to think independently, preferably, without clouds of smoke emanating from seized cerebral circuits!

Rather than rusted on recalcitrant moribund Neanderthals, with neither, who serve fatuous fulsome fools, by keeping them in power!

Perhaps that'll change, when all the old folk have tottered off the mortal coil?
Alan B.

Ponder,

I don't accept that I am wrong regarding old people and drugs. The drugs now keeping old people alive were not unavailable not so long ago. You could, perhaps, ponder what I actually said.

Misanthrope,

You certainly are misanthropic. I'm over 70, and I don't cost you anything. Their are no commercial pilots, soldiers or policemen over 70, and few doctors, scientists or builders work over 70. What are you smoking, boy? As for suggesting that those of us over 70 should be put to sleep, you might find that they think people like you, haters, should be put to sleep first.

Some scientists are working on immortality.

It seems we've traded immortality for procreation? We don't need so much procreation? So how about a little immortality?

Or joints and vital organs that just don't wear out? And how many problems would that solve? Retirement? What retirement?

Housing affordability would be returned? You could spend the first five hundred years saving a substantial deposit all while making negatively geared housing barons into trillionaires; then spend the next five hundred paying the mortgage, making fabulously wealthy banks wealthy beyond imagination!

Or until all the unobtainable wealth of the entire universe was possessed by them?

Immortal cells would mean there'd be no sick days or sick related loss of productivity? And working until you drop would be eliminated by the work until all the work is done mantra!

You wouldn't get tired or need sleep, so there be no need to go home or commute. Just work harder and harder; and consume stuff other folk produce, during your time off!

Taking your allotted meal and comfort stop breaks? Until the employer was the richest employer in the universe, owning a planet sized stack of gold! And you had ten cars, seven TV's and a dozen cell phones, so you never lose touch ever again or get bored with reality

Wouldn't immortality be wonderful? sports injuries? What sports injuries?

We wouldn't be worried about aging or who paid for it then would we? Just where to dump the obsolete trash?

The asteroid belt perhaps?
Alan B.

Immortal cells already exist Alan B.

They're called cancers.

Misanthrope
I think ttbn rounded you up convincingly, on your ambit claim for the young to be given less competition as they themselves age. But unknowingly, you have entered the area of debate around the pro's and con's of euthenasia.

But I agree to some degree, the younger generation should have a priority to jobs and resources over the older generation. The scene looks like a set piece, where the aged have amassed surpluses of worldly wealth, in excess to needs.

The "foot print" as we age should actually be reducing in size, not increasing. The aged should aim their life accordingly, with no more an aspirational view, than finishing their last breath, slumped against the butt of a gum tree!
There was a time in past history of Australia, where that view was acceptable. Many of our aged lived out their final days, camped in a tent in the bush.

So, Misanthropy, your views of the burden of the aged, in an historical sense, are not so shocking.

Let those who can afford the luxury of a supported retirement, do so. But likewise, give those who find the burden of age intolerable, for whatever reason, be given a free ticket out with dignity: Be that at the butt of a gum tree, or euthenasied in a doctors surgery...five minutes up, next please!

Not quite Bugsy, they're called stem cells. That aside, lot of tongue in cheek satire in my post, given some individuals and corporations act as if my post were their factual reality!

Went right over the top without parting the hair on the way through!
Cheers, Alan B.