The aging population

what to you think? should people in their late 50+ stay in the workforce and work till they die?

view 1: For:
they should work to help the burden they're placing on tax payers' shoulders.
Old people like to work, it makes them feel useful and it can reduce the stress in them.

view 2: Against:
they shouldn't for they have done enough already.

questions:
would the society be heading towards a work till you die mode?

problems:
employers like employing younger people.
only older people with great qualifications will get employment.. for example, a professor.

interesting topic.. what do you think of it?

The problem is at the moment the birth rate is declining, and older people are living longer and spending more time in retirement. The people in their 50s and 60s tend to be fitter, and healthier than they once were (due to increased medical knowledge) My parents are 52, and 53. Neither of them have any chance of retiring soon because they have 3 adult children living at home still. Also they are both healthy and enjoy their work. I don't think either of them have any thoughts of retiring in the next 5 years lol.

There has been stuff on the news lately that superanuation schemes aren't enough to provide for people's retirement because people are living longer and we are going to have to save more super. (this freaks me out because my super is rotting, eaten up by admin charges and it peeves me off, just because I am a SAHM earning diddly squat)

They have to work. Not til they die, but definitely past 55.

The simply truth is that we can't afford to have the baby boomers on pensions. It's easy to say "they've/I've paid taxes for the last 40 years. I deserve a break", but it completely ignores the problem.

If put the burden of supporting the baby boomers onto the younger generations, our country is going to disappear. Taxes will have to rise, because the number of pensions will rise, but the number of workers will decrease. If taxes don't decrease, health and education will suffer. Family benefits will disappear, gov. programs will be cut etc. etc. It's hard for the lower and middle class to afford children now. How are we going to have families in 10 or 20 years time if we have to support the baby boomers?

We'll have to choose between paying the pensions, or our kids. I'll choose my kids. If I have to move overseas to do that, then I will. I've got three brothers. Between us and their super my parents will be fine. I think many others would do the same.

The baby boomers non continuing to work isn't feasible. I don't like Peter Costello (or the liberals), but he's did an unpopular thing last week, and I admire him for it. It needed to be done.

My parents are both over 50 ... 51 and 52 ... they have almost no choice but to keep working until my sisters are out of college. Meanless to say, they don't want to quit working either ... they're missionaries. But we don't have the funds to pay more taxes, since we're paying US, Canadian and Australian taxes, since we're not permanent residents here. Already our salary has gone down by 40% -- 30% because of the rise in the Australian dollar, and 10% because we haven't been able to visit our supporters and encourage them to keep donating. Paying for the post-war Baby Boomers could probably be the straw the broke the camel's back -- and send us back to the US.

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I'm curious. What denomination are you Kookaburra that missionaries are coming to Australia of all places?

I have been in YWAM and seen some of the work missionaries do. I was only in it for 6 mths. We went to the outback and did some missionary work out there. ALthough I didn't go to as many places as my team did because I was pregnant and they thought that I'd be better staying in places that were more populated. A shame really, although I had to agree that I didn't really want to go to Broken Hill sleeping in a tent.

THere is missionary work to be done in Australia as well as overseas.

YMAM?

I realise there is work to be done here, but in my experience it's usually done by Australians. Other than Mormons I've never met a missionary doing missionary work here.

Yep, there are quite a few, I have met some Americans, Tongans, and Canadians through YWAM I guess it is all up to where you feel God is calling you to go to. I would love to do some more missionary work again, but it won't be for a few years.

What does YMAM stand for?

Well ... let me tell you the whole story. My parents work with Campus Crusade for Christ International, which is a Christian organization that mainly works with college-aged kids, but also is the main distributer of the Jesus Film worldwide. My parents actually met while doing missionary work in Kenya, and after they got married in the US, they returned there for a year until my eldest sister was born. Then they moved to Texas and my dad got another degree at Texas Tech while working part-time for CCCI - US. That's where my middle sister and I were born. Then we moved to California.

Now comes the interesting part. Every two years, I think, there is a mission conferance in Colorado, and some workers from Australia were there. For some reason (he doesn't know why), he ducked into the Australian 'tent'. After meeting the workers, he got challanged personally by one of them to come to Australia. In short, we did. I can still remember wondering *why* my parents gave us ice cream before dinner on the day they broke the news to us, and teddy-bears -- my eldest sister was kind of offended by that.

CCCI in Australia is still quite small, and it often struggles to keep all areas of ministry covered. At the moment, my dad is handling the IT, networking, and is also the interim manager. Resources are kind of stretched.

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