The excuses offered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for keeping people working to the age of 70 are arguably as insane and irrelevant as any purely political platform. If you read the synopsis of the IMF’s grotesque position, it’s quite incredible.
The reasons for working to 70 have nothing to do withthe realities of people’s lives, or the quality of their lives. What a surprise.
This is the cyclical babble supporting this lunacy, and you’ve heard it before:
Governments can’t afford pensions with so much debt.
They need the revenue from the workforce to manage debt.
People are healthier for longer.
Demographics are threatening living standards.
Fertility rates are falling.
Do tell.
The first two points are basically perspectives on the same point about public finances. Mismanagement and fiscally irresponsible levels of debt aren’t mentioned.
The solution that low-wage earners should pay for debt incurred decades ago is more than slightly ridiculous. These criminally gutless governments don’t collect taxes from corporations, the rich, or their lobbyist owners. All costs are offloaded on the poor. Billions of taxes are unpaid every single year. Is the IMF calling for fair and just taxation? Ironically, that alone would solvemany of the problems
People are not healthier. Anything but. Stress is at plague levels. The workplace and personal finance are the major causes of stress worldwide. Suicide rates have been high for decades. Access to prompt healthcare has crashed. Preventive medicine, like vaccinations, is now political, not practical.
The health sector is bloated and booming, and the incredibly high prices are totally unregulated. Many Americans in particular experience medical bankruptcies every year, and the collateral damage directly affects their families. The health sector is a measure of criminal levels of mismanagement.
Standards of living are appalling. It’s like the Middle Ages, and quality of accommodation at high prices is often horrendous. The cost of living and the massive mismatch with wages aren’t a subject for discussion, apparently. At least, not by the IMF. The rest of the world has been screaming about it for years.
Fertility rates are falling due to unaffordability, low wages, a chaotic, unregulated employment sector, and price rises destroying savings or even the opportunity to save. Children are astonishingly expensive. They have been for decades. Why is the IMF never addressing these issues?
The IMF is directly responsible for upholding the myths about the economic realities. Meaningless metrics like “median wages” aka “average wages” are so inaccurate that they’re absurd. Nobody in economics sections out the actual money earned by actual people.
Put it this way – People doing 3 jobs and constantly paying more for everything do NOT earn “median wage”. It wouldn’t matter if they did. They can barely hold on. They can’t keep what they earn, much less invest it, thanks to the inexcusable neglect of generations of mismanagement.
These economics have destroyed the prosperous world of the past. Now the IMF wants people to keep working to support this level of constant failure after 50 years of work? How about doing your own damn jobs for a change?
Keep working after 70? The answer is NO.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
