Got to thinking about the whole retirement age thing.
We'll call it 65 for the sake of argument because that has been the cherished target for a long time. Even though it is creeping up to 67 and soon will be upwards of 110.
I am thinking about it because I am 59 and working a hellish nightmare of a job. And...........given my current state of financial affairs I have absolutely no prospect of retiring at age 65 or 75 or 85 unless I want to shoulder my cats aside to get at their cat food.
It occurred to me there was something evil, something insidious, about setting the age at 65.
So I looked into it.
The Social Security Act of 1935 set the minimum age for receiving full retirement benefits at 65.
In 1935 the life expectancy of white males was 62.9. For black males it was 51.1. White females were projected to live to 65. Black females to 55.2.
Does this not seem incredibly evil to you?
The powers that be convince the public that this social security thing is a good thing. That if you spend your life working like a dog, at age 65 when you expect to be relatively healthy and mobile, you will be able to retire, collect some cash and lay around the pool drinking martini's and laughing at all the young working fools.
Meanwhile they are silently betting that you will drop dead before you ever have a chance to collect one thin dime.
Based on the stats, the only humans who will be able to collect are white women, and even then only for a couple of days.
I envision them standing at the mailbox, and opening their first social security check while flirting with the 55 year old guy across the street. Unbuttoning one button too many on their polyester blouse, showing a little leg colorfully decorated with varicose veins. Suddenly, but not unexpectedly, they drop to the ground in the shadow of the mailbox, victimized by a massive myocardial infarction.
It is not beyond belief to think that life expectancy was taken into consideration when setting the official retirement age.
Man, I gotta tell you - this is such an evil world. Us wee folk who work so hard and lose sleep to anxiety and pinch pennies to afford take out pizza once every six months; us wee folks who depend upon and trust those in power to look after our best interests, are being screwed with eyes wide open by people who don't give a damn what the quality of your life is as long as they can make money from our misfortune.
I watched the seasonal debut of Eastbound & Down last night. Kenny Powers has settled down into domesticity. He works for a rental car agency and his boss is a dick. He is trying to be responsible, trying to be a family man with a solid job, but he is bored to death doing it.
And he knows deep down inside that it leads to no where.
At the end of the episode he explodes, punches his boss in the face and quits the job to pursue a return to professional baseball.
This is what I need to do. It is what I want to do. I want to lose my mind at The Asylum (?) and fling bottles of booze around the store while I scream and rant and rave.
And yes I want to punch my boss in the face even though she is a woman.
This is what you need to do as well. You need to quit. You need to explode. You need to tell your boss exactly what you think of him, you need to make him understand that you are so much better than the way he treats you and you need to barrel down the road with your hair flying in the wind and your free hand wrapped around a bottle of whiskey as you listen to The Doors and The Stones set to 11 on the volume dial.
Because............ these evil people who pretend to want to look out for your best interests are only happy when you don't get a chance to collect.
Kenny Powers is my hero.
No comments:
Post a Comment