Things to consider—

Since early 2011, Obama's been waging proxy war on Syria. Imported death squads masquerade as freedom fighters. The scheme's familiar. It repeats. It reflects US imperialism's dark side. In the 1980s, CIA-recruited mujahideen fighters battled Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers. Ronald Reagan called them "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers." He characterized Contra killers the same way. —Stephen LendmanFor over a century now US ambassadors have acted as fifth columns in the nations they are embedded in, their role chiefly to foster corporate and plutocratic power and coordinate machinations against any truly pro-democratic government.•••••"The dead end identity politics of SF Pride, which sells out a peace hero like Bradley Manning to curry favor with the American ruling class, is what I had in mind. The empire loves your tameness, irrelevance and cowardice, SF Pride. You don’t bother the American ruling class — a five foot two, 105 pound soldier does because he has a conscience and because he didn’t make comfort the guiding principle of his life...." —Randy Shields
Jun 142012
 
PrintFriendly and PDF
By Pat Garofalo, ThinkProgress

Slim: Mexican via Lebanon. Like most capitalist magnates he does not see human beings, only “resources” and “commodities” to be exploited.

Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim, who with a fortune of $65 billion is the world’s richest man, believes that struggling countries need to raise their retirement age to 70 in order to help fix their finances:

Countries should have people work until they are older to reflect longer life expectancy rates, Slim reportedly saidSlim added the current retirement age was established “when jobs were more physical and people died at 60, but now we live until 85 or 90.”

El Universal reported one of the world’s savviest businessmen as saying: “We live in the knowledge society, so knowledge and experience should be valued. This is why a person’s work life could be increased.”

Raising the retirement age from 65 to 70 is also a favorite suggestion of American conservatives, who cite the same reasons: an increased life expectancy and changing workforce. But at least in America, it’s not true that life expectancy is increasing for everybody.

In fact, while life expectancy has gone up substantially for richer, white men, low-income workers have not seen the same gains. Low-income minority women have actually seentheir life expectancy decrease in recent years. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research put it, “there has been a sharp rise in inequality in life expectancy by income over the last three decades that mirrors the growth in inequality in income.”

 

If current trends in inequality continue in the U.S., raising the retirement age to 70 would result in those born after 1973 having a shorter retirement than those born in 1912.

ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! (Hmm…that got your attention, uh?)

Did you like this article? Then buy us a beer. How many times do we have to beg you? The wingnuts and fascists are falling over each other to make donations…to their filthy causes. We, on the other hand, take our left blogs for granted.

Just think how much money you spend on beer, cigs, trinkets and other useless stuff that can also kill you.
Use the DONATE button below or on the sidebar. And do the right thing. Even once a year.

 

 

 

 

 

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

 

Did you like this? Share it:

QR Code - Take this post Mobile!
Use this unique QR (Quick Response) code with your smart device. The code will save the url of this webpage to the device for mobile sharing and storage.

 Posted by at 4:50 pm

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.