"History is a wonderful thing, if only it was true"
-Tolstoy

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Thread(s) and age

Was doing morning scan of Andy's blog, spotted this

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Glenn Reynolds reports on the latest in anti-aging research. Fascinating. One possible implication of extending life spans:

... on a societal level, the extension of peoples’ productive working lives could pay huge dividends. If people stay youthful longer, we’ll see less pressure on the stressed-out social security systems of most industrialized countries. If 65-year-olds were as vigorous as 35-year-olds, or even 45-year-olds, there would be no reason to fund their retirement. Pushing the retirement age back a decade or two could save trillions. And, of course, if you can actually reverse aging, the whole notion of retirement becomes obsolete.


Jumped to Glen's Instapundit

But before getting to the aging piece, spotted

Bob Krum (dunno him) Divided by itself

with following quote :
"No, I’m not surprised that a party that has spent four decades highlighting racial differences now finds itself divided by race."

Are we ready to move beyond "race politics" ?

Are Colin Powell and Condi Rice democrats ?
(just to name a couple high profile names)

"Dream ticket" ... McCain/Obama ?
Call it "beyond politics"
Note that I placed McCain first due to age.

Which brings me back to the point on age...
Move the retirement age up at least a decade, encourage folks to lead productive lives.
Don't follow the European early out model.

Took an "age estimate" quiz yesterday ... gave me guess for longevity of 95-100.
So if the average longevity use to be 70, and we do a little math
is 60 the new 45 ?

Layer on that I've been reading Rainbows End: Books: Vernor Vinge

Book is set in 2025
A main character would be my age (was in grad school in the '70's), recovering (via advances in bio-meds) from Alzheimer's, physically rejuvenated (maybe to look like his 20's)

With breakthroughs in medicine, who knows what may be terminal limits.

And what might be "too old" for politicians?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Which brings me back to the point on age...
Move the retirement age up at least a decade, encourage folks to lead productive lives.


Tell that to someone who's stayed at the job they hate for 30 years in order to provide for their family or put their kids through college.

Increasing the retirement age might have economic benefits, but it will also have social costs that need to be considered. Retirement is the light at the end of the tunnel for many, many people.