Raise the medicare age? No.

This talk about raising the age limit on medicare from sixty-five to sixty-seven really pisses me off. I've talked about this before here. I've mentioned it to people I know personally and whenever I bring it up, people look at me like it's a new idea, or like I'm nuts. Why is that? Why isn't it even in the realm of their considerations? And more, why don't they even consider that we are working far too much, for far too long?

It's a fiscally bad idea to raise the Medicare age. It doubles the amount it will cost us, although it won't really adversely affect the individuals involved. It's just a bone for the Administration to throw to the GOP to make the move on other topics they should want to move on, anyway.

Our priorities as always, are all screwed up. We need ideals, we need higher ideals... to shoot for.

Since the 1940s we should have been shooting for these ideals, certainly since the 1950s and 60s. But we have gone the other direction. We have let corporations take over our ideals and our ethics. We have allowed moral-less institutions to run our ideals and priorities.

Ask yourself, why are we working longer hours? Why are we working further into our old age. Yes, we are living longer now. So perhaps we should be staying the same in things, retiring at the same age, medicare at the same age and so on.

But in all these years, as science fiction professed in the early years of the last century, we read that robots would be taking over for the difficult, dangerous and redundant tasks. And indeed, they are beginning to. We read that we would be having more leisure times in our daily lives and old age to study the arts, to add to the quality of our lives, to travel, to have the difficulties of daily life to be made less and less important. And some of those have.

But ask yourself why aren't we holding up ideals of working fewer days per week, fewer hours per day, and retiring earlier to enjoy our elder days in immersing ourselves in the arts and higher considerations of Human capabilities? Why aren't we respecting our elders more because they have become more educated, more knowledgeable and therefore more able to give us guidance? Why are things going the other way?

We should be shooting for working four day workweeks, just as one day long ago we started working six day and then five day workweeks. We should be working shorter days, going down to six and four hour workdays. We should be retiring at sixty-three not sixty-five, or sixty, or going back to the old days of being fifty-five and starting to enjoy the fruits of our labors. We should be working toward increasing life's quality.

But we're not, are we?

We're working longer hours, some of us are working two and three jobs to make ends meet. We're working later into our retirement years, not because it is required by law but because we cannot afford to retire and begin to enjoy our "retirement" years. Some are dying in their jobs rather than being able to afford to quit work and have the money to enjoy life, rather than quit and sit around because we can't afford to do things, to travel, to take up a hobby that will enhance our culture and society. We should more and more be dying in our old age on vacations, not at work.

Why is that? Why don't we have those ideals as... well, our Ideals?

Isn't our goal, shouldn't our goal be... to enhance our lives, not enhance the bottom line for government and corporations? Yes, on the surface, especially considering how things have been economically lately, this all sounds just, what? Stupid? Ludicrous? But back up a minute and ask yourself WHY does this sound ludicrous? Because, it shouldn't. Think about that for a minute longer. And let it alter your view on how we are moving forward and consider that one thing.

Are we really moving forward?

And if your decision is no, then ask yourself, and ask others as well:

Why?