Quote Originally Posted by JimmyHAD View Post
you have to be 60 years old to remember when a man could support a family, own a home, a couple of cars, send a couple of kids through college, while the wife stayed home with the kids.
Now a woman can do it, while the husband takes care of the kids

Seriously, I have several friends just like that. Of course the wife is not a blue collar worker, but a 'professional' - banker/doctor/CTO/etc.

Actually, working longer doesn't seem bad to me. People now live 8 years longer than they did in the 1960s, and are generally healthier - they've got to work some of those extra 8 years so that there is money to pay for the balance where they draw a pension. Or if they want to work the same amount of time that means that the money they get in retirement should be less than they were promised because it's being spread over a longer period.
Anything else is demagoguery and forcing the financial burden on your children and grandchildren.
That's the intra-generational social contract and it's heavily slanted to the benefit of older people because they hold the political and financial power.


As far as corporations being part of the social contract - that was probably the exception than the rule as in the previous gilded age they weren't. It seems to me that it's fundamentally darwinian and at a certain period of time the power balance was better.
Or may be I'm just too young and from what I've seen corporations have never been concerned with what is moral, only with what is legal and only in terms of calculating the cost/benefit to breaking the law or not. Those with deep pockets can simply buy the law instead, cf. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-11...3HPRT91668.pdf