I have just sent an email off to my local federal MP. Below is a lightly edited (to protect other people’s privacy) copy of that.
***
Dear Member for _,
That
article raises some points which validly require consideration, but
there is another perspective on this which I consider is overlooked: the
perspective of minorities (women, First Peoples and people of colour, LGBTQIASB+ people, etc) and non-conformists (including, based on my lived experience, autists).
When
I started work after graduation, I initially
planned to save for retirement, but some decisions by the Fraser
government led to me stopping those, as the saving no longer had what I
considered an adequate benefit.
I didn't have any desire to buy a house, as I could see that they were, as has been recently described, "functionally little better than tents",
and I had absolutely no desire to take on something that would tie me
to a job that, frankly, was, in those days, psychologically abusive, for
at least 15 years - quickly moving to 25 years.
My
view of the houses was that they were kitsch-bedazzled sh_t. Many still
are - I want a house that is plain and small, but will last at least a
couple of centuries, but the selfish elders around me wanted to "protect
their investment" by forcing me to buy in to their Ponzi scheme.
It was their attitudes, as well as the crappy structural fabric, that contributed to me deciding I did NOT
want to commit the majority of my working life to slavishly trying to
pay off a mortgage - which, given the assumptions government planning
for retirement is based on, is now a major problem for me.
Attitudes
are a problem ...
I
think Menzies once made a statement to the effect that Australia didn't
need anything like McCarthyism as there was far more scrutiny and
social control in Australian living rooms of neighbours anyway. To that I
say yes: yes, there was, and I am a victim of that - as are so many
others.
And
victim to the extent that I didn't seriously think I would survive to retire until
I was already in my 60s. One of the real life effects of the gap Australian
governments have said they seek to close, and deaths in custody and
violence against LGBTQIASB+ people, and the harm done by workplaces that
cannot cope with differences such as autism, is that many of us will NOT
live to retire, let alone retire in good health or finances. Given that
reality, why would we bother planning for retirement, or take on burdens
such as ridiculously overlong 25 year mortgages for substandard housing
- especially substandard when the effects of the current climate crisis
are taken into consideration?
Given
the minimalist prospect of retiring, I chose to use my money to hep
others as much as possible - relatives, friends, charities, and some
non-conventional options ...
I
don't regret those decisions, but now that I am here in retirement, I
acknowledge that had it been a realistic prospect that I would get here,
I would have redirected some of that money towards the future of myself
and my family.
And my family raises another set of issues that needs to be considered: unexpected life events.
Major family illnesses, some prolonged (including my health issues)
have had a major adverse impact on our finances. Medicare covers most
of those costs (not all, and hospital parking fees are a particular
gripe of mine), but things like the loss of a second income can be a
major blow ...
If our intergenerational and intragenerational
inequity problems are to be realistically addressed, we need to extend our economic and government planning beyond idealised simplifications,
and accept and address the realities of differences.
No reply to this email is necessary.
***
Possible flaws
Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:
- there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan
Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;
- I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
Gnwmythr
teaching the "good" (balanced positive and spiritually mature)
safe ways to counter the "bad" (out of balance, spiritually immature)
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& accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor
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Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here, and Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear
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