Thursday, April 23, 2015

Mis Cellania's Links

A Note to Miss Cellania Readers: I have been alerted that links from this site are being redirected to an ad site -at least for one reader. Is this happening for you? Please leave a comment and let me know.

10 Hilariously Cheesy Fast Food Training Videos. From 1978 to the current era.

13 Beautiful Fields Of Flowers Around The World. A feast for your eyes to begin the day.

I Tested The Bed Bath & Beyond Return Policy. After reading this, I can understand why they recently tightened up the rules.

Seven surface tension experiments. Physics Girl gives us lessons for kids and party tricks to impress your friends.

Why we should be lowering not raising the retirement age. It would free up jobs for younger people, and strike a blow against income inequality.

8 Underground Rivers. And the stories of how they became buried.

Try giving your name to Starbucks and see how they mangle it at the generator What’s My Starbucks Name? (via Laughing Squid)

The Skin I’m In: I’ve been interrogated by police more than 50 times—all because I’m black. (via Metafilter)

In 1851, A Man Picked Two Unpickable Locks and Changed Security Forever.  (via the Presurfer)

$23,660-a-Year ‘Executives’ Will See a Raise From Obama Rule. Or at least work fewer unpaid overtime hours. (via Fark)

5 comments:

Jane said...

Links are working correctly for me

Old Geezer said...

No link issues here.

I must respectfully disagree with the author of the retirement article. I am retired and in my 70's. When my father was born (1911) a male's life expectancy was 50.8 years. While we were shocked at the time, it was not unreasonable to see him die at the age of 49.7 years. When I was born (1940) a male's life expectancy was 60.8 years; the fact that I am well into my 70's and not dead yet is, statistically, mildly surprising,

All that is to introduce the concept that "retirement" and the Social Security payments were intended to help those who unexpectedly survived beyond their anticipated "due date." Raising the retirement age simply recognizes the fact that people are living longer and are able to contribute to the economy longer than before.

If, like the present form of Social Security, you choose to retire earlier, you may do so with the understanding that you will draw proportionately less money each month. In theory you will draw less per month but, in the aggregate, the same amount over a longer term.

Yes, the rich will probably still be rich, while the rest of us have to look for part time jobs to support ourselves. That is why you see so many elderly people working at Walmart. Lowering the "retirement age" will not help them and might actually make it harder for them to get enough hours per week due to competition from their "younger" and more physically fit competition.

Anonymous said...

I was getting redirects yesterday, but had a lot of tabs open and didn't determine if the redirects were from your site. ... so, maybe?
-Chip

Miss Cellania said...

Old Geezer, there are tons of people who are in their 50s and 60s and found their jobs obsolete do to technology, or else they've ruined their bodies with decades of physical labor. That's why they are competing for jobs at Walmart.

At one time in the U.S., people without a high school education could get a job and support a family and buy a house. Now we have machines to do many of those jobs, in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, etc. There are more people than jobs for them. We used to look forward to the days when everyone could support themselves by working four hours a day because of machines. Well, that is now possible, except for the “support themselves” part. It doesn’t take 40 man hours per adult to get ALL the work done, but we still expect everyone to work full time to make a living. So we have a surplus of workers, and that’s one reasons unions are pretty much gone.

We could fix that by having a Universal Basic Income, or we could fix that by taking workers out of the labor pool. We won’t be able to get women to go back to being lifelong housewives, because there’s no security in that. Right now, we are delaying people entering the workforce by sending them to college, at great expense, which only works for so long. So many kids that aren’t college material are going because they can’t find a decent job otherwise. Lowering the retirement age would be working that same idea from a different angle. If people could afford to retire at 60 instead of 65, they would, and there’s nothing to keep them from volunteering, or they might even spend money to contribute to the economy, if they could afford to.

Old Geezer said...

Miss C -
Much of what you say is true. However, I seriously doubt having older people retire earlier will make that high school grad any more qualified for a job. Likewise, the lower age will not make that 50ish person with a ruined body any more able to work as many of the retirees are also broken down and are not truly competing for his/her job.

We need to face the fact that employers offer part time positions to two or more people to cover one full time job in order to keep themselves from having to provide the entitlements that go with full time employment. Better we should extend benefits to both full and part time employees rather than expanding the unemployed pool of elderly people who cannot afford to live on a fraction of their previous income. Retirement for most of us does not hold out an endless stream of Carnival Cruises or trips to Branson.