RR Community Prospect Rankings: Jonathan Correa grabs #22

As somebody who is going to retire early this year (for health reasons mostly) I can say that the disposable products culture is not all our fault.

Long before the plastics, we had glass. We were expected to spend money on stuff because that brought America back out of the Depression. And in my dad’s day, a man worked till he was 65, in conditions that were often deplorable. He retired, got his gold plunger … and 2 years later, he fuckin’ died.

Now we live to be 85 because of science, a reality that I am sure you would not want to give back. New hearts, new knees, new this … genetics and … well, a health-care maze of just amazing amazings.

But it’s also not quite fair to blame all the people (or very many) of our generation. We never understood the bait and switch that occurs in our financial world now. That was invented by the 30-somethings, and signed and approved by the 40-somethings. The 60-somethings are all “executive senior level” golfers.

The rest of us, meaning about 80 percent, worked for a living, watched some greedy motherfuckers steal our pensions right out from under us and told us we don’t need health insurance.

The economy was built on the fact that the credit card was a convenient way for big business to give us a pay raise without handing over any money. We lived large on the lamb as a result and the vast bulk of folks your age are probably in debt to a sinner’s level.

I don’t owe nobody nuthin’ and I will get about $1,600 a month to live on. Which is OK because I rarely buy anything these days that I can’t use twice.

So I don’t post this as a way of creating a dispute. But I think there’s a tendency to want to push us baby boomers overboard. I have a hunch I will fight back if somebody tries that.

It’s because there’s not enough real work to keep everyone employed.

That was a serious concern in the first half of the last century, when mass production, automation, etc., started to replace human labor.

In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called "need saturation." Davis noted that "the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year" and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, "It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week."

I think the best solution might actually be for everyone to work less, rather than more. Old people and young ones alike.