Having passed my allotted three score years and ten I self-consciously realise I am now a continual liability on the long-suffering taxpayer and may potentially become a burden on the health system. Retirees tend to believe that having paid taxes all their lives they deserve to live off the fat of the land - or at least the lean pickings that the state allows.
The pension is no doubt an encumbrance on the treasury coffers, but is hardly generous enough to allow superannuitants to live in the kind of comfort they may have experienced during their working lives. As one dear old lady expressed it, “Retirement means twice as much husband on half as much money.”
The truth of the matter is that successive governments never did put aside a percentage of our taxes to pay back out to us when we reached retirement. They frivolously spent every penny they received on ongoing projects and now have to borrow from frugal overseas moneylenders to pay the unemployment benefits, the DPB and old-age pensions.
Dear old Winston, observing his own greying hair, did come up with the Gold Card granting recipients the use of public transport in off-peak hours. This allows elderly locals to take a train to Wellington, have a few minutes to stride along windswept Lambton Quay, a few more minutes to sit on the world’s coldest railway platform and then come home. Aucklander’s are slightly better off. Apparently they can get to Waiheke Island and back and experience seasickness.
When I first started earning we understood that one and sixpence out of every pound we paid in tax was put aside to pay our pensions. Social Security it was called. Back then we were encouraged to retire at sixty.
Such prudence was halted in1975 when Mr Muldoon scrapped Labour’s contributory scheme based on Singapore’s Central Provident Plan and introduced his National Superannuation Fund, assuring us that there would always be enough money in the kitty to pay out old-age pensions.
He hadn’t factored in advances in medical science and the canny drug companies subsequent surfeit of expensive elixirs that the government is reluctantly obliged to pay for to extend our lives.
Talk about Catch 22.
Benjamin Franklin once said that in this world nothing can be certain except death and taxes. So having paid the taxes apparently we now can only look forward to death.
It’s a sobering fact that at Masterton’s Men’s Shed, where male retirees regularly gather to learn or enhance their carpentry skills during their golden years, some are building their own coffins.
And then nightly on primetime TV either Gary McCormick or Keith Quinn plead with me in the nicest possible way to take out insurance to pay for my funeral. I suspect my children are hoping I will heed their advice, but I intend my will to be one of the shortest: “Being of sound mind, I spent all my money.”
As we approach the inevitable there are all manner of alternatives open to us; not all of course of our own choosing. I’m hoping to die of old age. I want to live to 120 and by then I reckon the government will have paid me back all the taxes I begrudgingly paid them.
The least desirable option is death by a terminal illness. There are a number of maladies in this category and we recently added Ebola to that sordid list. During my working life I handled lots of pork and poultry, skilfully avoiding swine flu and bird flu. But I have got aids; fortunately of the hearing variety and not HIV, so hopefully I’ll hear of any external danger that may creep up on me. Mr Key has warned us of the possibility of beheadings and given the inexplicably high price of hearing devices my severed head may be quite valuable.
An English academic writing in a medical journal said last week that climate change is a bigger threat to humanity than the Ebola virus. I’m glad I live in an inland town so rising sea levels won’t engulf me and I intend limiting my visits to the coast. I will also discard my speedos to ensure I don’t die from over-exposure to the sun’s rays.
I can’t think of any other precautions I should take to maintain my longevity in the face of an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere; though in the thirty years since we were first warned of the danger of global warming I’m not aware of any widespread fatalities.
But I’ve really only skimmed the surface on ways we can die.
There was this fellow who was a karate expert, then he joined the army. The first time he saluted, he killed himself.
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