VERSION|0.5.1|NAME|Steve|DATE|1385726083|CONTENT|[blockquote]Endless desire for more is the big lie about most people.[/blockquote]

I don’t think it&#039;s necessarily a lie. Whenever people have access to spending power, they tend to use it. This means that an acquisitional culture is limited to a) the rich, and b) anyone with a credit card. This is the big change since the old days. There was no point in being acquisitional when you had flat out no chance of buying stuff, so only the well-off could even consider being acquisitional. What easy credit has done is allow people to think they can be as acquisitional as they want. Who sets up home with mismatched 2nd hand furniture these days?

And on pensions, while he is wrong to suggest people are being greedy, there has to be a more realistic debate. What people contracted for when they started work was an average of a 5 to 10 year pension from a 40 year working life. That&#039;s what the system was set up to provide. The current great lie about pensions is that nobody is asking for anything extra. This is nonsense, because the length of time it is being asked for is hugely different. Retirement at 60 now entails an average 22 year pension from a 40 year working life. Life is longer, therefore working life needs to be longer. A fair settlement would be the same balance between working life and pension life as before (i.e. about 4:1), which based on an 82 year life expectancy would be a retirement age of about 67 (50 years working, 15 years pension).|IP-ADDRESS|217.36.222.79|MODERATIONFLAG|