Should you be able to retire at 60 years old? French labor unions think so...

[Louis VI the Fat]

The point of life is not to spend as much of it working as possible. The point is creative, human, emotional, aestethic, intellectual, hedonistic pursuit.

Economic growth and progress need to be geared towards that.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world is inhabited by worker ants who think people ought to work fourteen hours a day, six days a week, 50 weeks a year, from age five until death. This, its proponents triumphantly claim, means more production and thus is superior. They are right it allows for more economic production and bitterly, bitterly wrong in mistaking it for higher standard of living.

Unfortunately, capitalism is a winner takes all system. If your neighbour declines seeing his chiuldren grow up so he can slave his life away working, he wins all. Such is the nature of the rat race.

By it, the pinnacle of evolution, the creative ape, reduces itself to the level of the worker ant.