Gene Morphis ' View

As happens this time of year, publishers list their most important/influential/etc. youngsters.  As an example, the May issue of Wired has “20 Unsung Geniuses”.  We think mature adults deserve recognition just as much as 20-something billionaires.  Here is our Sixty Over Sixty list of the most influential, annoying, important or folks we just find interesting.  Here then, sorted by age, is The Sixty Most Important Leaders Over Sixty. Henry Kissinger.  Still the U.S. best thinker on foreign policy and diplomacy. His recently published book (at age 91) World Order is not only a best seller, it is extraorinary. Jimmy Carter.  Better as an ex-President than President.  His work for Habitat for Humanity is a lesson for all of us. T. Boone Pickens.  Oilman, energy expert.  Creator of The Pickens Plan for energy independence. Frank Gehry.  Showing the world what new materials and CAD design can do to architecture. Warren Bufett. B...

Has the concept of retirement come to an end? Background Retirement, in human terms, is a new concept.  Until the industrial age and the massive shift from farms to factories, there really wasn’t retirement.  One worked the family farm or ranch until unable to work.  At that point one hoped that his children would take care of him during his short remaining life.  Industrialization changed much of that.  While manual farm work was back-breaking labor (and, even with today’s highly mechanized farms, remains so), coal miners, steel-mill-hands, textile plant employees, slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant workers and millions of others had it even tougher, with serious workplace injuries and fatalities common. Bismarck is credited with the first old-age pension in 1889. The industrial age was dawning, and Germany needed an incentive to convince young workers to leave the farm for factory jobs in the cities.  This was a part of that plan. It became w...