The Island Where People Forget to Die

If you read the articles -- and if you follow the proceedings in Greece, this is linkbaity headlines.

Title: "120,000 families claiming 'ghost pensions' for relatives who died years ago"

Actual content: "Greece has halted welfare or pension payments to 200,000 people either because they are unentitled to the money - or because they are dead, a Labour Ministry official said on Wednesday."

Not that the 200.000 number includes all pensions under examination -- and most of those were found to be absolutely OK in subsequent checks.

So, first the "dead getting pensions" were far from "120,000" (more close to a few thousands -- and of those "dead cases" most were recent deaths of a few months were the reported death wasn't yet registered (the bureacracy is chaotic).

The final tally was some 40.000 problematic pensions (which in a huge messy bureacracy like Greece includes pensions missing a few supporting documents, having 1% less "pension credits" than needed, etc), and around 2.500 cases of "dead pensioners".

Moreover, of those "dead pensioners" most were cases of people who died with no relatives etc and weren't declared to stop the pension being deposited. Of the 35 million euros deposited to dead pensioners, the state found that the 21 million euros were such and reclaimed it immediately ( http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=380165 ). The rest could be actual fraud cases.

Not as impressive as the BS baity headlines that preceded the investigation one year before. The government merely wanted to give an impression of wide corruption, in order to sweeten the passage of some anti-pension laws.

The article glosses over the contribution of genetics by providing just one vague counterexample.

However, see this

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Very clear evidence in a wide study about the contribution of genetics.

I think its entirely possible to live in a Western society and live with those principles ascribed above.

It just takes will power but it hasn't ever been easier. The overall population has more access to healthful, natural foods than in the past. I'm always amazed that on many street corners in NYC a vendor is willing to sell you produce at incredible prices (4 bananas for $1, $2 for a small cart of blueberries, etc) considering that many of these products come from thousands of miles away and are incredibly perishable.

Discovering communities that share your beliefs and lifestyle is also a lot easier today than it has been.

I think a lot of people that don't ascribe to this healthful lifestyle just have different values. Some people like cheap processed food. It's a lot more consistent and convenient than many other food products. I don't believe in any kind of global conspiracy that wants to push foods bad for your health or inactive lifestyles. I guess maybe its less depressing to think that societal forces manipulate people rather than the idea that people make conscious health related trade-offs for their own reasons.

I live in germany but I tried to use common sense.

In this scenario our society would be split into two groups if we pay pensions for eternity:

Those who lived long enough to receive their pension. Their body turns 30 again thanks to breakthroughs in science. And those who never age beyond 30 and so they never get their pension.

The first group effectively gets "basic income" and they probably own houses/apartments so their living costs are quite low. You can either let everyone have pensions or get rid of pensions.

Not a lot of people get pensions where I live anymore (or at least, not enough of one to live on comfortably). If you don't want to spend your entire life working, you could save for retirement, same as you (hopefully) do now. A lot of people plan their retirement so that they can live off the returns of their investments without touching the principal. If you do this, there's not much difference between retiring for 20 years versus 200.