Some of the most unpopular measures of the unpopular federal budget were the attacks on the age pension. The Council on the Ageing reported that 70 percent of people opposed raising the eligibility age to 70.

Perhaps, as it does me, the image of the elderly reduced to subsisting on cat food haunts them. As a child in the prosperous 1950s and 1960s, I can remember adults talking of this shameful reality. The cuts to the pension announced in the budget make it more likely.

Not only will it take longer to be eligible for the pension; the value of it will also be cut. The apparently minor change of linking the age pension to increases in the consumer price index (CPI) will do that. Pensions will begin to lose value from September 2017. The charity UnitingCare estimates that pensioners will be between $80 and $100 a week worse off within 10 years.

It is not just the bleeding hearts of the charitable sector making these points. The pro-business Mercer report, which claims “deep insights into the perspectives of employers, superannuation providers, investors, and individuals”, draws similar conclusions. It suggests that the pension will be 35 percent lower in 30 years than if it remained linked to increases in average male earnings.

These changes will push more elderly people into charity dependency and homelessness. Every charity reports an unsustainable increase in demand for its services. At the same time, government cutbacks mean the lack of affordable housing is getting worse.

OECD figures show that the poverty rate among the elderly in Australia is already at 35 percent, almost triple the OECD average. In 2013, the Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation survey found that women over 65 made up nearly 36 percent of those living below the poverty line, followed by elderly men (29.5 percent). That’s almost a million people.

In this dire situation, older women are even worse off than men, being more likely to have less superannuation or other retirement savings. The simple reason is a part time or sporadic working life; due to their role in the family, it is generally women who have time out of paid work to look after children.

The proposed $7 GP co-payment will add disproportionately to the costs of older workers, whose health care needs are inevitably greater than the young. Blue collar workers’ bodies in particular are likely to be wrecked by their jobs.

And then we refuse to die quickly and quietly when our usefulness to capitalism ends. The age pension is now being paid for about 45 percent longer for men and 30 percent longer for women than it was in the 1970s. Obviously this benevolence has to stop.

The Mercer review of the budget therefore argues it is “imperative for individuals to better prepare now for their future working life and retirement … Australians will need to be more self-reliant and less reliant on government payments now and in funding their retirement.” So if you are old and poor, it’s your own fault.

What prospects are there for older workers to keep working? There are already 200,000 people in their 50s and 60s on the woeful Newstart allowance. This number has increased by 41 percent since 2010. Age discrimination by employers is, if anything, increasing. Unemployment always means the bosses can pick and choose, both in who they make redundant and who they take on. Older workers lose out on both counts.

But then there’s always the cat food option.