Explain to me like I am 5...How will we keep growing with an aging population?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My personal thought is that people are going to work longer if they are healthy enough.

A lot of the retirees/forced-out older managers and execs from my F500 company seem to not fully retire. Even re-emerge with new full-time corporate jobs after a few years off.

My grandpa retired from a corporation at 65 and lived to be 94. He easily could have worked until 80-85.

If economics change in ways that make it useful or necessary for retiree age people to work, it will happen.

In order for this to be a viable solution, you need older people to be healthier than they are. It's one thing for a wealthy white guy to work until he's 80 after decades of excellent healthcare in corporate jobs, and not doing hard labor. This is not the case for the vast majority of elderly people, who have disabilities that prevent them from doing a lot of even low-impact jobs. And it does nothing to solve the problem of a shortage in workers for physically demanding jobs in essential industries like agriculture, construction, infrastructure and maintenance, and healthcare. Heck, a significant number of the jobs in healthcare we need to fill are needed to care for the disabled elderly population. Sorry but there are no 80 yr olds who are going to take jobs as health aides whose whole job is help 80 yr olds.

I think if you've only ever known UMC and UC people working cushy white collar jobs, you may not understand how this really works. But who cleaned your granpa's house? Who mowed his lawn? Who *build* his house? Who built the roads he drove on? Who taught his kids to read? Who took his blood pressure at the doctor's office?

Think. We aren't facing a shortage of corporate executives here.

PP. You are being unnecessarily insulting. There are quite a lot of middle-class white collar workers. And pensions are going away so people don't get the automatic income they used to.

Regarding your rhetorical questions. My grandpa didn't move between the ages of about 50 and 94. He mowed his own lawn using a lawn tractor. And did a lot of home maintenance himself.

I have another relative, not so fancy but a bit of a layabout, who went to work as a care provider at an old folks home in his late 60s/early 70s because he still needed to earn some social security credits at that advanced age. He was able to perform that work.

I've run across a lot of older physicians lately. Meaning boomer-ish who look like they could retire if they want to (60s plus).

My elderly parents just had their chimney rebuilt and the main mason looked extremely old. But he was spry and did a good job. He had a younger man with him. Older people can retain a lot of muscle and dexterity if they are active their whole lives.

My kids have a sub at their school that is extremely old from their perspective. Possibly in her 80s. A famously-beloved elementary teacher just retired after 50! years of service. So she was at least 72.

My point is that people will come back into jobs if they need or want the money. No, they can't do every job.

Heck, I myself am wondering if when I'm old if I could be a nanny to a professional family. It seems like being a grandma babysitter could be worth at least $40K a year or more to a highly-compensated professional couple. "Household managers" even more.

It's not just UMC people's jobs that could continue to be done.

The concept of retirement was invented. It's not entirely natural.

How old are you now? You may not feel the same when you get to old age. Yes, there was no retirement age just as there was no five-day work week or eight hour day. Go look up photos of families doing sewing piecework in their tenements at night by gaslight. People didn't want to starve so they worked until they died or a disease for which there was no cure took them. A 94 year old mowing the lawn is not the same as showing up in an office. I worked with some 80-somethings who had to work to survive. They had hearing loss and their reflexes and reaction times were slow. It was super frustrating to be their colleagues. They got into fender benders on the way to work. There really is a difference once you hit your late 70s. Thank goodness for the concept of retirement. It is also about the collective good. It's hard to work with very aged people and they are not as productive. They deserve to take it easy too. Why lionize working forever? I'd rather help out my family and friends in retirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My personal thought is that people are going to work longer if they are healthy enough.

A lot of the retirees/forced-out older managers and execs from my F500 company seem to not fully retire. Even re-emerge with new full-time corporate jobs after a few years off.

My grandpa retired from a corporation at 65 and lived to be 94. He easily could have worked until 80-85.

If economics change in ways that make it useful or necessary for retiree age people to work, it will happen.

In order for this to be a viable solution, you need older people to be healthier than they are. It's one thing for a wealthy white guy to work until he's 80 after decades of excellent healthcare in corporate jobs, and not doing hard labor. This is not the case for the vast majority of elderly people, who have disabilities that prevent them from doing a lot of even low-impact jobs. And it does nothing to solve the problem of a shortage in workers for physically demanding jobs in essential industries like agriculture, construction, infrastructure and maintenance, and healthcare. Heck, a significant number of the jobs in healthcare we need to fill are needed to care for the disabled elderly population. Sorry but there are no 80 yr olds who are going to take jobs as health aides whose whole job is help 80 yr olds.

I think if you've only ever known UMC and UC people working cushy white collar jobs, you may not understand how this really works. But who cleaned your granpa's house? Who mowed his lawn? Who *build* his house? Who built the roads he drove on? Who taught his kids to read? Who took his blood pressure at the doctor's office?

Think. We aren't facing a shortage of corporate executives here.

PP. You are being unnecessarily insulting. There are quite a lot of middle-class white collar workers. And pensions are going away so people don't get the automatic income they used to.

Regarding your rhetorical questions. My grandpa didn't move between the ages of about 50 and 94. He mowed his own lawn using a lawn tractor. And did a lot of home maintenance himself.

I have another relative, not so fancy but a bit of a layabout, who went to work as a care provider at an old folks home in his late 60s/early 70s because he still needed to earn some social security credits at that advanced age. He was able to perform that work.

I've run across a lot of older physicians lately. Meaning boomer-ish who look like they could retire if they want to (60s plus).

My elderly parents just had their chimney rebuilt and the main mason looked extremely old. But he was spry and did a good job. He had a younger man with him. Older people can retain a lot of muscle and dexterity if they are active their whole lives.

My kids have a sub at their school that is extremely old from their perspective. Possibly in her 80s. A famously-beloved elementary teacher just retired after 50! years of service. So she was at least 72.

My point is that people will come back into jobs if they need or want the money. No, they can't do every job.

Heck, I myself am wondering if when I'm old if I could be a nanny to a professional family. It seems like being a grandma babysitter could be worth at least $40K a year or more to a highly-compensated professional couple. "Household managers" even more.

It's not just UMC people's jobs that could continue to be done.

The concept of retirement was invented. It's not entirely natural.

No one wants your old butt as a nanny or house manager
Who the hell will be able to afford either once republicans are done killing jobs and the economy??

I disagree. It's quite hard in my area to find a reliable, highly-educated, legally-here young woman with full-day availability whom you would trust to drive your kids around town. And currently older people don't need to bother because they have pensions and Social Security. Or veterans' benefits. My grandma's senior living community was full of Silent Generation and Boomer people who were supporting themselves mainly with those kind of payments. But Gen-X doesn't often have that setup.

No matter what, there are always rich people. Rich Republicans will ensure that rich Republicans remain. No matter how hard you culminate. There are still rich people in Europe and Japan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well immigration *was* the answer

Grrr this answer always upsets me. And not because I am anti immigrants. Why are we relying on immigrants instead of letting our population have children? Dh and I are now UMC, but we waited until our mid 30s to have kids because we couldn’t afford it from 25-35. We didn’t have maternity leave and also couldn’t afford to be a sahm. I have so many other friends who would like to have had a second or third child and couldn’t afford it.

[Anonymous]

^fulminate

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well immigration *was* the answer

Grrr this answer always upsets me. And not because I am anti immigrants. Why are we relying on immigrants instead of letting our population have children? Dh and I are now UMC, but we waited until our mid 30s to have kids because we couldn’t afford it from 25-35. We didn’t have maternity leave and also couldn’t afford to be a sahm. I have so many other friends who would like to have had a second or third child and couldn’t afford it.

I agree with you and the answer is that making it easier for you to have children would create taxes on businesses and they don’t want that. Immigrants on the other hand will just create more demand and be cheaper labor instantly.

Another argument I have seen is that birth rates are falling in countries with appropriate safety nets too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well immigration *was* the answer

Grrr this answer always upsets me. And not because I am anti immigrants. Why are we relying on immigrants instead of letting our population have children? Dh and I are now UMC, but we waited until our mid 30s to have kids because we couldn’t afford it from 25-35. We didn’t have maternity leave and also couldn’t afford to be a sahm. I have so many other friends who would like to have had a second or third child and couldn’t afford it.

I hope when we get rid of gerontocrats on all sides that we can have more government attention on the needs of children and better working conditions in K-12 education. There is still the possibility of social change in this area. Despite how terrible Covid was for the education system, I see signs of recovery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My personal thought is that people are going to work longer if they are healthy enough.

A lot of the retirees/forced-out older managers and execs from my F500 company seem to not fully retire. Even re-emerge with new full-time corporate jobs after a few years off.

My grandpa retired from a corporation at 65 and lived to be 94. He easily could have worked until 80-85.

If economics change in ways that make it useful or necessary for retiree age people to work, it will happen.

In order for this to be a viable solution, you need older people to be healthier than they are. It's one thing for a wealthy white guy to work until he's 80 after decades of excellent healthcare in corporate jobs, and not doing hard labor. This is not the case for the vast majority of elderly people, who have disabilities that prevent them from doing a lot of even low-impact jobs. And it does nothing to solve the problem of a shortage in workers for physically demanding jobs in essential industries like agriculture, construction, infrastructure and maintenance, and healthcare. Heck, a significant number of the jobs in healthcare we need to fill are needed to care for the disabled elderly population. Sorry but there are no 80 yr olds who are going to take jobs as health aides whose whole job is help 80 yr olds.

I think if you've only ever known UMC and UC people working cushy white collar jobs, you may not understand how this really works. But who cleaned your granpa's house? Who mowed his lawn? Who *build* his house? Who built the roads he drove on? Who taught his kids to read? Who took his blood pressure at the doctor's office?

Think. We aren't facing a shortage of corporate executives here.

PP. You are being unnecessarily insulting. There are quite a lot of middle-class white collar workers. And pensions are going away so people don't get the automatic income they used to.

Regarding your rhetorical questions. My grandpa didn't move between the ages of about 50 and 94. He mowed his own lawn using a lawn tractor. And did a lot of home maintenance himself.

I have another relative, not so fancy but a bit of a layabout, who went to work as a care provider at an old folks home in his late 60s/early 70s because he still needed to earn some social security credits at that advanced age. He was able to perform that work.

I've run across a lot of older physicians lately. Meaning boomer-ish who look like they could retire if they want to (60s plus).

My elderly parents just had their chimney rebuilt and the main mason looked extremely old. But he was spry and did a good job. He had a younger man with him. Older people can retain a lot of muscle and dexterity if they are active their whole lives.

My kids have a sub at their school that is extremely old from their perspective. Possibly in her 80s. A famously-beloved elementary teacher just retired after 50! years of service. So she was at least 72.

My point is that people will come back into jobs if they need or want the money. No, they can't do every job.

Heck, I myself am wondering if when I'm old if I could be a nanny to a professional family. It seems like being a grandma babysitter could be worth at least $40K a year or more to a highly-compensated professional couple. "Household managers" even more.

It's not just UMC people's jobs that could continue to be done.

The concept of retirement was invented. It's not entirely natural.

No, you aren't getting it. We are facing a worker shortage and that worker shortage is NOT in white collar jobs. We have essential, blue collar jobs that it will become increasingly hard to find people to do because they need to be done by young, able-bodied people. We are not going to solve this problem by people working in their 70s and 80s because there will never be enough 70 and 80 year olds capable of working construction and doing nursing to make society function properly.

I'm glad that you don't feel like you need to retire. That's a you-specific issue though. I'm talking about middle and working class people who work the kind of jobs you physically cannot do past age 55 or 60, and the fact that we are not having enough babies or bringing in enough immigrants to do those jobs. You are being myopic in thinking this is about you and your family and your peer group. It's not. It's about society as a whole and society needs young, healthy workers to do a lot of stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My personal thought is that people are going to work longer if they are healthy enough.

A lot of the retirees/forced-out older managers and execs from my F500 company seem to not fully retire. Even re-emerge with new full-time corporate jobs after a few years off.

My grandpa retired from a corporation at 65 and lived to be 94. He easily could have worked until 80-85.

If economics change in ways that make it useful or necessary for retiree age people to work, it will happen.

In order for this to be a viable solution, you need older people to be healthier than they are. It's one thing for a wealthy white guy to work until he's 80 after decades of excellent healthcare in corporate jobs, and not doing hard labor. This is not the case for the vast majority of elderly people, who have disabilities that prevent them from doing a lot of even low-impact jobs. And it does nothing to solve the problem of a shortage in workers for physically demanding jobs in essential industries like agriculture, construction, infrastructure and maintenance, and healthcare. Heck, a significant number of the jobs in healthcare we need to fill are needed to care for the disabled elderly population. Sorry but there are no 80 yr olds who are going to take jobs as health aides whose whole job is help 80 yr olds.

I think if you've only ever known UMC and UC people working cushy white collar jobs, you may not understand how this really works. But who cleaned your granpa's house? Who mowed his lawn? Who *build* his house? Who built the roads he drove on? Who taught his kids to read? Who took his blood pressure at the doctor's office?

Think. We aren't facing a shortage of corporate executives here.

PP. You are being unnecessarily insulting. There are quite a lot of middle-class white collar workers. And pensions are going away so people don't get the automatic income they used to.

Regarding your rhetorical questions. My grandpa didn't move between the ages of about 50 and 94. He mowed his own lawn using a lawn tractor. And did a lot of home maintenance himself.

I have another relative, not so fancy but a bit of a layabout, who went to work as a care provider at an old folks home in his late 60s/early 70s because he still needed to earn some social security credits at that advanced age. He was able to perform that work.

I've run across a lot of older physicians lately. Meaning boomer-ish who look like they could retire if they want to (60s plus).

My elderly parents just had their chimney rebuilt and the main mason looked extremely old. But he was spry and did a good job. He had a younger man with him. Older people can retain a lot of muscle and dexterity if they are active their whole lives.

My kids have a sub at their school that is extremely old from their perspective. Possibly in her 80s. A famously-beloved elementary teacher just retired after 50! years of service. So she was at least 72.

My point is that people will come back into jobs if they need or want the money. No, they can't do every job.

Heck, I myself am wondering if when I'm old if I could be a nanny to a professional family. It seems like being a grandma babysitter could be worth at least $40K a year or more to a highly-compensated professional couple. "Household managers" even more.

It's not just UMC people's jobs that could continue to be done.

The concept of retirement was invented. It's not entirely natural.

How old are you now? You may not feel the same when you get to old age. Yes, there was no retirement age just as there was no five-day work week or eight hour day. Go look up photos of families doing sewing piecework in their tenements at night by gaslight. People didn't want to starve so they worked until they died or a disease for which there was no cure took them. A 94 year old mowing the lawn is not the same as showing up in an office. I worked with some 80-somethings who had to work to survive. They had hearing loss and their reflexes and reaction times were slow. It was super frustrating to be their colleagues. They got into fender benders on the way to work. There really is a difference once you hit your late 70s. Thank goodness for the concept of retirement. It is also about the collective good. It's hard to work with very aged people and they are not as productive. They deserve to take it easy too. Why lionize working forever? I'd rather help out my family and friends in retirement.

Our culture doesn't value older people. I know that. But I'm shocked that you're citing hearing loss and reflex issues and your own impatience as reasons why older people shouldn't be working.

Also...you know older Americans aren't going to give up driving. So it's ridiculous to say it's worse to have them drive to work than to the senior center for a chat and a subsidized meal.

I agree that it's humane not to make older people do backbreaking work. But much of what people do these days doesn't require that. Any job that involves a computer and a chair. Or simple tasks like dogwalking.

Our retirement ages are set based on demographic phenomena from long ago and a higher proportion of body damaging manual labor (like factory work).

There are all kinds of possibilities for allowing seniors to continue to work. It just depends on whether the work is needed and wages are worth it. There's no need to recreate the miserable poverty of the past. We have a lot of solutions for the issues you raise. It's particularly funny you mention hearing. At my work, most of our time is spent on written communication (e-mails and chats). I'm pretty sure X-ers will remain sufficiently computer literate into old age to be employable.

Regarding "deserving to take it easy", a lot of people derive meaning from work. Whether it's fancy high-paid work or not. You mention helping family and friends in retirement. That is substituting unpaid care work for paid work. So you might mow their lawn, paint their house, drive them to appointments, and administer meds. That doesn't show up as "economic growth" but you are essentially planning to still do "work".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My personal thought is that people are going to work longer if they are healthy enough.

A lot of the retirees/forced-out older managers and execs from my F500 company seem to not fully retire. Even re-emerge with new full-time corporate jobs after a few years off.

My grandpa retired from a corporation at 65 and lived to be 94. He easily could have worked until 80-85.

If economics change in ways that make it useful or necessary for retiree age people to work, it will happen.

Easier to "not retire" when you have an "office job". Harder to do when you are on your feet and doing manual work at 65+

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well immigration *was* the answer

Grrr this answer always upsets me. And not because I am anti immigrants. Why are we relying on immigrants instead of letting our population have children? Dh and I are now UMC, but we waited until our mid 30s to have kids because we couldn’t afford it from 25-35. We didn’t have maternity leave and also couldn’t afford to be a sahm. I have so many other friends who would like to have had a second or third child and couldn’t afford it.

I agree with you and the answer is that making it easier for you to have children would create taxes on businesses and they don’t want that. Immigrants on the other hand will just create more demand and be cheaper labor instantly.

Another argument I have seen is that birth rates are falling in countries with appropriate safety nets too.

Birth rates have been consistently falling across the developed world for the past 100 years, pretty much on a straight line. No policies have changed that, anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My personal thought is that people are going to work longer if they are healthy enough.

A lot of the retirees/forced-out older managers and execs from my F500 company seem to not fully retire. Even re-emerge with new full-time corporate jobs after a few years off.

My grandpa retired from a corporation at 65 and lived to be 94. He easily could have worked until 80-85.

If economics change in ways that make it useful or necessary for retiree age people to work, it will happen.

Easier to "not retire" when you have an "office job". Harder to do when you are on your feet and doing manual work at 65+

We often don't redesign work and processes until we are forced to. When we are forced to it is usually because it is economically efficient.

I once toured a factory that spent $10K to build a part-flipping machine for the end of a machine's production line. Why did they do it? They did it because after reviewing their workmen's comp. records they discovered that the (mostly middle-aged) production workers who manually flipped the parts were getting expensive shoulder injuries every couple of years. One injury cost as much as the machine they designed to handle the specific task.

Without economic reasons to reinvent, employers continue on with the status quo. Simply because it's low-effort and cheaper.

For those who mock the UMC white collar workers who still want to work, there are tremendous amounts of expertise, mentoring, insight, etc. But our economy is still set up to throw people away and disrespect older people because in the past, it was easy to find newbies.

I've given lots of examples (anecdata) above. I have a corporate acquaintance who after layoff in mid-50s is advertising himself as a home repairman. This is surprising to me, except for when I think about repairs I've paid for. I've paid $200-$600 per visit for basic handyman work from licensed professionals because I can afford it and I'm terrified the work will be done wrong and flood my house or burn it down if I half-a$$ it myself.

I definitely believe there is untapped labor force potential out there for people from say 55-75. My retirement age is already set at 67.

[Anonymous]

More immigration and a higher birth rate are the only answers. Right now those trends are both negative.

[Anonymous]

Why do we need constant economic growth?
I’ve never understood why macroeconomics seems to be essentially a Ponzi scheme.
I mean things can’t grow for eternity right? Eventually resources are limited.

This is like the pressure for corporations to constantly post growth in profits. What’s wrong with a company that keeps making the same amount of profit every year with a nice stable business? The push to always increase profits over last year leads to bad decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well immigration *was* the answer

Grrr this answer always upsets me. And not because I am anti immigrants. Why are we relying on immigrants instead of letting our population have children? Dh and I are now UMC, but we waited until our mid 30s to have kids because we couldn’t afford it from 25-35. We didn’t have maternity leave and also couldn’t afford to be a sahm. I have so many other friends who would like to have had a second or third child and couldn’t afford it.

I agree with you and the answer is that making it easier for you to have children would create taxes on businesses and they don’t want that. Immigrants on the other hand will just create more demand and be cheaper labor instantly.

Another argument I have seen is that birth rates are falling in countries with appropriate safety nets too.

Immigrants create an immediate strain on schools and Medicaid. They are not cheaper when you factor everything in. The issues is that our schools are funded by local property taxes and not the federal government so they have different sources of funding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well immigration *was* the answer

Grrr this answer always upsets me. And not because I am anti immigrants. Why are we relying on immigrants instead of letting our population have children? Dh and I are now UMC, but we waited until our mid 30s to have kids because we couldn’t afford it from 25-35. We didn’t have maternity leave and also couldn’t afford to be a sahm. I have so many other friends who would like to have had a second or third child and couldn’t afford it.

I agree with you and the answer is that making it easier for you to have children would create taxes on businesses and they don’t want that. Immigrants on the other hand will just create more demand and be cheaper labor instantly.

Another argument I have seen is that birth rates are falling in countries with appropriate safety nets too.

Immigrants create an immediate strain on schools and Medicaid. They are not cheaper when you factor everything in. The issues is that our schools are funded by local property taxes and not the federal government so they have different sources of funding.

Well the Cato Institute, not exactly a bastion of liberal thinking, thoroughly disagrees with that conclusion.

https://www.cato.org/white-paper/fiscal-impact-immigration-united-states