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

[Anonymous]

How will we keep growing?
Immigration from areas of the world which are increasingly uninhabitable due to climate change. Those areas which don't allow immigrants will slowly fade away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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".

Dog walking can actually be incredibly dangerous for the elderly. Dog sees a squirrel, lunges for it, walker is thrown off balance, falls and breaks a bone. It’s very common.

65 is not the right retirement age for most people. It should be 70 or 75. There is no current science to the age 65.

[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.

We are mostly a nation of immigrants. It’s why we had drive and made so many innovations. Too many generations of people who didn’t have first hand experience with the alternative made us soft.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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".

Dog walking can actually be incredibly dangerous for the elderly. Dog sees a squirrel, lunges for it, walker is thrown off balance, falls and breaks a bone. It’s very common.

65 is not the right retirement age for most people. It should be 70 or 75. There is no current science to the age 65.

Read up. We’re getting sicker at younger ages and starting to live less long.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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".

Dog walking can actually be incredibly dangerous for the elderly. Dog sees a squirrel, lunges for it, walker is thrown off balance, falls and breaks a bone. It’s very common.

PP. I agree with the risk. But presumably people will know their limits. And lots of seniors have dogs. That's how you know people have accidents with them.

If you just want to sit around on your butts from age 60 until you die, be my guest.

Uh, there’s a lot that people can do other than work, and that’s what people want to do. If you live to work, fine…but I feel sorry for you.

I don't live to work. I just don't get people whose retirement plan is to sit around their house and not really do anything. Cooking, crafting, walking around, the eternal golf, etc. The retired people that I know who are like this really don't do more than they did when they were working. And the whole work part disappears. To me it looks very boring and disconnected from society.

You do you. Let them do them. Good lord.

The topic of this thread is the risk of economic stagnation. My belief is that some older people would choose to work more if jobs were 1) available and 2) worth it financially.

I further believe a lot of people retire and muddle around because that's what is/was "normal". Not because they love that state of existence so much but because "it's what people do".

I do think that it's possible that American society will evolve in response to labor shortages. And that might involve opportunities for seniors.

Meanwhile other people are just saying they'd rather be euthanized, that old people have physical flaws, and that people have "earned" an imaginary right to retire from being socially productive. That's bleak.

It's not so much my love of work that keeps me commenting. It's that all these comments about how older people can't or shouldn't work suggest that there's no way out of a stagnant economy (to OP's question). America has different norms than Europe and Japan. I think we will take a different path with our aging population.

It seems that commenters have not reflected on crisis situations. If US government entitlements get cut, that will be a financial crisis for some. In wartime, we've seen people come into the labor force more fully. I think an economic crisis might have the same effect. However a long-term growing labor shortage doesn't have to have the drama of a war or stock-market crash. It can be fixed with HR policy adjustments and wage increases.

No, most elders do not want to work. They’ve worked their whole lives. They want to do whatever TF they want to do. Let them do that instead of guilting them into “contributing to the economy.”

It's not about guilting. It's about what happens if taxpayers/government stop giving out as much free money. You sound like a rich person who plans to crochet or golf away your senior years. A lot of older Americans are very dependent on government benefits. I actually don't want those taken away. But I also wish Trump wasn't president. If I was 40-60 today and had no savings and low expected government benefits, I'd be preparing to never retire.

[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.

We do let our population have children, you chose not to. I had a kid at 25 that I couldn't 'afford' as MC but I had anyway. Same with many immigrants. We have kids not matter what, not as an economic choice.

[Anonymous]

Simple, the old folks will have plenty of time and money to do a lot of online shopping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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".

Dog walking can actually be incredibly dangerous for the elderly. Dog sees a squirrel, lunges for it, walker is thrown off balance, falls and breaks a bone. It’s very common.

65 is not the right retirement age for most people. It should be 70 or 75. There is no current science to the age 65.

Read up. We’re getting sicker at younger ages and starting to live less long.

This is just a dumb comment. We are not getting sicker at young ages. While people die along the way plenty of people today who are 20 will live well into their 90s. Advances in medicine have been significant. It is important to look at each demographic group as there are different results. But most of us are not getting sick younger and a much longer life is here now for many.

[Anonymous]

Even scarier they are people already born who will live to 150 years of age

Someone born in 2025 when they are 90 will be getting health care in the year 2115.

My Grandma who lived to 90 died in 1980. She was in pretty good health just a few minor things and a bad flu knocked her out.

Do you really think in 2115 she would have died at 90? They could of kept her going a few more decades.

Heck look at cars. I drove my wifes old 2012 SUV to work today at 75 miles per hours and since I started driving it t owork last year it has been my daily driver.

Ford Pintos, Chevy Citations, Dodge Darts and most cars of the 1970s and 1980s by 10 year old were rust buckets headed for junk yard. They barely made it to 10 years and 100K miles. Today I am driving a soon to be 14 year old rust free SUV to work on highways at 80 MPH and I even did a 9 hour round trip a few weeks ago in it.

With tech most of our kids under 25 will live past 100.

[Anonymous]

Japan and Korea have experienced negative birth rates and an aging population for some time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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".

Dog walking can actually be incredibly dangerous for the elderly. Dog sees a squirrel, lunges for it, walker is thrown off balance, falls and breaks a bone. It’s very common.

65 is not the right retirement age for most people. It should be 70 or 75. There is no current science to the age 65.

You don't need "science" to figure out that you're either screwed or about to be screwed when it comes to your health at 65 and above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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".

Dog walking can actually be incredibly dangerous for the elderly. Dog sees a squirrel, lunges for it, walker is thrown off balance, falls and breaks a bone. It’s very common.

65 is not the right retirement age for most people. It should be 70 or 75. There is no current science to the age 65.

I think the "right" retirement age is when you can live off a 4% withdrawal rate of your assets indefinitely, or if you are younger than 50, use a 3.5% withdrawal rate.

[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.

We are mostly a nation of immigrants. It’s why we had drive and made so many innovations. Too many generations of people who didn’t have first hand experience with the alternative made us soft.

We are not mostly a nation of immigrants. Stop with this propaganda. Throughout US history the vast majority of US citizens were born in the US as citizens. Do you understand what "mostly" means?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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".

Dog walking can actually be incredibly dangerous for the elderly. Dog sees a squirrel, lunges for it, walker is thrown off balance, falls and breaks a bone. It’s very common.

PP. I agree with the risk. But presumably people will know their limits. And lots of seniors have dogs. That's how you know people have accidents with them.

If you just want to sit around on your butts from age 60 until you die, be my guest.

Uh, there’s a lot that people can do other than work, and that’s what people want to do. If you live to work, fine…but I feel sorry for you.

I don't live to work. I just don't get people whose retirement plan is to sit around their house and not really do anything. Cooking, crafting, walking around, the eternal golf, etc. The retired people that I know who are like this really don't do more than they did when they were working. And the whole work part disappears. To me it looks very boring and disconnected from society.

You do you. Let them do them. Good lord.

The topic of this thread is the risk of economic stagnation. My belief is that some older people would choose to work more if jobs were 1) available and 2) worth it financially.

I further believe a lot of people retire and muddle around because that's what is/was "normal". Not because they love that state of existence so much but because "it's what people do".

I do think that it's possible that American society will evolve in response to labor shortages. And that might involve opportunities for seniors.

Meanwhile other people are just saying they'd rather be euthanized, that old people have physical flaws, and that people have "earned" an imaginary right to retire from being socially productive. That's bleak.

It's not so much my love of work that keeps me commenting. It's that all these comments about how older people can't or shouldn't work suggest that there's no way out of a stagnant economy (to OP's question). America has different norms than Europe and Japan. I think we will take a different path with our aging population.

It seems that commenters have not reflected on crisis situations. If US government entitlements get cut, that will be a financial crisis for some. In wartime, we've seen people come into the labor force more fully. I think an economic crisis might have the same effect. However a long-term growing labor shortage doesn't have to have the drama of a war or stock-market crash. It can be fixed with HR policy adjustments and wage increases.

How old are you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My personal conspiracy theory that I believe in was that the government purposefully dropped the ball on Covid in order to dispose of a lot of elderly, sickly people quickly. I think the government will do the same for the next “big one.”

yea...right up there with the US govt bombing the WTC