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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

You are on point here.  I have a family that worked physical jobs and now have disabilities.

Even most white collar professions have a lot of pressure which is hard for older people (even middle aged people) to handle.  They have deliverables, deadlines, toxic coworkers and often after hours commitment.  No way 65+ yr old is going to want to do this day in and day out, while begging  for 2 consecutive weeks off and having to approve every sick day or not being able to get up in the morning if not feeling well.

Boss and consulting types who want a few highly compensated hours a week to simply participate in meetings (with no deliverables) and tell people what to do are more than there are available jobs for this type of service.  If you manage to do this, good for you, you won a lottery.

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