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][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]
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. [/quote]

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.  [b]Or simple tasks like dogwalking.[/b]

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".[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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