6 ms·

Live longer, work longer

50 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

JamesBarney 11y ago
I think this is why studies looking at ways to promote lifespan beyond just treating disease are so important. And it seems like the medical and scientific community are coming around to the same idea. A great example of the changing mindset in the scientific community is a new study on metformin to increase longevity.[0] Given how low interest rates are and the profound savings from delaying senescence, it is a great fiscal opportunity for government research. [0]https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02432287 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02432287
nugget 11y ago
People talk a lot about ''quality of life'' but not so much about ''quality of job'' or ''quality of work life''. I used to have a job I hated and couldn't wait to retire (early). Now I have a job I love and hope to keep doing it forever, or as long as I'm competent at least. The difference isn't the amount of work but has rather more to do with autonomy, flexibility of hours, smart co-workers and low stress. Not sure if that scales across the workforce. Maybe some people are only productive in medium to high stress environments where there are constant external pressures to perform? One downside I can see is that if retirement ages are extended and old folks work longer, then opportunities for young folks to enter the workforce will be delayed and overall unemployment may increase.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Your criteria are off somewhat. Most people have jobs they hate and no workable path towards finding something they love. In tech, we are very lucky to have skills that we a) enjoy employing, b) can mostly keep doing until our minds fail us, and c) are in high enough demand so as to pay us a living wage. The vast majority of people aren't so lucky. Your criteria, autonomy, flexibility of hours, nice coworkers, low stress, can't be prioritized unless the former are also satisfied. To want to work until you die is a privilege afforded to very few. Workable, socially-subsidized retirement plans are needed for everyone else.
  - nugget 11y ago
    I used to agree with you but now I'm not so sure. My uncle works in health care and had the same experience as me. He hated his old job, switched to a new one - is performing the same work, same hours, but the change in practice environment (better co-workers and more flexible scheduling) improved his attitude similar to mine, and now he's happy to keep working for another decade or so. It wasn't the hours he hated but certain toxic environmental factors (inflexible scheduling, overhead and bureaucracy). I have heard similar things from folks in other industries. Look at taxi drivers. From what I hear, it really sucked to work for medallion owners - you paid a flat weekly rate, and felt like you had to work 7 days a week or were losing money - and if you took a few weeks off (without paying the rate), you lost your grandfathered position in line. You worked for 12 hour shifts. Now with Uber, you can clock in and clock out whenever you want. No boss yelling at you because he is having a bad day and wants to roll the shit down hill. Same amount of work, same amount of money, but much happier drivers from what I can tell due to that autonomy and flexibility. Software is an awesome field with a lot of benefits that others don't enjoy but my sense is that there are a lot of fields within which you could increase quality of work life happiness by increasing autonomy and flexibility. Increased autonomy and flexibility, enabled by technology, if not a free lunch, might at least be a very, very cheap one. Whether large employers have an incentive to explore this or not (before some technology disruption forces them to) is another question.
  - lgieron 11y ago
    I recently saw an article about a study results which said that in Denmark large portion of population is happy with their jobs, and a lot of them would keep the exact same jobs even if winning the lottery. So, in the right culture, people can be quite happy even with the menial and (superficially) unattractive jobs. BTW these (and similar) reports intrigue me so much that I'd consider moving to Scandivian country for a couple years just to see it first-hand.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Its cultural, of course. Not every society is full of corporate climbers. Some places its OK to fill a socially useful role, make enough money, and go to the pub after work. Add in family and community club, and you have a life.
- Kurtz79 11y ago
  I agree in principle, but I think that many people do not have the luxury (due to lack of skills/inclination, market situation, economic environment,etc), to choose an occupation that is both rewarding in its own right and it is able to pay the mortgage at the end of the month. And it's not the end of the world, it is possible to find satisfaction in other aspects of life: family, friends, hobbies...
CodeCube 11y ago
From the little chart they have on there ... one datapoint that stuck out was iceland. Their employment age is significantly higher than other nations. along the same line as nugget's comment, I wonder how those older workers' quality of life/job/work life is?
- larrik 11y ago
  Iceland sticks out on a lot of charts. Very interesting place.
  - seren 11y ago
    Keep in mind that Iceland population is around ~300K people (with one third living in the capital city), so compared to the vast world, this is roughly equal to a mid-size city.
AlexB138 11y ago
Why would people want to work longer? As much as I enjoy technology, working is the least pleasant part of my life. Perhaps if I were self employed it would be better, but spending the vast majority of my time selling my time to a company is not something I would like to figure out a way to do more of. I intend to do everything in my power to retire early, and something about the discussion of keeping the elderly working longer strikes me as perverse and crass. I think we, as a society, should be trying to figure out how to let the elderly enjoy their twilight years with some dignity, not how to wring every last cent of tax money and GDP out of them that we can.
- cubancigar11 11y ago
  Because you are married and too old to do adventure outside. And work place is less troublesome than being married :p
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Raising the retirement age just seems like one more way in which the Silents and Boomers have pulled up the ladders behind themselves, reneging upon their social contracts after already benefiting from them. If anything, with the advancement of technology, we should be lowering the retirement age. The Earth just doesn't need sexagenarians to be working, but it doesn't need them to exit the workforce, either. When you raise the state pension age, you aren't affecting those with enough personal savings to retire earlier. You are only affecting those who could not stop working at that age without additional financial support of the state. So poor people with lower-paying jobs get to face down the possibility that they may eventually be fired after their first day of not being alive enough to come in to work. Great for morale, I'm sure.~ People with enough money will still be retiring at 50 or 60, or whenever they think they have enough to count down their death clock to zero and still have a little left over. It seems a lot like micromanager Lumbergh from Office Space saying, "Yeah, we're running a little behind on the ol' pension plan here, so I'm gonna need you to come in when you're 65... and 66 too. So if you could go ahead and do that, it would be great. Mmmkay?" And then he retires at 55, while you're stuck filling out TPS report cover sheets. If I make it to 65, and still can't afford to retire, I'm going to burn the seniors village down. You bastards shouldn't have taken my stapler.~
ryandrake 11y ago
One unfortunate consequence of the trend of retiring later and later is that it halts advancement and puts people's careers in limbo who would otherwise be climbing the ranks. When people generally retired at 65 or so, "mid career" would be around 35-40, where you'd start managing or taking on more senior roles. Now you see people still clinging to their senior executive jobs at 85, crowding out everyone else's advancement. You have 40 and 50 year olds still in low level jobs, and you need to be in your late 50s or early 60s in order to start climbing the ladder. Kind of a crappy situation, unless you're one of the lucky type who doesn't care about advancement.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  This can't be more than a transient friction. It would obviously be better if everyone were robust enough to magically work into their were 90s (from a productivity perspective, not just well-being). This would allow more people to accumulate more expertise, etc.
grecy 11y ago
The official age of retirement in Canada is now 67, and most people agree it will bump up to 69 in the next decade like it is in a few European countries. As a male born in Australia in 1982, my life expectancy is....72. I feel a lot like the Clydesdale in Animal Farm, working my entire life to enjoy a very brief (or no) retirement. It's complete nonsense and I refuse to do it. I just quit so I can drive around Africa for a few years. (I'm aware life expectancy doesn't work like that, and that it's already gone up seeings I've lived to 33 already. I'm using it as an illustration)
galfarragem 11y ago
It seems to exist a correlation between early retirement and high deficits on country budgets..
jsprogrammer 11y ago
Paywalled.
littletimmy 11y ago
On the one hand, I see how this might be necessary to continue a welfare state. On the other hand, really? A person is institutionalized from a very early age (school), proceeds to follow orders from a boss (work-life for most), and now policy makers want to limit even the small part of life that a person has to himself (retirement). Might it not be a better option to impose a wealth tax on the very rich and use that to fund retirement?
- rconti 11y ago
  The purpose is to maintain the same amount of retirement as life expectancy goes up. Perhaps it would be more fair to split the difference. But the point is that the 'old' retirement age shouldn't be static as life expectancy rises, because of the costs of state-sponsored benefits.

50 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

I think this is why studies looking at ways to promote lifespan beyond just treating disease are so important. And it seems like the medical and scientific community are coming around to the same idea. A great example of the changing mindset in the scientific community is a new study on metformin to increase longevity.[0] Given how low interest rates are and the profound savings from delaying senescence, it is a great fiscal opportunity for government research. [0]https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02432287 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02432287

nugget 11y ago

People talk a lot about ''quality of life'' but not so much about ''quality of job'' or ''quality of work life''. I used to have a job I hated and couldn't wait to retire (early). Now I have a job I love and hope to keep doing it forever, or as long as I'm competent at least. The difference isn't the amount of work but has rather more to do with autonomy, flexibility of hours, smart co-workers and low stress. Not sure if that scales across the workforce. Maybe some people are only productive in medium to high stress environments where there are constant external pressures to perform? One downside I can see is that if retirement ages are extended and old folks work longer, then opportunities for young folks to enter the workforce will be delayed and overall unemployment may increase.

vinceguidry 11y ago
Your criteria are off somewhat. Most people have jobs they hate and no workable path towards finding something they love. In tech, we are very lucky to have skills that we a) enjoy employing, b) can mostly keep doing until our minds fail us, and c) are in high enough demand so as to pay us a living wage. The vast majority of people aren't so lucky. Your criteria, autonomy, flexibility of hours, nice coworkers, low stress, can't be prioritized unless the former are also satisfied. To want to work until you die is a privilege afforded to very few. Workable, socially-subsidized retirement plans are needed for everyone else.
- nugget 11y ago
  I used to agree with you but now I'm not so sure. My uncle works in health care and had the same experience as me. He hated his old job, switched to a new one - is performing the same work, same hours, but the change in practice environment (better co-workers and more flexible scheduling) improved his attitude similar to mine, and now he's happy to keep working for another decade or so. It wasn't the hours he hated but certain toxic environmental factors (inflexible scheduling, overhead and bureaucracy). I have heard similar things from folks in other industries. Look at taxi drivers. From what I hear, it really sucked to work for medallion owners - you paid a flat weekly rate, and felt like you had to work 7 days a week or were losing money - and if you took a few weeks off (without paying the rate), you lost your grandfathered position in line. You worked for 12 hour shifts. Now with Uber, you can clock in and clock out whenever you want. No boss yelling at you because he is having a bad day and wants to roll the shit down hill. Same amount of work, same amount of money, but much happier drivers from what I can tell due to that autonomy and flexibility. Software is an awesome field with a lot of benefits that others don't enjoy but my sense is that there are a lot of fields within which you could increase quality of work life happiness by increasing autonomy and flexibility. Increased autonomy and flexibility, enabled by technology, if not a free lunch, might at least be a very, very cheap one. Whether large employers have an incentive to explore this or not (before some technology disruption forces them to) is another question.
- lgieron 11y ago
  I recently saw an article about a study results which said that in Denmark large portion of population is happy with their jobs, and a lot of them would keep the exact same jobs even if winning the lottery. So, in the right culture, people can be quite happy even with the menial and (superficially) unattractive jobs. BTW these (and similar) reports intrigue me so much that I'd consider moving to Scandivian country for a couple years just to see it first-hand.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Its cultural, of course. Not every society is full of corporate climbers. Some places its OK to fill a socially useful role, make enough money, and go to the pub after work. Add in family and community club, and you have a life.
Kurtz79 11y ago
I agree in principle, but I think that many people do not have the luxury (due to lack of skills/inclination, market situation, economic environment,etc), to choose an occupation that is both rewarding in its own right and it is able to pay the mortgage at the end of the month. And it's not the end of the world, it is possible to find satisfaction in other aspects of life: family, friends, hobbies...

CodeCube 11y ago

From the little chart they have on there ... one datapoint that stuck out was iceland. Their employment age is significantly higher than other nations. along the same line as nugget's comment, I wonder how those older workers' quality of life/job/work life is?

larrik 11y ago
Iceland sticks out on a lot of charts. Very interesting place.
- seren 11y ago
  Keep in mind that Iceland population is around ~300K people (with one third living in the capital city), so compared to the vast world, this is roughly equal to a mid-size city.

AlexB138 11y ago

Why would people want to work longer? As much as I enjoy technology, working is the least pleasant part of my life. Perhaps if I were self employed it would be better, but spending the vast majority of my time selling my time to a company is not something I would like to figure out a way to do more of. I intend to do everything in my power to retire early, and something about the discussion of keeping the elderly working longer strikes me as perverse and crass. I think we, as a society, should be trying to figure out how to let the elderly enjoy their twilight years with some dignity, not how to wring every last cent of tax money and GDP out of them that we can.

cubancigar11 11y ago
Because you are married and too old to do adventure outside. And work place is less troublesome than being married :p
logfromblammo 11y ago
Raising the retirement age just seems like one more way in which the Silents and Boomers have pulled up the ladders behind themselves, reneging upon their social contracts after already benefiting from them. If anything, with the advancement of technology, we should be lowering the retirement age. The Earth just doesn't need sexagenarians to be working, but it doesn't need them to exit the workforce, either. When you raise the state pension age, you aren't affecting those with enough personal savings to retire earlier. You are only affecting those who could not stop working at that age without additional financial support of the state. So poor people with lower-paying jobs get to face down the possibility that they may eventually be fired after their first day of not being alive enough to come in to work. Great for morale, I'm sure.~ People with enough money will still be retiring at 50 or 60, or whenever they think they have enough to count down their death clock to zero and still have a little left over. It seems a lot like micromanager Lumbergh from Office Space saying, "Yeah, we're running a little behind on the ol' pension plan here, so I'm gonna need you to come in when you're 65... and 66 too. So if you could go ahead and do that, it would be great. Mmmkay?" And then he retires at 55, while you're stuck filling out TPS report cover sheets. If I make it to 65, and still can't afford to retire, I'm going to burn the seniors village down. You bastards shouldn't have taken my stapler.~

ryandrake 11y ago

One unfortunate consequence of the trend of retiring later and later is that it halts advancement and puts people's careers in limbo who would otherwise be climbing the ranks. When people generally retired at 65 or so, "mid career" would be around 35-40, where you'd start managing or taking on more senior roles. Now you see people still clinging to their senior executive jobs at 85, crowding out everyone else's advancement. You have 40 and 50 year olds still in low level jobs, and you need to be in your late 50s or early 60s in order to start climbing the ladder. Kind of a crappy situation, unless you're one of the lucky type who doesn't care about advancement.

jessriedel 11y ago
This can't be more than a transient friction. It would obviously be better if everyone were robust enough to magically work into their were 90s (from a productivity perspective, not just well-being). This would allow more people to accumulate more expertise, etc.

grecy 11y ago

The official age of retirement in Canada is now 67, and most people agree it will bump up to 69 in the next decade like it is in a few European countries. As a male born in Australia in 1982, my life expectancy is....72. I feel a lot like the Clydesdale in Animal Farm, working my entire life to enjoy a very brief (or no) retirement. It's complete nonsense and I refuse to do it. I just quit so I can drive around Africa for a few years. (I'm aware life expectancy doesn't work like that, and that it's already gone up seeings I've lived to 33 already. I'm using it as an illustration)

galfarragem 11y ago

It seems to exist a correlation between early retirement and high deficits on country budgets..

jsprogrammer 11y ago

Paywalled.

littletimmy 11y ago

On the one hand, I see how this might be necessary to continue a welfare state. On the other hand, really? A person is institutionalized from a very early age (school), proceeds to follow orders from a boss (work-life for most), and now policy makers want to limit even the small part of life that a person has to himself (retirement). Might it not be a better option to impose a wealth tax on the very rich and use that to fund retirement?

rconti 11y ago
The purpose is to maintain the same amount of retirement as life expectancy goes up. Perhaps it would be more fair to split the difference. But the point is that the 'old' retirement age shouldn't be static as life expectancy rises, because of the costs of state-sponsored benefits.