I'm not making the claim that age discrimination is rational or optimal. I'm merely suggesting that you may not have enough information to claim that it isn't

I'm not making the claim that age discrimination is rational or optimal. I'm merely suggesting that you may not have enough information to claim that it isn't optimal. It's fairly easy to show that age discrimination exists, but far more difficult to show that it's not optimal, especially in an environment in which it's both illegal and socially taboo. And secondly, even if keeping the older workers is both rational and optimal for the business it's not clear to me why we should force a company to do it. If the shareholders feel the company is not acting in their best interest there are mechanisms in place for them to deal with that.