8 ms·

Isn't 64 a rather arbitrary number? 65 used to be retirement age (for men at least), it clearly needed raising years ago, but was hard to do politically in man

Isn't 64 a rather arbitrary number? 65 used to be retirement age (for men at least), it clearly needed raising years ago, but was hard to do politically in many countries. It is finally being raised. When pensions were first introduced they were meant to run 5 years, not 20. In the UK, at least, you could argue we're left paying for a generation of Baby Boomers who are swanning about on cruises, golf days and health spas on pensions they never paid even half towards. Most are perfectly able to work for another 10 years at least (and if you're younger than 50 you'll have to work those extra 10 years), but for some reason we need economic migrants for economic growth. Even though we're not building anywhere near enough homes, schools, hospitals and transport infrastructure for this mass immigration, and we're not training enough nurses, doctors, teachers. We are effectively just shunting all the economic problems of the end of continual growth 20 years down the line. We even scrapped bursaries for student nurses! Utter madness. And then, rather ironically, it's this same generation who overwhelmingly voted for Brexit to even further destroy their children's and their children's children prospects because they're not happy about the changing face of the Britain they're not even going to live in.

MRD85 7y ago
I'm Australian and my parents "retired" at 58. They're not quite on cruises and golf days but they're perfectly capable of work even now at 63 if they really wanted. They just don't want. Is it their fault or the governments?
- hydrox24 7y ago
  > if they really wanted. They just don't want The premise of working for cash is that no-one really wants to do it, which is why you need to give people money in exchange for the work. So if they don't want to work, and they are entirely self funded, good for them! It's their "fault" and I'm happy for them. But if they have enough cash flow only because of the current Australian franking credit setup (it no longer merely prevents double taxation, it's a subsidy for investors), tax breaks on Superannuation, and so on, then it's the Government's fault for incorrectly calibrating the benefits in such a way that tax payers end up paying people to be unproductive.
  - mattmanser 7y ago
    We've also seen low tax rates for most of the rich countries for the last 20/30 years, meaning they could save more and retire earlier, while underfunding pensions and infrastructure for future generations. It's not just the government's fault, it's short-term thinking by both the government and the voters. Tax rises became anathema in the UK, even for socialist governments like Tony Blair/Gordon Brown. My parents and other retired people I know feel they've earnt their retirement, when they really haven't. And will be one of the few generations out of the preceding and following to have this sort of luxury of sitting around for a couple of decades doing effectively nothing. Whether it be the rather middle class cruises, golf days, spas, etc. or sitting down the pub or going to bingo or pottering around gardening or sunning it up in Spain or whatever. They say things like "I worked hard for 35/40 years", I say "So what? The following generations will have to work 50, 55 or even 60 just to pay for the fact you worked 35/40". At least until automation/robots/AI whatever free humans from work, if it ever happens. Then again, being in the industry that I am, and most of us are, I will also probably be one of the lucky ones.
    - cujo 7y ago
      >My parents and other retired people I know feel they've earnt their retirement, when they really haven't. Hasn't anyone who can afford to retire earned their retirement? What do you mean by "they really haven't"?
      - vageli 7y ago
        > >My parents and other retired people I know feel they've earnt their retirement, when they really haven't. > Hasn't anyone who can afford to retire earned their retirement? What do you mean by "they really haven't"? I think what mattmanser is point (if this has to do with state-provided benefits and not strictly employer-provided benefits, though arguments about market performance can be made there) is that, in many cases, these benefits either 1) will not exist at all, 2) exist in a severely reduced form, or 3) will have the goal posts raised periodically (30 years until retirement for you means your children will have to work 50 years until retirement). If that is a correct interpretation of mattmanser's argument, then he/she is effectively saying that current retirement benefits receivers are receiving their benefits only by encumbering future generations with a greater burden than they bore. As an aside, this brought to mind the notion that perhaps there is such a thing as time inflation, where past promises don't add up in the future and thus result in moving the goal posts. I've seen this crop up more and more with state pension funds in the United States (which always seem to have assumed the most favorable (and unrealistic) rate of return on their investments).
- glitchc 7y ago
  The government’s primarily, but theirs too because they are the govt., or at least their cohort, friends and neighbours. The proper thing to do is raise the retirement age to 75, reflecting gains in longevity and economic reality. Other options include some form of part-time mandatory volunteering component to earn the govt. portion of the pension. However we do it, we are breaking a promise, if you will, that society made to these people when they entered the work force, in that if they endure the indignities and inequities of a salary/wage position for 35 years, then they have earned the freedom to spend the remainder of their time as they see fit.
  - dannypgh 7y ago
    These changes can just be made for persons born after a certain year, to limit or eliminate any broken promises by delaying implementation.
    - glitchc 7y ago
      Right, and that’s exactly what’s happening across the economy. Old programs are being locked, and new entrants are being shunted into modified programs with fewer benefits. We suffer because we know what we’ve lost, but future generations may not know the difference.
  - mattmanser 7y ago
    A promise made by preceding generations that didn't think it through, not by us or people younger than us. Politicians are now implicitly or explicitly saying that such a promise is clearly not being made to us, why should it be honored as they're the ones who didn't 'pay it forward'?
    - kingraoul3 7y ago
      They did, their politicians just spent it all on battleships.
- hexo 7y ago
  I don't get why they should "want to work" and why it should be anyones fault. I don't get your obsession with unneeded work.
  - rb808 7y ago
    The point is most people dont want to work, but society needs people working to provide food, build the things we use, create gas/electricity, help the sick etc. Its an argument about the fairest way to do this. Allowing some people retire in their fifties while lots of poorer people are looking after them does not seem fair to me at least. (unless perhaps they started working FT at 15)
- rb808 7y ago
  One thing about free healthcare and no real property taxes is that its a lot easier to retire early. If they lived in a coastal city in the US they probably couldn't retire because they'd need 40k USD per year in healthcare costs and property taxes.
taneq 7y ago
It's the traditional number at which to re-evaluate whether you'll need and/or feed someone, innit? Along those lines, though, I can't help feeling that this result has got to be largely because of the increases in life expectancy rather than falling birth rate (although in some countries the latter is certainly a factor).
pjc50 7y ago
A lot of this could be addressed by employers being more comfortable with part-time or less energetic employees; I'm sure there are a lot of people who would want to do some work during the week, but not 40 hours, nor the 10 hours of commuting that would entail. The "make them go back into the workforce" argument needs to deal with the realities of aging and low-level chronic illness, or you end up with Amazon-style painkiller dispensers on the walls of the workplace. (Note that a lot of the state pension debate is basically the same as the UBI debate. But most of the well-off pensioners you see are on either deferred compensation from more generous times, or savings, or property value)
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  In order to make this happen you have to get rid of age discrimination laws. If you want someone to hire 'less energetic' workers, those employers need to be able to pay them 'less energetic' salaries. That's going to be a tough sell for voters who tend to be in that age block.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    It's not necessarily a barrier if you can measure their output - it's not age discrimination if you have a clearly measurable variable that relates to productivity and use it for pay. The old "piecework" model. It's also not unreasonable or discriminatory to argue that part-time workers can be paid less because they have more overhead .. so long as you apply this across all PT workers.
- zaroth 7y ago
  It’s almost as if we should have a low friction way for people to contract for companies, doing simple non-physical labor, for as many hours a day as they desire. Something where the investment in the worker is low enough that the company doesn’t need to optimize for someone who will perform at the highest level or have some upward career path over time.
  - koboll 7y ago
    This is why I love the gig economy. "Barista FIRE" sounds awful, but "Uber FIRE" sounds great.
bluGill 7y ago
My company has people who retire at 40 with full pension. To get that though you have to work in some nasty conditions for 20 years. We do our best to make it safe, but there is only so much you can do to make liquid iron safe. I retire at 65 like most people: developing software is not nearly as nasty.
- mattmanser 7y ago
  Yes, but that's a different kettle of fish. I'm reading Garbage Land at the moment and she mentions that garbage collectors have an incredibly dangerous job, more dangerous than policemen or firemen, for example. They're risking their lives to do a necessary job, and in that case I see no problem with the early retirement.
  - madengr 7y ago
    Tower workers are the most dangerous (by fatalities). Tower Dogs is a book about it.
coldtea 7y ago
>65 used to be retirement age (for men at least), it clearly needed raising years ago How old are you? Have you tried working at most jobs (not just some office job) as 65+? Have you tried programming as such? If you mean "paying pensions for people 65+" was too much, and we needed to cut that, I'd understand. And sure, raising the retirement age is one way to do that. Still, it's not the best way to solve the problem. Nor is it "needed" for any other reason (e.g. because people of 65+ today are more capable than in the 70s). >Most are perfectly able to work for another 10 years at least I take it you're in the 20-40-max bracket?
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  My 38 year old friend installs security systems in homes and businesses. This job involves crawling around attics in 100+ degree heat. Trying to imagine my very healthy 60 year old father doing this is... Well it's not happening. I suspect my friend's body will be shot by 50.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Friend of mine is a builder, mid-40's and had to give it up as his back literally an S. He's doing music now, not making much atm, but least he is active and not giving up on himself as many do alas. Then you have professional footballers - don't see any old ones doing that. So yes, some trades/professions do take a toll and in effect have age/fitness limits that do not correspond to retirement age. Alas, nobody tells you at school the work-expectancy cut-off age for many a profession. Hence many will do a trade, that they will be unable to do in later life and not everybody wants to or is able to be a manager or business owner. But many people fail to plan their pensions, let alone their working/income planning for a lifetime. FWIW many (and I'll agree) would say 35 is when you start to really notice your age catching up with your body and downhill from their.
    - Konnstann 7y ago
      Agreed, except for the professional footballer comment, if you can't save for retirement while making more money in a year than most people make in 10, that's on you.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Nasrudith 7y ago
Well it is probably the highest number that still fits the threshold for under five. Under five itself is also arbitrary in that it is "show how the demographics have gone older".
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Some unfortunate changes to UK pension laws mean that for some people who hit the - you have to retire or change jobs as you would get massive tax penalties. One of my friends to early retirement from BT as other wise for his remaining time he would be working for a pittance
littlestymaar 7y ago
> in the UK, at least, you could argue we're left paying for a generation of Baby Boomers who are swanning about on cruises, golf days and health spas on pensions they never paid even half towards. There is a massive (and sadly too common) social bias in this comment: this is not the life of retired baby boomers, this is the life of retired upper-class baby boomers, but the majority of people isn't like that. The upper class people also live a lot longer than the lower one (a decade or more depending on the region) so they cost even more. And since they are generally in a much better shape at the same age, raising the retirement age affects the lower class much more than the upper one. Also, the life expectancy didn't change as dramatically as you'd think since 1950 in that context: in 1950 the life expectancy of a 60 years old British citizens was 77 years. Now it's around 84 years[1]. It rose, but not that much (it didn't go from 5 to 20). [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013.png https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Life-e...
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  But if the retirement age is fixed at 65, that's nearly a 60% increase in years retired per retiree. And, on average, older retirees are less physically able and require more care.
  - littlestymaar 7y ago
    This is indeed correct. But a 60% increase isn't a 400% one, and talking about the increase of healthcare cost is very different from complaining about «lazy and selfish babyboomers going to the spa instead of working longer». These are the two things I criticized in the original comment.
- mattmanser 7y ago
  Upper class, ho ho ho. The middle class is where all those cruises are being sold to. They have huge disposable incomes due to final salary pensions and no mortgage to pay, or they've downsized and unlocked huge sums in an over-inflated housing market because we stopped building enough homes year on year 40 years ago when Thatcher banned the councils from doing so. Pensioners now have higher disposable incomes on average than working people in the UK. The average person under the age of 50 today will never have it as good as the baby boomers, unless some major, socially liberating, tech advance happens.
seanalltogether 7y ago
I do think we should move away from a static age and test the idea that retirement is calculated somewhere between the last 10%-15% of the average life span. And maybe we could do away once and for all with the charade that Social Security is a fund you pay into to receive later on in life and just figure out a better way to distribute X% of annual income taxes to retired folks.
cletus 7y ago
> 65 used to be retirement age (for men at least), it clearly needed raising years ago, but was hard to do politically in many countries. It is finally being raised. When pensions were first introduced they were meant to run 5 years, not 20. Working beyond 65 is fine for some people but there are many cases where this isn't. Take any job requiring physical labour like construction. There is only so long you can do those kinds of jobs. Also the fact that you've been doing them for decades takes its toll, physically. So what's the solution there? People still need stuff built. So you only work construction until you're 40-50 and then what? Change careers? To what exactly? Even for jobs that aren't physically demanding, many people have jobs that if they lose them when they're over 50 they may never work again. This could be completely not their fault either. Their company could go under or get bought out. It could be economic downsizing. The problem, on HN at least, is that there are young people in a high-demand high-paying profession who have never experienced a recession making sweeping statements like "just work until you're 70" as if everyone else is in the same boat as them. As much as you might be a highly paid tech worker, come back here when you're say 55 and those same companies who were fawning over you as a new college grad won't give you the time of day. In tech we haven't really dealt with this yet but I guarantee you it's coming.
- snarf21 7y ago
  I think there is tons of ability for these people to teach young tradesmen the skills they learned over a lifetime.
- bumby 7y ago
  > Change careers? To what exactly? I don't like generalizing by "generations" but this is something where I see a divergence in younger and older coworkers. Older ones literally say, "I don't want to learn [insert relevant skill] because I'm too old." Younger coworkers seem to come better equipped with the mindset that they will have to continually unlearn and relearn to remain relevant. And to counter your point about a recession, many of them started their careers in a recession and I see it in their conservative approach to employment. I think this is more about a complacent mindset with people who may not have recognize that they have to adjust to continue to be valuable. I've known people who were downsized and squandered ample opportunity like free tuition to change careers. I've known others who've successfully parlayed a physically demanding job to one less physically demanding because they knew they couldn't do that forever.
Balgair 7y ago
> Isn't 64 a rather arbitrary number? This is likely a cultural reffrence to The Beatles' song When I'm Sixity-Four (released in 1967, 55 years ago).
jpindar 7y ago
Does your employer hire people over 65?

MRD85 7y ago

I'm Australian and my parents "retired" at 58. They're not quite on cruises and golf days but they're perfectly capable of work even now at 63 if they really wanted. They just don't want. Is it their fault or the governments?

hydrox24 7y ago
> if they really wanted. They just don't want The premise of working for cash is that no-one really wants to do it, which is why you need to give people money in exchange for the work. So if they don't want to work, and they are entirely self funded, good for them! It's their "fault" and I'm happy for them. But if they have enough cash flow only because of the current Australian franking credit setup (it no longer merely prevents double taxation, it's a subsidy for investors), tax breaks on Superannuation, and so on, then it's the Government's fault for incorrectly calibrating the benefits in such a way that tax payers end up paying people to be unproductive.
- mattmanser 7y ago
  We've also seen low tax rates for most of the rich countries for the last 20/30 years, meaning they could save more and retire earlier, while underfunding pensions and infrastructure for future generations. It's not just the government's fault, it's short-term thinking by both the government and the voters. Tax rises became anathema in the UK, even for socialist governments like Tony Blair/Gordon Brown. My parents and other retired people I know feel they've earnt their retirement, when they really haven't. And will be one of the few generations out of the preceding and following to have this sort of luxury of sitting around for a couple of decades doing effectively nothing. Whether it be the rather middle class cruises, golf days, spas, etc. or sitting down the pub or going to bingo or pottering around gardening or sunning it up in Spain or whatever. They say things like "I worked hard for 35/40 years", I say "So what? The following generations will have to work 50, 55 or even 60 just to pay for the fact you worked 35/40". At least until automation/robots/AI whatever free humans from work, if it ever happens. Then again, being in the industry that I am, and most of us are, I will also probably be one of the lucky ones.
  - cujo 7y ago
    >My parents and other retired people I know feel they've earnt their retirement, when they really haven't. Hasn't anyone who can afford to retire earned their retirement? What do you mean by "they really haven't"?
    - vageli 7y ago
      > >My parents and other retired people I know feel they've earnt their retirement, when they really haven't. > Hasn't anyone who can afford to retire earned their retirement? What do you mean by "they really haven't"? I think what mattmanser is point (if this has to do with state-provided benefits and not strictly employer-provided benefits, though arguments about market performance can be made there) is that, in many cases, these benefits either 1) will not exist at all, 2) exist in a severely reduced form, or 3) will have the goal posts raised periodically (30 years until retirement for you means your children will have to work 50 years until retirement). If that is a correct interpretation of mattmanser's argument, then he/she is effectively saying that current retirement benefits receivers are receiving their benefits only by encumbering future generations with a greater burden than they bore. As an aside, this brought to mind the notion that perhaps there is such a thing as time inflation, where past promises don't add up in the future and thus result in moving the goal posts. I've seen this crop up more and more with state pension funds in the United States (which always seem to have assumed the most favorable (and unrealistic) rate of return on their investments).
glitchc 7y ago
The government’s primarily, but theirs too because they are the govt., or at least their cohort, friends and neighbours. The proper thing to do is raise the retirement age to 75, reflecting gains in longevity and economic reality. Other options include some form of part-time mandatory volunteering component to earn the govt. portion of the pension. However we do it, we are breaking a promise, if you will, that society made to these people when they entered the work force, in that if they endure the indignities and inequities of a salary/wage position for 35 years, then they have earned the freedom to spend the remainder of their time as they see fit.
- dannypgh 7y ago
  These changes can just be made for persons born after a certain year, to limit or eliminate any broken promises by delaying implementation.
  - glitchc 7y ago
    Right, and that’s exactly what’s happening across the economy. Old programs are being locked, and new entrants are being shunted into modified programs with fewer benefits. We suffer because we know what we’ve lost, but future generations may not know the difference.
- mattmanser 7y ago
  A promise made by preceding generations that didn't think it through, not by us or people younger than us. Politicians are now implicitly or explicitly saying that such a promise is clearly not being made to us, why should it be honored as they're the ones who didn't 'pay it forward'?
  - kingraoul3 7y ago
    They did, their politicians just spent it all on battleships.
hexo 7y ago
I don't get why they should "want to work" and why it should be anyones fault. I don't get your obsession with unneeded work.
- rb808 7y ago
  The point is most people dont want to work, but society needs people working to provide food, build the things we use, create gas/electricity, help the sick etc. Its an argument about the fairest way to do this. Allowing some people retire in their fifties while lots of poorer people are looking after them does not seem fair to me at least. (unless perhaps they started working FT at 15)
rb808 7y ago
One thing about free healthcare and no real property taxes is that its a lot easier to retire early. If they lived in a coastal city in the US they probably couldn't retire because they'd need 40k USD per year in healthcare costs and property taxes.

taneq 7y ago

It's the traditional number at which to re-evaluate whether you'll need and/or feed someone, innit? Along those lines, though, I can't help feeling that this result has got to be largely because of the increases in life expectancy rather than falling birth rate (although in some countries the latter is certainly a factor).

pjc50 7y ago

A lot of this could be addressed by employers being more comfortable with part-time or less energetic employees; I'm sure there are a lot of people who would want to do some work during the week, but not 40 hours, nor the 10 hours of commuting that would entail. The "make them go back into the workforce" argument needs to deal with the realities of aging and low-level chronic illness, or you end up with Amazon-style painkiller dispensers on the walls of the workplace. (Note that a lot of the state pension debate is basically the same as the UBI debate. But most of the well-off pensioners you see are on either deferred compensation from more generous times, or savings, or property value)

Consultant32452 7y ago
In order to make this happen you have to get rid of age discrimination laws. If you want someone to hire 'less energetic' workers, those employers need to be able to pay them 'less energetic' salaries. That's going to be a tough sell for voters who tend to be in that age block.
- pjc50 7y ago
  It's not necessarily a barrier if you can measure their output - it's not age discrimination if you have a clearly measurable variable that relates to productivity and use it for pay. The old "piecework" model. It's also not unreasonable or discriminatory to argue that part-time workers can be paid less because they have more overhead .. so long as you apply this across all PT workers.
zaroth 7y ago
It’s almost as if we should have a low friction way for people to contract for companies, doing simple non-physical labor, for as many hours a day as they desire. Something where the investment in the worker is low enough that the company doesn’t need to optimize for someone who will perform at the highest level or have some upward career path over time.
- koboll 7y ago
  This is why I love the gig economy. "Barista FIRE" sounds awful, but "Uber FIRE" sounds great.

bluGill 7y ago

My company has people who retire at 40 with full pension. To get that though you have to work in some nasty conditions for 20 years. We do our best to make it safe, but there is only so much you can do to make liquid iron safe. I retire at 65 like most people: developing software is not nearly as nasty.

mattmanser 7y ago
Yes, but that's a different kettle of fish. I'm reading Garbage Land at the moment and she mentions that garbage collectors have an incredibly dangerous job, more dangerous than policemen or firemen, for example. They're risking their lives to do a necessary job, and in that case I see no problem with the early retirement.
- madengr 7y ago
  Tower workers are the most dangerous (by fatalities). Tower Dogs is a book about it.

coldtea 7y ago

>65 used to be retirement age (for men at least), it clearly needed raising years ago How old are you? Have you tried working at most jobs (not just some office job) as 65+? Have you tried programming as such? If you mean "paying pensions for people 65+" was too much, and we needed to cut that, I'd understand. And sure, raising the retirement age is one way to do that. Still, it's not the best way to solve the problem. Nor is it "needed" for any other reason (e.g. because people of 65+ today are more capable than in the 70s). >Most are perfectly able to work for another 10 years at least I take it you're in the 20-40-max bracket?

Consultant32452 7y ago
My 38 year old friend installs security systems in homes and businesses. This job involves crawling around attics in 100+ degree heat. Trying to imagine my very healthy 60 year old father doing this is... Well it's not happening. I suspect my friend's body will be shot by 50.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Friend of mine is a builder, mid-40's and had to give it up as his back literally an S. He's doing music now, not making much atm, but least he is active and not giving up on himself as many do alas. Then you have professional footballers - don't see any old ones doing that. So yes, some trades/professions do take a toll and in effect have age/fitness limits that do not correspond to retirement age. Alas, nobody tells you at school the work-expectancy cut-off age for many a profession. Hence many will do a trade, that they will be unable to do in later life and not everybody wants to or is able to be a manager or business owner. But many people fail to plan their pensions, let alone their working/income planning for a lifetime. FWIW many (and I'll agree) would say 35 is when you start to really notice your age catching up with your body and downhill from their.
  - Konnstann 7y ago
    Agreed, except for the professional footballer comment, if you can't save for retirement while making more money in a year than most people make in 10, that's on you.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Nasrudith 7y ago

Well it is probably the highest number that still fits the threshold for under five. Under five itself is also arbitrary in that it is "show how the demographics have gone older".

C1sc0cat 7y ago

Some unfortunate changes to UK pension laws mean that for some people who hit the - you have to retire or change jobs as you would get massive tax penalties. One of my friends to early retirement from BT as other wise for his remaining time he would be working for a pittance

littlestymaar 7y ago

> in the UK, at least, you could argue we're left paying for a generation of Baby Boomers who are swanning about on cruises, golf days and health spas on pensions they never paid even half towards. There is a massive (and sadly too common) social bias in this comment: this is not the life of retired baby boomers, this is the life of retired upper-class baby boomers, but the majority of people isn't like that. The upper class people also live a lot longer than the lower one (a decade or more depending on the region) so they cost even more. And since they are generally in a much better shape at the same age, raising the retirement age affects the lower class much more than the upper one. Also, the life expectancy didn't change as dramatically as you'd think since 1950 in that context: in 1950 the life expectancy of a 60 years old British citizens was 77 years. Now it's around 84 years[1]. It rose, but not that much (it didn't go from 5 to 20). [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013.png https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Life-e...

i_am_proteus 7y ago
But if the retirement age is fixed at 65, that's nearly a 60% increase in years retired per retiree. And, on average, older retirees are less physically able and require more care.
- littlestymaar 7y ago
  This is indeed correct. But a 60% increase isn't a 400% one, and talking about the increase of healthcare cost is very different from complaining about «lazy and selfish babyboomers going to the spa instead of working longer». These are the two things I criticized in the original comment.
mattmanser 7y ago
Upper class, ho ho ho. The middle class is where all those cruises are being sold to. They have huge disposable incomes due to final salary pensions and no mortgage to pay, or they've downsized and unlocked huge sums in an over-inflated housing market because we stopped building enough homes year on year 40 years ago when Thatcher banned the councils from doing so. Pensioners now have higher disposable incomes on average than working people in the UK. The average person under the age of 50 today will never have it as good as the baby boomers, unless some major, socially liberating, tech advance happens.

seanalltogether 7y ago

I do think we should move away from a static age and test the idea that retirement is calculated somewhere between the last 10%-15% of the average life span. And maybe we could do away once and for all with the charade that Social Security is a fund you pay into to receive later on in life and just figure out a better way to distribute X% of annual income taxes to retired folks.

cletus 7y ago

> 65 used to be retirement age (for men at least), it clearly needed raising years ago, but was hard to do politically in many countries. It is finally being raised. When pensions were first introduced they were meant to run 5 years, not 20. Working beyond 65 is fine for some people but there are many cases where this isn't. Take any job requiring physical labour like construction. There is only so long you can do those kinds of jobs. Also the fact that you've been doing them for decades takes its toll, physically. So what's the solution there? People still need stuff built. So you only work construction until you're 40-50 and then what? Change careers? To what exactly? Even for jobs that aren't physically demanding, many people have jobs that if they lose them when they're over 50 they may never work again. This could be completely not their fault either. Their company could go under or get bought out. It could be economic downsizing. The problem, on HN at least, is that there are young people in a high-demand high-paying profession who have never experienced a recession making sweeping statements like "just work until you're 70" as if everyone else is in the same boat as them. As much as you might be a highly paid tech worker, come back here when you're say 55 and those same companies who were fawning over you as a new college grad won't give you the time of day. In tech we haven't really dealt with this yet but I guarantee you it's coming.

snarf21 7y ago
I think there is tons of ability for these people to teach young tradesmen the skills they learned over a lifetime.
bumby 7y ago
> Change careers? To what exactly? I don't like generalizing by "generations" but this is something where I see a divergence in younger and older coworkers. Older ones literally say, "I don't want to learn [insert relevant skill] because I'm too old." Younger coworkers seem to come better equipped with the mindset that they will have to continually unlearn and relearn to remain relevant. And to counter your point about a recession, many of them started their careers in a recession and I see it in their conservative approach to employment. I think this is more about a complacent mindset with people who may not have recognize that they have to adjust to continue to be valuable. I've known people who were downsized and squandered ample opportunity like free tuition to change careers. I've known others who've successfully parlayed a physically demanding job to one less physically demanding because they knew they couldn't do that forever.

Balgair 7y ago

> Isn't 64 a rather arbitrary number? This is likely a cultural reffrence to The Beatles' song When I'm Sixity-Four (released in 1967, 55 years ago).

jpindar 7y ago

Does your employer hire people over 65?