|
Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2009 9:27:28 GMT
Should people of retirement age who don't need the money be working, or should they leave the job market to make room for the many unemployed younger people seeking paid employment?
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Jun 22, 2009 10:08:31 GMT
It is a disgrace that anyone should have to work until they drop in order to survive. They should be free to do what work they choose because they want to do it, not feel forced into it because tghey need the money. Instead of constantly rising, retirement age should be constantly falling as automation improves production and as product quality and lifetime improves. We should be working to support living a full family life, not looking on everyting except employment as a 'problem' that has to be juggled to allow us to satisfy our hours quota.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2009 10:17:29 GMT
That's a bit of a cop-out ratarsed! Take a look at the world today. If people choose to work past retirement age, not because they need the money but because they can't think of better ways of filling the day, should they be made to step down?
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Jun 22, 2009 11:06:31 GMT
I'm all for working to do something constructive but there are many kinds of 'work'. Probably more than half of what is top level paid 'work' today was rich men's playtime a couple of hundred years ago, gambling stocks and commodities in coffee houses. There should be so much more to life than just earn and spend. I don't believe in conspiracy theories but they can provide an easy shorthand to sum things up and the images of a deadweight population slumped in front of TV being hypnotised by images of dysfunctional 'celebrities' after their daily stint of service all being arranged by some sinister Cabal instead of just the way things have worked out is tempting.
There are so many things that could be done and could be done by and for ourselves, but as we keep getting reminded about this financial crisis, if we don't raise debts to buy things we don't really need or want instead of doing for ourselves, so we have to keep working to pay them off, the whole economic shebang implodes. Which to me suggests that there's something terribly wrong with it along the lines of tails wagging dogs. given a chance and less distinction between 'work' and life - like back in the days when you lived over your shop or farm and had to do things as they came up with no fixed hours - we might do a lot more variety of things at a steadier pace.
I'm all for that, but not for using the rhetoric of 'opportunity' and 'choice' to mean tied to something of no interest to you because the alternative is poverty. That's just workhouse in the community.
|
|
|
Post by clemiethedog on Jun 24, 2009 18:02:49 GMT
That's a hard one to govern because "those who don't need the money" is ambiguous. Some companies have mandatory retirement age requirements, but I am not sure if all such companies offer generous pensions.
Here in the United States it's not uncommon to find elderly employees who just lack the means to retire. Our safety net, Social Security, is financed by severely regressive taxation and there were many attempts over the past decade to destroy it altogether.
Also, thanks to George W. Bush and the Republicans, the costs for prescription drugs have increased for many seniors with limited means.
|
|
|
Post by mouse on Jun 24, 2009 18:29:58 GMT
where i looking to employ any one for a job where there was no great phsyical imput needed..i would employ older people every time..more reliable...better time keeping..less likly to have time off for what ever i would also employ older people to teach as they have more life experience..and there is no substitute for experience
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Jun 24, 2009 22:30:42 GMT
There used to be such a thing as experience. Now, it means three years doing exactly the same job somewhere else but for a lot of work, there's a certain degree of knowing the way around and being able to make judgments, deal with the unexpected, or know the familiar by heart, that older workers usually have. Some places positively dislike that because they want things done their way and half the 'experienced' they employ are actually trained monkeys unable to make the mental leap to connect the way they learnt to do it and a new method through understanding the principles behind.
|
|