Will raising the retirement age put young people at disadvantage to find work

If the retirement age keeps going up, older people keep working, and not many new jobs are created, is this going to keep jobs for younger people at a minimum as those jobs done by older people are not going to come up vacant until a later time when the person does retire...at what, 70 years old? Seems like it would to me.
The government should keep retirement age at around 63. Why is it so freaking hard for our government and employers to get their s*it together and make this happen?
I don't care how high they say life expectancy has increased and that they say we should work longer before we retire. And for those who want to bring up SS payments...well, a heck of a lot of people DO pass away before they draw any SS. My own parents did not get a penny as they each worked from when they were around 18 years old until for my mom she was 54 and my dad was 61. So all these people who put in the money and don't draw it...we should have plenty to pay people SS from say age 63.

Well following your logic maybe they should reduce it to age 30. Then there would be even more jobs for people and we would have 0 unemployment.

You do not grasp the theory of economics so i'm sure someone will explain them to you.

I will leave you with this question though. Ask yourself why they are raising the retirement age in the first place?

reply to post by kro32


Oh please, I don't think I was being that out of line with 63....

reply to post by sharintexas


The trick here is whether it's to be voluntary or mandatory. Some people are fit to work until they wear out because they are still contributing. However if they are worn out at 60 or 63, why not be able to do so? In any case, it's my heart-felt opinion that as times change there should be flexibility and adaptability of the system. But since when has the system listened to me, lol?

They are raising the age simply to keep them off of social security. Most people at that age are not taking jobs that the college graduate kids are going for. Most are low skilled low wages.

It's really unfair to the elderly I think to make them work longer but hey if you want that mcdonalds job so bad I'm afraid your gonna have to compete for it now.

reply to post by sharintexas


The people who set up social security did not understand the human life span very well. There is a big misconception that people died a LOT earlier at around the turn of the century than they do now. This really isnt the case. The AVERAGE human life span has increased a good deal, mostly because of great reductions in infant mortality.

So, how long people were going to live and collect social security was underestimated, but even that is not the whole story. Another problem with Social Security is that the government didnt actually set the money it collected for Social Security aside, or even invest it. It spent it, and gave bonds as promissory notes. This could be a big problem if the corporate rape of America and her assets leaves the United States insolvent. It would cause the US to default on those promissory notes for the money it borrowed from the people who paid into that system.

Also understand that full employment was NEVER a goal in the US, we have always tried to keep unemployment around 5% as it helps hold down the cost of labor.

The problems with jobs for young people has a lot less to do with raising the retirement age than it does with globalization, and corporate pressure on our politicians to make our economic system work in their favor, and not in favor of the majority. Corporations have figured out how to take advantage of the US's assets, (our military, tax credits, our court system, etc) to further their goals, without really reciprocating by keeping jobs here and thus supporting the system whose assets they use liberally.

Your biggest competition for jobs is not grandpa who has to work a couple years longer. Its people in China, and India, who will work cheaper than both you AND grandpa. The shortage of jobs is a direct result of jobs having moved overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


Ahhh, your post makes sense...I didn't think of the jobs going out of the country.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


People may a lived to an OK age. But that was only the wealthy, who we read about. No-one wrote about the poor and how they lived and died.

Most people were also basically disabled through medical issues if they got to 65.

Remember it was only a few years ago the Beatles sang the song....... "when I'm 64 " as though that was ancient.

As a mortician I am always amused at how people romanticize how we used to live and die.

I understand wishful thinking, but actually believing is another step.

Retirement age was a short lived social experiment carried out in a few countries. It will become a failed experiement and things will go back to how it has always been.

You remain useful. Or die trying to be useful.

reply to post by thedeadtruth


Many people still are in really rough shape in their 60s for various reasons. But it really wasnt only the rich who lived a long time.

www.anth.ucsb.edu...

A fundamental conclusion we draw from this analysis is that extensive longevity
appears to be a novel feature of Homo sapiens. Our results contradict
Vallois’s (1961: 222) claim that among early humans, “few individuals passed
forty years, and it is only quite exceptionally that any passed fifty,” and the
more traditional Hobbesian view of a nasty, brutish, and short human life (see
also King and Jukes 1969; Weiss 1981). The data show that modal adult life
span is 68–78 years, and that it was not uncommon for individuals to reach
these ages, suggesting that inferences based on paleodemographic reconstruction
are unreliable.

These studies were done on modern "stone age" peoples who do not have access to modern medicine or other supposed life prolonging technologies.

People of the Beatles age singing about how awful 64 was, doesnt tell you about natural human life span. It tells you about the condition of old people who worked in the nasty beginnings of the industrial revolution for who knows how many hours a day, in who knows what kind of conditions, etc. If you take two horses born at the same time, and work one of them like a slave and expose them to all manner of hazards and toxins, etc. The one you work like a slave might be in worse shape at old age than one who labored under better working conditions.

Unions had a lot to do with people having less broken down bodies in their old age, because of the resulting improvements in health and safety on the job.

Ok then. If it is all about working hard that kills you.

Explain the infant and generally young death rate ( below 25 ) of royals and other wealthy people in England for the last 1000 years ? It has only significantly increased in the last 200 years even for them. The records are pretty astounding and eye opening.

I think the difference in death age figures you are talking about was in a period in history when humans were not crowded together. As population density plays a massive part in spreading disease.

Originally posted by thedeadtruth
Ok then. If it is all about working hard that kills you.

Explain the infant and generally young death rate ( below 25 ) of royals and other wealthy people in England for the last 1000 years ? It has only significantly increased in the last 200 years even for them. The records are pretty astounding and eye opening.

Who said anything about "only working hard kills you?" You are putting words in my mouth. I specifically addressed the issue of infant mortality being incredibly high until very recently. Its not a wealth thing. Its a childhood illness thing.

Everyone who knows anything knows that infant and childhood mortality were very, very high. Which is what led a lot of the statistically naive to assume that meant adults died young.