I noticed this tweet this morning from the Wall Street Journal:
More Americans are postponing retirement. 30% of middle-class workers plan to work until their 80s. http://t.co/bv1yfam9
Now it so happens that my current planned retirement age is 84, but that's just because I've been setting it thirty years hence for some time now - and simply because I enjoy work too much to give it up - but this is something quite different. This is people working because they have no choice.
Bet let's be realistic about what that means. Such behaviour demands many more jobs in the economy, and many of them will have low prodictivity. That's a fact as we get older. That changes the nature of work, and who does it.
Now, hang on a minute: aren't we currently seeing more, lower productivity jobs in the UK but without much impact on youth employment? Is this what is happening already in the UK? Are we seeing a new demographic of work?
If so this needs some rapid rethinking of what full employment is, for starters, and how we create and pay for this work next.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Since one our “lords” said last week that pensioners should do work or lose their benefit, I should say that it will be government policy soon.
After they have pushed through boundary change (+20 conservative seats) and bribed the Scots to vote for self rule (slow death) (-41 labour seats).
Then there is council tax reform, doubtless many councils will decide to collect taxes from each voter.
I have not heard much about illegalising the political levy yet, but have no doubt it is simmering away slowly somewhere.
Pensioners working for their pensions… I’d consider that to be what had already happened for decades…but think of the opportunity cost if the Tories don’t try it on…and think of the “testing” that’d need to be done if you were too decrepit to “contribute”.
Sounds like a great new chance for Atos… or for whoever else can lower their snouts to the New Enclosure trough.
Professor Bill Mitchell describes the same thing in the Australian context … older unemployed are finding work but not the young. Do you think that this government’s removal of help/training/degree opportunities for the 0-25s could be part of a deliberate strategy to create similar conditions of work-social relations to India and the other BRICS?
In a word, yes
That’s what I suspected… I won’t swear on your blog but I want to!
No one should be required to work past retirement age unless they wish to do so. The pure evil that underpins this idea is that we increase the mortality rate of the old (more will die while working) and hence reduce the State’s retirement pension costs. It can be presented in a myriad of ways and those in power will deny that this is so, but that is the objective.
Turning to the young. The ladder is being pulled up, They will be denied opportunities. They are for example being priced out of tertiary education. This is to make them maleable and ameniable, so that they will be eternally grateful for the scraps thrown to them from the high table.
The Rght will continue with their attempts to divide and rule (there’s an example of them trying to stir up trouble over taxes in this morning’s City am).
http://www.cityam.com/latest-news/allister-heath/how-income-tax-has-become-such-nightmare-so-many
You only have to look across the “Pond” to see what is store for us in five ten years time if the Right are allowed to advance their agenda over here.
Thomas Frank discusses his book “The Wrecking Crew” how the Right have gone about their
business in the US, dismantling government and gulling the electorate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzwcvJUaNGE
As much as Romney and Ryan are following the Austerity programme advanced in the UK and the rest of Europe. You can guarantee that the Tory “Brat Pack” that wrote “Britannia Unchained” are following what GOP are doing in the US.