MSE News: Recession triggers huge rise in depression

One thought that was in my mind anyway this morning (as someone in the Baby Boom generation myself) is the fact that it is very depressing/stressful when one is nearing retirement age to be in a position where you feel fearful in case someone somewhere decides to raise your own personal retirement age.

So - its not JUST about the fear of job loss. There is also the fear of being trapped in a job after one has reached retirement age (because employers and/or the State have decided you won't be allowed to retire till later than that).

People in my agegroup often say "What is the point of anyone trying to make us work on after our expected retirement age - when there are people down in a younger age group who need to have our jobs? That way - one has two lots of unhappy people (us because of being trapped in our jobs when we are supposed to be retired and them because they are trapped in unemployment)"

Actually - conspiracy theory of the day time here:cool::

Once one reaches normal retirement age - then you are normally free from mortgage/debt/bringing up children and can do exactly what you please for your remaining years. Obviously younger people still have all that stuff "hanging round their necks" or are trying to get it in the first place - and therefore younger people are a lot less free than we are to speak their minds without fear of being penalised in some way for doing so (eg job loss).

Most of my age group are free to protest when we see things changing for the worse (as we have a lot less to lose) and have reached an age where the amount of life experience we have "under our belt" means we are a lot less likely to "have the wool pulled over our eyes" by anyone. Those two factors combined mean we have both the will and the time to protest against changes in Society for the worse as soon as we retire. Hmm....:think: - it probably suits the Government better to keep us trapped at work past our normal retirement age so that we dont do that protesting we ourselves are now probably free enough to do.

There is certainly little "financial" reason to keep us trapped for longer - as many of our jobs would be re-filled by younger people once we no longer require them ourselves. Hence my wondering whether there is some other reason why it makes sense to the Government to try and keep us trapped in a job after normal retirement age - ie 60-65 (and therefore lacking the time/energy we expected to have spare for ourselves). Certainly - when I saw the latest comment from some "high up idiot" yesterday - in which he was saying that people need to work to 75! - my reaction was "All well and good for you matey - you probably actually like YOUR job and get paid decently for doing it - but that doesn't apply to most of us".

perplexed.com wrote: »

@Ceridwen

Conspiracy theory contd./ Maybe they want people near retirement who don't want to work on to become more stressed, unhappy, unhealthy and hence succumb to illness etc and die earlier, thus reducing the "pension burden"? Or alternatively they want people to say "well I'll just smoke, drink, eat as I want and enjoy a shorter, less healthy life so I don't live so long"!

There is a slight problem I can see to the second point there (ie the "eat, drink and be merry" school of thought) - that we would all cost them lots more in medical care before they started saving on our pension payments...:rotfl:Mind you...the stressed and unhappy etc school of thought would also cost them more in medical care for us as well....:rotfl:

I've now got visions of someone somewhere sitting there with a calculator getting one almighty headache along the lines of:
- If 10% extra people get heart problems, for instance, because they are forced to work during time they expected to be retired that will cost the NHS £x - so how much do we think we will save on pension payments from some of them dying earlier because of said heart problems?
Now - would that overall save us money or cost us money - the homework for tonight is to work out how many of that 10% would die from those heart problems they werent due for and how long it would be before they do so....