MSE News: Pension age rise 'a bitter blow'

Dominic9

Sorry, but I don't necessarily accept that these increasing life expectancy figures have so dramatic an impact. Life expectancy has been increasing since the invention of antibiotics but the crucial thing is that the actual ageing process has not changed. People might live a few years longer, because of improved medical care, but they still get old at the same rate as they did 500 years ago! So, does that mean the solution is to make elderly people work for longer? Of course not!

In 1950, the average retirement age of males was 67.2.

It fell to 63.1 by 1995, since when it started increasing slightly.

jamesd

Right. That illustrates one of the big advantages of not depending solely on the state pensions: you can take other pensions or other income and retire whenever you can afford it even if the state pensions haven't started.

We still should have a state pension that's at a level that provides reasonably decent living for people who didn't provide for themselves, though. Maybe not ideal age or ideal income but something. Choice is more for those who do something about providing for their ability to choose.

RickMave

DPEN wrote: »

I think they are going the wrong way. I think the retirement age should be comming down and younger people should be given employment.

I completely agree with this sentiment - I firmly believe that we've got it completely wrong in terms of the approach, for the following reasons.

We live in an age where computerisation can do an awful lot of what used to be considered "real" jobs. 50+ years ago there were pools of typists - I'm not aware of there being any such typing pools today. If you want a letter to send to a customer you write it on your laptop, in fact the letter might today be an email which never sees a piece of paper.

It's the same with manufacturing, which we have precious little of in the UK today. In the good old days there was a lot of metal bashing involving workers who worked in large teams to produce the company's wagons. These days there are robots to stick a car together, and panels are created by huge metal presses - the car plant jobs can tend towards operators who can shift boxes and parts around the plant.

The only jobs we seem to be able to create these days involve things like selling insurance premiums to each other. Which again is hugely computerised and subject to box-ticking by the salesman. And invariably if there is a product involved in the sale then it will have been mass-produced on some automated production line, rather than hand-crafted like it might have been years ago.

Computer breaks down? Swap in a replacement - engineers these days often don't take the covers off, so the good old days of the field based computer monkey are no longer with us.

What we SHOULD be doing is recognising that many people would like to retire EARLIER, so that they can have a decent number of years during the evening of their life - where they can be customers for people further down the food chain. We should view this as an OPPORTUNITY and not a PROBLEM.

I'm afraid the main problem comes down to the only show in town being this magical profitability statistic which companies (and countries) get measured on. What a pity that we can't swap that measure to be one of social impact, so that a company's performance is measured on the return they provide in providing services to society, rather than bottom line figures. So your ambulance has a team of 4 rather than 2 - and saves more lives by being able to do more body maintenance in the field - at the moment the basic design of the ambulance process is to package the victim to get them to the hospital where the real work can be done, so why can't we get more of this happening on-site?

I would much, much rather that a company was measured on a statistic like "how many lives did your company contribute to saving this year?", rather than hard numbers generated by bean counters to suggest how much profit the company made on its turnover.

I know it's hard to think in those terms, and measuring it might be a nightmare. But we weren't born with profit flowing in our bloodstream and we won't die with it either - in the jungle Lions survive by their ability to maintain their healthy food supply, not by some magical number trick suggesting that they used a calculator better than some other Lion team.

Sorry, just blethering. But I really don't see increasing retirement age because the population is able to survive longer as being the right solution. We should be looking seriously at people being able to benefit from having a longer life, by having some extra years at the end of their life where they don't have to work. These people who are retired will always be customers for others in work, which would increase the jobs etc.

RickMave

antrobus wrote: »

Just because a government goes around promising to pay this and that at some point in future, it doesn't mean to say that they'll actually do so when the time comes.

Think public sector unions. Apparently in their world that's the way it is and you mustn't dare think about taking the real world into account.

georgiesmum

I worked till i was 67. Didn't want to but needed the money as i only had a married women's pension. Ill health forced me to stop. My husband started work at 15 and when he retired at 65 took a lollipop man job till he was 75. going out in all horrible weather. So you can see i don't have a lot of sympathy for all the furore about a year or two rise in retirement age.
Years ago people could expect to pop their clogs 5 to 10 years after retiring. Now we can have 20 or 30 years of active life. It couldn't go on.

jamesd

RickMave wrote: »

Sorry, just blethering. But I really don't see increasing retirement age because the population is able to survive longer as being the right solution.

It's not blathering. It's just that you're considering only half of the problem. How do you plan to pay for this longer retirement? That is, where are those new customers you're mentioning getting the money to buy things?

Anyone can retire at any age they like already. All they need to do is save enough money to live on from that age.

bigheadxx

http://www.rosaltmann.com/hutton_press_release_contract_out_2aug10.htm