Good News Or Bad?

[JSngry]

https://www.axios.com/developed-world-senior-citizens-workforce-c745b318-fc36-453f-b7e2-2d1933fe3c57.html

 

Work long past 65....doing what? For who? For how much?

[Brad]

I retired last year.  Missed the grind a first but not now. Still doing a little work for a client, not so much for the money but to keep busy. 

[JSngry]

Did you read the article linked to? This is about the "future of work". I can't tell if it's a promise or a threat.

[soulpope]

56 minutes ago, JSngry said:

https://www.axios.com/developed-world-senior-citizens-workforce-c745b318-fc36-453f-b7e2-2d1933fe3c57.html

 

Work long past 65....doing what? For who? For how much?

"In at least some cases, older workers sticking around could make it harder for young people to move up the career ladder ...." 

Rather minimizing chances for young people to get a job at all, I`m afraid ....

[JSngry]

Yeah, they already hate us (with good reason) for not getting out of the way...is armed warfare inevitable? And who will protect us old fucks, our overlord slave-labor overlord benefactors?

Because what are you going to do with old people if you need them to have to "work", give them gym classes and in-house Starbucks?

 

[soulpope]

The future will be about equitable distribution of jobs/workload .... and us "old fucks" will keep the economy going by spending our old-age provisions  ....

[JSngry]

aka shopping at the company store....

[Brad]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Did you read the article linked to? This is about the "future of work". I can't tell if it's a promise or a threat.

Yes, I did and I’m not one of those who had to. One of the reasons many people have to work over 65 is they don’t have the savings for retirement. 

[JSngry]

Ok, it's not about now...

[mjzee]

There's nothing wrong with work.  One of my favorite anecdotes involved George Burns.  After Gracie died, George decided to retire.  He had enough money.  So he played golf every day, and got exceedingly bored and anxious.  He went back to work.  He said, I realized it's not enough to do things you want to do; it's also important to do things you don't want to do.

[JSngry]

Of course there's nothing wrong with work. That's why we should hope there's plenty of it for those who want it, especially younger people who want to have families and stuff, people who want to further their horizons not just for themselves. That's not exactly what is being considered in this scenario, though.

[mjzee]

49 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Of course there's nothing wrong with work. That's why we should hope there's plenty of it for those who want it, especially younger people who want to have families and stuff, people who want to further their horizons not just for themselves. That's not exactly what is being considered in this scenario, though.

The article's premise is that workers will be in short supply, hence the desire to hire older workers.  That's over and above the available younger workers.  At the end of the article, it touches on older workers as "a potential part of the solution to the social system crisis," not that workers will be short on savings (although that might very well be true).

[JSngry]

Short on savings or not was not the gist of the article as I read it. It was that, oh my, there's going to be all this work that needs to be done and it's going to have to be old people that do it, and I'm like, oh, really, what's that going to look like? How is that need going to be met? Is "business" just going to sit there and let old people have a whole lot of options? Am I supposed to believe that "they" are willing to let everything go to hell because they can't get enough old people to keep working? Tell me again how all the lost 401Ks are now back to their pre-crisis levels and how that's never going to happen again, tell me again how the whole economic system is going to be allowed to fuck itself because old people don't have to work anymore. Tell me, please, how all the young people (of whom apparently there's not going to be enough) are going to be left to benefit from a high-demand/low supply labor pool by demanding quite pleasantly high wages that reflect all that.

And dig - that's the optimistic scenario. I work in a corporate environment where automation (none dare call it AI, even though that's exactly what it is) is driving, not just the employment model, but the actual business portfolio. I suppose I should be glad that I'm going to be "needed" to work until I die, but needing between the lines, I'll note that "being needed" and "having an opportunity" are not quite the same thing. Not exactly.