Economically Active
I don't subscribe to The Economist, but I do get the "editor's highlights" on the iPhone app. That's fine, because it's about all I have time for. In this week's installment of highlights is a discussion of the retirement age. This phrase is used: "Older people are going to have to stay economically active longer...". That got me to thinking. I usually say, in polite conversation, that one step we need to take to balance the budget is to raise the retirement age. Usually I say it with a bit of a grimace, because it's kind of painful to think about. But when I read "economically active" I thought to myself, isn't this just exactly what we conservatives are after? We believe that America is made great by the ingenuity and hard work of her people. So keeping people "economically active" is a good thing, right? I mean, what is so wrong with working until you are 70? It's not as though we are asking each other to work in the mud pits making bricks until we die of heat exhaustion, right?
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Oct '10
Re: Economically Active
Being on Social Security isn't retirement. I am 68, own my own very small business as a consultant in an industry where I have spent the better part of 45 years, and have just hired my adult son to start a whole new area of business, specialized local construction, so I don't have to leave my disabled wife alone while traveling a great deal as a consultant.
I am economically active, as are most people who have lived prudent, read: conservative. lifestyles. What the Social Security money enables me to do is accept a small amount of slowing down and rearranging my work, and still continue to live in the home we have had for decades, and have modified extensively to accommodate both our lives and my wife's essential power wheelchair.
Don't like the government in my life either, but that is where we are in life.
Nov '10
Re: Economically Active
Raycon, but if you had to rewind, would it be a hardship for you to have waited until 70 to start receiving SS payments?
Dec '10
Re: Economically Active
As one perilously close to the magic age you mention, I will say this. I am an anomaly from an age where a man was defined by what he does and how well he does it. I continue to work. I like what I do, believe it is valuable, enjoy good health, maintain reasonable mental acuity, and will continue until one or more of those fortuitous conditions changes.
Today, for the most part, people work to afford the ability to do something else and for them the sooner they can get to it the better. Many feel entitled to a life of leisure at 55, 60, or 65. Few prepare for it. Further, they simply can't understand how anyone could feel differently. Thus, extending that time is a burden unjustly imposed.
Yes, I think about hanging it up now and then and will do so in the not too distant future. The choice, hopefully, will be mine.
Nov '10
Re: Economically Active
"Thus, extending that time is a burden unjustly imposed."
You mean, they feel it's unjustly imposed? Or that it is unjustly imposed?
My point is that I had previously considered the older "retirement" age to be sort of cruel, but required as a measure to solve a fiscal crisis. But the term "economically active" caused me to rethink that. That maybe people working longer is a good thing. I think you are saying the same thing, maybe?
Dec '10
Re: Economically Active
Ken-
Some are convinced that any delay in realizing an entitlement is, to them, unjust. After all, politicians promised, and promised, and promised again. Being human, they said "Ok, I'll take all I can get." Being uninformed, they think the well can never run dry.
Oct '10
Re: Economically Active
Frankly, nothing in my life has been geared towards the magic SS check, and Medicare isn't even a part of my thinking. My wife has been totally disabled since she was 18 months old. She actually learned to walk for one week before the 1949 polio epidemic paralyzed her from the waist down. No hip control, none of it. She helps me in the office and actually tried a job for a few months, too much. We have never taken a dime of welfare of any kind, and Linda has never qualified for disability payments because I have worked hard and earned a reasonable living.
As for the question of retiring at 70? Not a problem. We have raised our children with the expectation that they would some day need to care for mom and dad. If and when the time comes, I have no doubt that they will. I don't believe in retirement, just doing what you are capable of doing, and that will diminish.
My mother is 96, lives a fruitful and enjoyable life, and my sister and hre husband have provided that for 25 years. That is what our plan for the future is.
Edited on Apr 10, 2011 at 2:50pmNov '10
Re: Economically Active
Nothing at all! In fact, studies show depression and alzheimers can be avoided and/or deferred by a life of purpose. It's such an American characteristic to define and fulfill oneself by whatever one chooses to do for a living; I can't imagine the boomer generation comfortably "tuning out" of the workplace by age 65.
Re: Economically Active
I am within shouting distance of 65 and have no plan to retire. Health concerns may alter my outlook, and at some point I may find my energy short of what is required for lecturing. But until that eventuality I will be delighted to soldier on. The real trick in life is to find a line of work that one genuinely enjoys.
Nov '10
Re: Economically Active
Elizabeth Dunn
Nothing at all! In fact, studies show depression and alzheimers can be avoided and/or deferred by a life of purpose. It's such an American characteristic to define and fulfill oneself by whatever one chooses to do for a living; I can't imagine the boomer generation comfortably "tuning out" of the workplace by age 65
My father retired for a weekend in his 70s and, on Monday, started work at a new venture that he set up with a colleague of a similar age and one younger man, both of whom he had met at the previous job. He is still working, although way less than full time because of my mother's illness, some 15 years later. At my last job, there are four people who work actively in their 80s, of a group of perhaps forty total people. It never occurred to me that I would retire, ever, although I thought I would probably cut back some once I was past 70 or so. I was horrified to learn that my current employer requires one to retire at 70.
Jan '11
Re: Economically Active
What is perhaps missing from the discussion so far is the physical work required to do a job. Will all telephone linemen be able to perform their required tasks into their eight decade? What about landscapers? In a union environment, we could be talking about a great deal of accommodation. Potentially very messy. Also, do we introduce measures for cognitive testing after a certain age?
Oct '10
Re: Economically Active
I have dipped just a toe in the over-sixty pool, but many of the wisest, most intelligent, and most intellectually engaged people I know are in their eighties and have never “retired” because they love what they're doing and also because they've seen too many contemporaries who did so dead within a couple of years.
I've loved what I do for a living ever since they started paying me for it at age 18. Whatever could possess me to give it up?
(I recognise that the circumstances which obtained for manual and agricultural labourers when Social Security was enacted were different. But those circumstances have changed.)
Jul '10
Re: Economically Active
"I usually say".." that one step we need to take to balance the budget is to.... " cut spending!
Apr '11
Re: Economically Active
This is a very good question, let me answer it with one. Who trains and manages telephone linemen and landscapers? If it isn't done by former practitioners of the craft, perhaps the tasks of training and management could be taken over by experienced people who can offer practical advice?
May '10
Re: Economically Active
I planned to retire at 40, being of that generation that believes the only thing screwing up the work-life balance is work. This is mainly because most of the things I like to do don't pay (or haven't figgered out a way to get them to pay yet). So far, unless I hit the lottery, the retire at 40 thing isn't going so well. As with Ursula, it is mere months away.
Retirement is the promised land, in which you are your own boss, and can wake up each morning and decide what to do and what can wait. You will note that in all these words, "Social Security" has not been mentioned.
May '10
Re: Economically Active
Retirement being the promised land then, for many people (I am the Lorax, I speak for the proles), moving the goalposts is a punch in the sternum. It upsets people on a deep personal level. Like taking away a treat from a bulldog after he's done a trick and saying "oops, just kidding, sucker."
Don't misunderestimate its political danger.
PS You know how gas prices determine elections? This is the same thing. Other economic statistics are airy abstractions. Gas prices and retirement are real, and visceral.
Edited on Apr 10, 2011 at 5:21pmDec '10
Re: Economically Active
Isn't anyone else appalled by the language of entitlement and dependency we're using here? What was the "retirement age" before Social Security? If Americans were truly economically free, the "retirement age" would be decided by the retiree... 35, 45...85 depending on one's industry, achievement and desired standard of living.
My husband had the foresight when he entered his profession at age 26 to not expect Social Security payments -- ever. Our concern isn't so much what the government will do about the Social Security retirement age as what it will do with our privately held 401k monies when America's creditors come calling. Any idea how many trillions are held in 401k accounts right now? It's a big fat nest egg waiting for government marauding. We're just hoping to become a "hardship" case in time to withdraw our own money without penalty before the feds turn their jaundiced eyes to our savings.
I think the real benefit of Paul Ryan's plan is missed by most Americans. It isn't what the electorate thinks about the policies that matter. It's what the Chinese think. They have to believe we're serious about reform.
Oct '10
Re: Economically Active
A change in the "social contract" is inevitable. I'm not thrilled with my job/profession (attorney). I work as diligently at creative endeavors that probably will never become economically viable alternatives. But because of my hobbies, my life is fulfilling. I will continue to do whatever I must to stay afloat. It is time to stop complaining that the government won't be there to feather my nest. It won't. I'm over it. If I must work into my 80s, that is preferable to whining in my 40s. And anyone in a job too mundane or physically demanding to bear delayed retirement, yours is but a price you thought you'd never be asked to pay for longevity.
Jul '10
Re: Economically Active
Gotta say, I'm not a fan of the euphemism "economically active." My neighborhood is full of jobless folks who are economically active.
Second, there's another side to this coin. Namely, what is so wrong with working before you're 30?
Jul '10
Re: Economically Active
What no one has mentioned here is how very much more difficult it is to acquire a job as one gets older. Coming from the human resources field, I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that older workers are at a tremendous market disadvantage.
Each recession casts legions of older workers upon the shoals. When things pick up, their jobs are taken by younger, cheaper, more exploitable workers.
It's all very well to tell people to work longer. Doesn't work so well when no one will give them the chance.
Of course, politicians don't understand this: most of them come from such safe seats that they "work" well into their 80's, surrounded by lovely young staffers.
May '10
Re: Economically Active
Oh, man, I've been in Bill Frist's office when he was Majority Leader. Breathtaking staffery. Not saying he was involved (I'd be shocked if that were the case), but wowza. Hated to leave the office. The hiring policies were pretty blatant.
PS didn't mean to imply I was employed there. Just visiting for like twenty minutes. But I'll always remember it. Tugged at the heartstrings when the appointment was over and had no excuse to hang around. Sigh.
Edited on Apr 10, 2011 at 6:25pm