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Laboring Longer a Growing Trend For Americans
AxSpark writes "More and more Americans have the tendency to work after retirement and this number is growing day by day. Last year this number was 6 million people of 65 and over working. The reason for that is quite evident: pensions are not enough for sufficient living."
As people stay healthier longer, people SHOULD continue to work. We shouldn't conceptualize the stages of human life in terms of years; Instead, we should conceptualize it in terms of percentages of expected life. Granted, the first 18 or so years are pretty much set in stone, but after that, we have a certain percentage of life available for each occupied stage. Looking only at labor, first there is education. Then, there is the career ramp-up. Then we have career maintenance -- perhaps a career switch (using skills from career #1 in career #2 . . . or not). Finally, we wind our careers down. A percentage of our healthy adult lives should be dedicated to each of these, with a percentage left for active retirement. There's nothing wrong with the actual number of years within each stage to increase in proportion to the amount of time we have to live well. This is the biggest benefit of progress in health and life expectancy.
I know whan my dad retired he was bored out of his mind since he loved the job he did. If he could have stayed on working I know he would have done. Plus just because you hit 65 doesn't mean you suddenly arn't interested in earning money. I don't see working beyond 65 as a problem personally unless the person is unwell or unfit to continue in the job.
And of course , if you're a COBOL coder you'll probably still be in demand until the day you go face down in your keyboard (or should that be punched card stack?)
Well said. At 44 years old, I expect to work until 70, and I expect to pay higher Social Security taxes along the way. It's not good or bad policy, just reality.
There is only one thing that could help make a difference for most Americans - owning lot's of foreign investments that we could sell off for a while during crunch time. Unfortunately, we've become a debter nation, so that plain went to Hell in a hand basket.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Fortunately for us, we're still in a position to attract skilled immigrants to make up the labor shortfall...That gives us the benefit of their labor, without having to have paid their costs as they were growing up. No, you're not. You make immigrants feel like criminals and second class citizens, people are afraid to come to your country on business these days.
If only they came to this country to do things the right way instead of avoiding taxes and stealing peoples identities, then I would have no issues with immigration. As it stands the illegals need to either do it the right way or take the high way home. They are un-needed in our society as illegals. Illegal immigrants take jobs where they are paid under the table in with cash, so they are not taxed. My brother has his identity stolen by an illegal immigrant and fucked up his credit, and made him owe over 19K in back taxes to the IRS. He is lucky he wasn't arrested for tax evasion.
Jackbird just has this defeatist attitude that I find a lot of people (who want to justify not planning for themselves) have.
If people were allowed to invest that 12% the government takes, they'd find it a lot easier to save enough for retirement, and unlike SS, you get to leave it to your kids when you die, which helps them reach their retirement goals (unless they're stupid morons and blow it on gold plated furniture or something).
This is one of my complaints with SS: if the goal of the welfare system (including SS) is to lift families out of poverty, SS it completely detrimental to the cause, as it denies families the generational accumulation of wealth.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Would you want to pay $10 for a gallon of milk?
Interesting that you should mention that. In Hawaii, where almost everything is "off-shore", a gallon of milk costs about $10.
Off-shoring only works as long as you have goods to trade back. If a cargo ship can't haul goods both ways on the route, then the route isn't worth as much of their time, and shipping costs go up. WAY up.