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Laboring Longer a Growing Trend For Americans

Posted by timothy on from the what-color-is-your-parachute? dept.

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."

11 of 603 comments (clear)

  1. Um, or... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It could be that a lot of people are still healthy enough to continue working after age 65... and some people actually want to!

    1. Re:Um, or... by daveime · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How is health care related to old age pensions being insufficient ?

      Fix health care, and all you do is make old people live longer, thus further burdening the pension system.

      The fact is, in most western countries, the average age is increasing. The people on pensions now are being paid with the taxes you and I pay today. When 30 years down the road, we are pensioners, there simply won't be any money left to pay everyone a pension.

      I was advised as far back as 1987 that I shouldn't rely on the UK state pension, and should think about a private one ... here we are 21 years later, and oops, pension payouts aren't sufficient ... anyone surprised ?

    2. Re:Um, or... by R2.0 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah, my grandmother was in that situation until relatively recently. She kept working until she was about 75 and ill health forced her to stop working - note, not "retire".

      The reason for this? She is a lazy bitch who never worked a real job in her life and relied on whatever man she was with to provide for her. Her first husband (my grandfather) left her. Her second was a great old guy who finally died of Parkinson's and left her a wad of cash. the third guy was a bum and a hustler and took that money when he ran to Mexico - literally.

      She never really saved any money, never invested herself in a job with future, and never planned. She doesn't have a pension because she never had a career. Social Security is keeping her afloat, and the fact that she scammed her way into a religiously affiliated care facility. And when that runs out, my Dad will take care of her, because as neglectful as she was, she is still family.

      Yes, there are plenty of people who had bad luck, and perhaps don't "deserve" what they are dealing with in their old age. But that does not negate the fact that there are also those who squandered their good luck, and are now asking others to pay the price.

      --
      "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
    3. Re:Um, or... by gfxguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My Dad is 78 years old and still runs his own accounting business. I truly suspect, as does he, that if he didn't, he'd be dead by now.

      He uses the extra money he gets during tax season to take expensive vacations, usually in the late summer or fall, with my mom.

      Nearly everyone my parents knew that didn't keep active have already passed on.

      That said, if people can't afford things, I'd say it's partial evidence of the giant failure of social security. Would those pensions have lasted longer if that extra 12% went into a 401k instead of the SS black hole? Do people realize that SS has, since the first year, taken in more money each year than it's paid out? Where did all this money go? There'd be trillions of dollars if they'd have saved and invested it (even at safe moderate rates of around 5%). So where is it? The federal government takes every penny extra and leaves a worthless IOU.

      When Bush pushes a spending deficit of $400 billion, he's not including $200 billion (yes, nearly $200 billion) that the federal government is "borrowing" from SS.

      Even people earning minimum wage would generally have sufficient retirement funds if they were saving 12% in a personal retirement plan.

      People also don't understand their pensions. They should be able to tell way ahead of time if they will receive an adequate amount of money.

      The band-aid solution that was SS is making less and less sense. A real goal would be to create an environment that allows people to save enough of their money for retirement. Get the government out of the SS boondongle, refine the tax structure so that people are encouraged to save. Hey, even make it mandatory if you have to, but at least allow people to decide for themselves how to do it.

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
    4. Re:Um, or... by cryptodan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Um, or... by penguin_dance · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      Some are skilled, some are not and many are here illegally. There is no labor shortfall--only a wage shortfall. When you've got companies that are allowed to take their business overseas to use what amounts to slave labor without fear of tariffs. Or using illegal labor here, which has driven down wages. These are not jobs that American's won't take. These are jobs that Americans expect a fair wage to be set.

      And illegal immigrants are hardly cost-free. We're paying for their medical, their children's education and medical. They're paying no income tax, they send the bulk of their money back over the border and have no plans to become American citizens. That's hardly a recipe for a successful country.

      --
      If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
    6. Re:Um, or... by duffbeer703 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What you're saying is that laissez faire economics that favors the plutocrats is preferable to are more logical nationalist or even socialist system.

      Thousands of highly skilled workers made shoes in Maine in the 1980's. Today they are chronically underemployed and their communities are in disarray because our society allows Chinese children with an inadequate standard of living to manufacture them instead.

      The fallacy that Chinese are only fit for stupid assembly work is just as racist as the notion that African-Americans should be restricted to the fields that was common among white folks in the 19th and early 20th century.

      The United States imports millions of laborers from places like Mexico and Guatemala specifically because they are easy to exploit. There are thousands of unemployed, low-skill workers languishing on the streets or eventually in prisons because they have no place to work.

      --
      Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
    7. Re:Um, or... by Sheafification · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. Re:If only... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If only people didn't look to government solutions and planned for own retirements.

  3. So what? by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you didn't earn enough money to support yourself in the lifestyle you want, you have no right to that lifestyle. I'm sick of the entitlement attitude that permeates this society. The day that the American Dream went from a dream of liberty, to a house, 2 cars, middle class family, dog, cat, etc. was the day that this country sold itself out to the highest bidder. If Ben Franklin were alive, he'd probably add a corollary to his infamous quip about security: they that lust after wealth more than liberty deserve neither; it was from that lust for economic equality, unearned money and sense of entitlement that most of the horrors of the 20th century were born.

  4. Laboring longer . . . as we should be by defile39 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.