US Politics

[Wisbech Eagle]

I would say your house is your asset....don't take out any shared equity loans.

Fingers crossed on your public pension but I wouldn't have any expectations. I would say forget retirement as something permanent, work on your health so you can keep 'working' to some extent.....though obviously not full time.

Yeah, I know....it's pretty grim.

That's the future....generations of politicians have spunked up the wall for us. They thought turning your towns into the third world was some kind of future.....As if the third world were going to be workaholics and form German type trade guilds or something.

Low quality and ideological elites.

50 years ago the company I was working for, which was part of Bayer, could clearly see the way the future was likely to be and adapted strategies accordingly. They knew that with improved health care we would all live much longer, but at a big cost. They also knew that with a declining birth rate there wouldn’t be enough working age people to keep society functioning, let alone provide the care that the elderly needed.

Of course there was also talk about a leisure revolution, a time when automation took care of all routines, but this was dismissed as just wishful thinking.

For much of my life people could look forward to perhaps 10 or 15 years of retirement. Not today. Most expect much more than that, and to be active for most of it.

The solution is staring us in the face but we have only played with implementing it, because it is so politically unpopular that it’s a sure vote loser.

We need to increase the retirement age to a minimum of 75 for the fit and healthy, with part time provision made for those who aren’t. After 75 those who remain fit should be expected to work helping the less able retired for a few hours each week as a condition of receiving their state pension.

Something like this should have been gradually introduced 30 or 40 years ago so that by now it would be normal. Now it would be near to impossible to do enough quickly enough.

It would though greatly reduce our need for legal immigration, even if not eliminating it completely.

 

[Teddy Eagle]

50 years ago the company I was working for, which was part of Bayer, could clearly see the way the future was likely to be and adapted strategies accordingly. They knew that with improved health care we would all live much longer, but at a big cost. They also knew that with a declining birth rate there wouldn’t be enough working age people to keep society functioning, let alone provide the care that the elderly needed.

Of course there was also talk about a leisure revolution, a time when automation took care of all routines, but this was dismissed as just wishful thinking.

For much of my life people could look forward to perhaps 10 or 15 years of retirement. Not today. Most expect much more than that, and to be active for most of it.

The solution is staring us in the face but we have only played with implementing it, because it is so politically unpopular that it’s a sure vote loser.

We need to increase the retirement age to a minimum of 75 for the fit and healthy, with part time provision made for those who aren’t. After 75 those who remain fit should be expected to work helping the less able retired for a few hours each week as a condition of receiving their state pension.

Something like this should have been gradually introduced 30 or 40 years ago so that by now it would be normal. Now it would be near to impossible to do enough quickly enough.

It would though greatly reduce our need for legal immigration, even if not eliminating it completely.

This again? How many are capable of doing manual labour after the wear and tear of 50 years of it? I know several whose knees, backs and hips are wrecked well ahead of them being 70 let alone 75.
Most people experience cognitive decline at 70. What jobs are they,supposed to do?
Apart from being President of America of course.

 

[cryrst]

50 years ago the company I was working for, which was part of Bayer, could clearly see the way the future was likely to be and adapted strategies accordingly. They knew that with improved health care we would all live much longer, but at a big cost. They also knew that with a declining birth rate there wouldn’t be enough working age people to keep society functioning, let alone provide the care that the elderly needed.

Of course there was also talk about a leisure revolution, a time when automation took care of all routines, but this was dismissed as just wishful thinking.

For much of my life people could look forward to perhaps 10 or 15 years of retirement. Not today. Most expect much more than that, and to be active for most of it.

The solution is staring us in the face but we have only played with implementing it, because it is so politically unpopular that it’s a sure vote loser.

We need to increase the retirement age to a minimum of 75 for the fit and healthy, with part time provision made for those who aren’t. After 75 those who remain fit should be expected to work helping the less able retired for a few hours each week as a condition of receiving their state pension.

Something like this should have been gradually introduced 30 or 40 years ago so that by now it would be normal. Now it would be near to impossible to do enough quickly enough.

It would though greatly reduce our need for legal immigration, even if not eliminating it completely.

75 too old. I would go 70-72. That buys a bit of time. Just because you are fit and and healthy not everyone is.