
The abolition of mandatory retirement, and how it changed America (2011) - tjalfi
https://slate.com/human-interest/2011/04/mandatory-retirement-how-the-abolition-of-mandatory-retirement-continues-to-change-america-in-unexpected-ways.html
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llsf
As European, is strange to see how old the US airline flight attendants are on
average. In Europe, those jobs are mostly filled by young people, here in US,
it tends to be the opposite of the spectrum. It is an interesting question.
Where I come from there is a mandatory retirement, but it is financed by a
universal pension system (like social security, based on how long and much you
made during your whole life). Now once forcibly retired, nothing prevents you
to start your own business and contracting if you want. Now, I get the no age
discrimination intent. I am just wondering if this is a way to underpay
people, and have 70yo people who still have to work to make it. Labor is more
expensive in Europe probably because the pool of workers is smaller due to
mandatory retirement age. I just wish I wont have to work at 70yo. Would be
nice to volunteer, or something if I feel like.

~~~
dcolkitt
> Labor is more expensive in Europe

Where are you getting that from? Average American wages are $63,000 per
worker. Higher than any country besides Switzerland, Iceland and
Luxembourg[1]. To compare to this five largest EU members: Americans are paid
28% higher than Germans, 41% higher than Frenchmen, 59% higher than Brits, and
64% higher than Italians and Spaniards.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage)

~~~
0xfaded
Labor is more expensive in Europe because workers rights add significant
overhead. A simple example, 37.5h work weeks and 5 weeks paid holiday is
pretty standard. Then there are severances.

Also, if you look at the median US wages, it's appearant how much does there
is at the top.

Yes, Americans do have higher wages overall, but this is because there are
fewer worker rights and less hidden costs for the employer. This does not mean
labor is cheaper.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_median_wage_and_mean_wage)

~~~
em-bee
in germany the employer overhead per employee is almost 100%

~~~
0xfaded
That's amazing. In Denmark it's closer to 25% if you don't count severances.

~~~
em-bee
we may be comparing different numbers. i doubt it's that low.

i don't know the specifics in germany, but there is net salary and gross
salary, and there are employer contributions beyond gross salary, as well as
other costs.

my understanding is that put everything together, the cost per employee is
twice the gross salary. this includes cost for equipment, work space and
whatever else you need to spend money on to help an employee to do their job.

25% seems very low. it's possibly only the taxes and insurance and related
contributions. or maybe denmark calculates the gross salary different?

i searched a few resources and found references ranging from 1.5 to 1.7. so
not quite 100%.

here is a swiss example with a compact table.

[https://www.runmyaccounts.ch/2013/07/wie-viel-kostet-ein-
mit...](https://www.runmyaccounts.ch/2013/07/wie-viel-kostet-ein-mitarbeiter-
wirklich/)

this one suggests a cost of 6900 for a 4500 gross salary.

but it also adds hiring a manager per 10 employees and splitting that up among
the employees being managed, bringing the cost to 8285.

so yeah, it depends on what numbers we are actually comparing

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ABoldGambit
Cut-throat business practices couched in the language of “freedom to choose”.
Let me retire on a good pension at 60 like my grandparents all did.

The world is supposed to be getting better not worse. If i want something “to
do with my time” when I’m in my 60s and 70s (if I’m even lucky enough to live
that long: many aren’t, and never get to stop working) I want to help out at a
local social club or volunteer for a charity, not get paid a pittance to greet
customers until my hips collapse.

~~~
mikem170
>Let me retire on a good pension at 60 like my grandparents all did.

My theory: The economic success of my grandfather, part of the post-WWII
"greatest generation" in the U.S., was an anomaly.

After WWII the U.S. economy was experiencing unique boomtimes. They won the
war with their economy intact, and were by far the most productive country on
the planet.

Since then, besides reverting to the mean, globalism and information
technology has changed everything.

My grandfather had a 4th grade education, retired from his job at a steel
plant, and lived in three of four houses he owned in two states. That is
simply not the way the world works any more.

From an economic perspective he was in the right place at the right time. A
couple generations earlier he would have been a poor farmer. A generation or
two afterwards he would have been a working-poor service worker.

Like I said, this is a theory of mine, that the economy of post-WWII American
was an aberration and should not be considered the normal state of things. For
those couple/few decades the U.S. was the factory and research powerhouse of
the world, other manufacturing bases didn't exist or were rebuilding.

I welcome comments.

~~~
rland
I agree, and it's the same reason I take investment advice from all 50s/60s
born with a huge grain of salt. "Put $10,000 in an index fund when you're 23
years old and you'll be a millionaire when you retire!" There are so many
assumptions being made there that it boggles the mind. What if the economy
doesn't grow 3% yoy for my entire life! What if it just... levels off?

Piketty pointed this out: in the early 1800s, authors would mention actual
numerical dollar amounts paid for goods in books and plays. Because for _all
of prior history_ economic growth was a few basis points per year, at best. So
a British pound earned in 1600 would be roughly comparable in value to one
spent a hundred years later.

------
cheese_van
The US Foreign Service still enforces mandatory retirement. I purposely
retired early to avoid the indignity of being told "you're too old to work for
us anymore, here's your hat, there's the door." I didn't want to go out that
way.

~~~
rmrfstar
> The US Foreign Service still enforces mandatory retirement

This is just bad strategy.

The foreign service is the field where wisdom and experience count the most.
The only thing new in the world is history you don't know.

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at_a_remove
I would not mind seeing this expanded.

I have an observation to offer, based on "anecdata" and the like. Let's assume
that the Baby Boomer generation is that standard group born between 1946 and
1964. Where I worked in 2008, I noticed a _lot_ of the Baby Boomer crowd
taking a bath on their retirement funds due to, well, 2008. Lousy investments,
house-flipping, and so on. Many of them grumbled about having to delay their
retirements considerably. I saw this happen in effect as these people
continued to work, often a decade longer than their stated departure dates.
They didn't have mandatory retirement, and so they kept plugging along.

I believe this 2008 effect, combined with the relatively small cohort for Gen
X, has left the Baby Boomers in power politically, in business, and in
university _still_ , leaving Gen X waiting for open positions to climb up
into, but they haven't opened up yet. Indeed, with the youngest Boomers at age
fifty-six, they will still be a forced to be reckoned with for at least
another decade, while Gen X grows stagnant.

We're a small bunch, so aside from bones thrown to us like Stranger Things or
Ready Player One, we are largely ignored. We will most likely be surpassed by
the Millennials. Part of this, I think, may be slightly due to the kind of
fatalistic passive nature which seems to permeate much of Gen X, who are, in
some sense, still waiting for the bombs to drop, assuming the acid rain,
killer bees, or GRID doesn't get us first.

Call it a wild suspicion, but I think Gen X will be a sort of forgotten bunch
a century from now, and the lack of mandatory retirement may be part of it.

~~~
lotsofpulp
> Where I worked in 2008, I noticed a lot of the Baby Boomer crowd taking a
> bath on their retirement funds due to, well, 2008.

How did they take a bath on their retirement funds? Did they sell everything
at its lows for some reason and ignore all advice about how to save for
retirement?

We’ve had 10%+ returns for a decade now, they should be fine assuming they had
adequate savings before 2008.

I suspect most people never had adequate savings to begin with, and 2008
didn’t have anything to do with their problem, which is they simply never
saved or earned enough money to retire at the quality of life they expect.

~~~
saalweachter
The oldest Baby Boomers were starting to retire by then. There are lots of
variables, but if you're drawing down your retirement funds and the stock
market is down significantly for a long period of time you may end up either
having several lean years or drawing down faster while the market is down.

~~~
lotsofpulp
It was down for 3 or 4 years. If that handicapped your retirement, then you
didn’t have enough to begin with.

~~~
mulmen
How could you know that in 2008?

~~~
lotsofpulp
I don’t understand the question? The original claim was people took a bath on
their retirement savings. Which is only true if they sold all their retirement
assets. Therefore, I don’t think it’s accurate to say the 2008 recession
caused people to lose their retirement savings. Selling at the bottom of a
market would cause one to lose their retirement savings.

~~~
ajmurmann
They didn't know it was the bottom. It could have been the new normal.
However, to me that would imply retiring 4 years later and not 10. One they
market turned around retirement was back...

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zt
Most consulting firms (BCG, Bain, McKinsey) and accountancies (KPMG, Deloitte)
have incredibly strong incentives for partners to agree to leave in their
early 60s.

~~~
gruez
Why? Do people not like old consultants?

~~~
nmfisher
I suspect because they need to dangle the carrot of partnership in front of
younger managers, otherwise they’d leave.

It’s a big issue in law firms, where senior associates (the ones who actually
are responsible for 99% of the work) get fed up waiting for 70+ year old
partners to step down.

------
xiaodai
In Singapore they have disabled 70-80 year old servicing ppl at hawker
centres. At first sight, it's kinda hard to watch.

~~~
RyJones
I disagree - when I saw them last year, I thought it was nice that they had
something to do to find meaning.

~~~
MandieD
It should be hard to watch: the “Pioneer Generation” was largely left out of
modern Singapore's current affluence. The government is taking efforts to make
sure they aren’t living in utter poverty, but they didn’t have the well-paying
jobs to build up nice pensions like their younger counterparts have:
[https://www.pioneers.sg/en-sg/Pages/Home.aspx](https://www.pioneers.sg/en-
sg/Pages/Home.aspx)

This is the _government_ talking about what their lives are like. Imagine the
harsher reality.

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tehjoker
Sounds like it could be okay so long as all the benefits that made it possible
come back too. Otherwise, we'll be in a Dickensian situation where the
capitalists yell "Are there no workhouses?!" at impoverished elderly that they
forced themselves to lay off.

------
vsskanth
Slightly OT, as a foreigner living in the US, the thing that really breaks my
heart is seeing a 70+ yr old greeter at Walmart.

I've grown up seeing many retired folks having their own tiny business or just
running their family businesses, but the greeter thing doesn't sit well with
me. I don't know why it makes me so deeply uncomfortable. It feels like some
kind of a breakdown of a social contract.

~~~
dx87
They aren't always working there because they need the money. My grandfather
is in his mid 70s and works at Walmart so he has something to do.

~~~
scruple
My 74 year old uncle is the same. He collects a 6 figure pension, he doesn't
need the money but he does need a place to go to be around people and being a
door greeter at a Home Depot (pre-covid, anyway) was what he wanted to do.

~~~
dx87
Yep, my grandfather has a pension from working as an electrician his whole
life, and now he works in the hardware section. He's getting too old and frail
to do the activities he used to do, so working in the hardware section lets
him feel useful instead of sitting around the house doing nothing.

~~~
ajzinsbwbs
The strategy of asking the oldest employee for advice has worked well for me
at Home Depot.

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marzetti
US Presidents need a mandatory retirement age.. perhaps 70 is a suitable round
number...

