We understand that discrimination by race, gender, etc is wrong, as well as age, arguing anything else makes you (ironically) an old-fashioned pariah, haha.
No, I don't think you do understand that discrimination by race, gender, etc. is wrong. Because you are doing exhibiting a behavior called the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. If older workers are just as viable as their younger counterparts then it will only take a small fraction of unbiased employers in the market to alleviate all bias pretty quickly. If you can give some small sampling of companies a 5%+ discount on labor costs (achieved by them not biasing), they're going to destroy everyone. Labor costs are a huge part of business costs.
Must be nice living in a fantasy world where markets are perfectly rational, enjoy.
Companies that are not under direct threat, i.e. most can do just fine working sub-optimally. There are hundreds of variables regarding why a company is successful or not. Many work way less efficiently than 5%, and will continue to happily screw folks unless we work together to keep a reasonably level playing field.
You've not been discriminated against yet I gather. I hadn't until recently either, so it's become less than theoretical. Your time will come as well, put out to pasture at the top of your game right when you're trying to put children through college or similar.
Markets are not perfectly rational but you seem to be unwilling to consider the idea that favoring younger workers might actually be rational. I doubt age discrimination is economically efficient, but I'm willing to let that play out.
Secondly, if older workers need to be subsidized in some way because they're unable to compete there's probably a better way to do so than to punish employers who are unable to skirt labor laws.
We understand that discrimination by race, gender, etc is wrong, as well as age, arguing anything else makes you (ironically) an old-fashioned pariah, haha.