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The UK has the highest retirment age in the developed world.

AViking

AViking

Platinum Member
What do you think of this? It might not affect anyone here but it will affect your kids.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/05/news/economy/uk-pension-hike/?hpt=hp_t3

I'm personally OK with it. Modern medicine is far better today and children born today are going to live to be about 104 years old. Life expectency is increasing at a rate of about 3 months per year.

What will be interesting though is how education follows suit. In Sweden you study until you're about 19. You then go to University or a trade school. Should we increase the amount of schooling to make our kids more competative? Who will pay for kids to study until they're 25 though?

Maybe it's more important for them to simply work, pay taxes, and put money in the pension coffers though. Seems to me though that 69 will be too low unless we plan on having people retired for 30 years. I don't see how that is remotedly affordable though.

I also don't see there being Jobs for this. We need a more specialized and educated work force.
 
Increasing the amount of mandatory will not accomplish anything. Once a child hits adulthood; they should make their decisions on the amount of schooling they want. The government should not dictate that level.

If the child wants additional schooling; let them and/or their parents figure out a way to pay for it.

I am sure that in every country; there are either loans, grants, government sponsored scholarship; work/school programs, etc.

The pricier schools may provide a slightly better quality education; but one needs to decide the cost benefit.
 
I'm talking basic education. High School. Not University. Whether someone goes to University or not is up to them but basic education is inevitably going to be extended as people live much longer and complex lives.

I graduated High School when I was 17 and basically learned nothing until University. I'm going to have a skewed view because of this but I'm of the opinion that people need more and higher quality basic education. Far too many idiots out there. I can't even imagine a world where everyone is living to be 100 yet they only studied for 12 years and are functionally illiterate, can't balance a checkbook, and are stupid.

Besides, if we're going to have people working for upwards of 50 years they need to be educated and it has to be continuous in many cases. On the job training is crucial. Otherwise you will have companies with staff that are using 25-50 year old information and being highly uncompetitive. You can already see this today. We like to kind of bury this under a cloud of people complaining that they got replaced by someone younger and cheaper but there's another big factor and that is that they are capable of bringing new and better ideas to the work place.
 
Life expectancy is a nasty statistic to understand. It's an average and it will average in infant mortality and what not. Regardless though a lot of children born today will live to be 100. That number is growing. At least in many parts of the world. I'm honestly not sure if that is true in the US but it's true over here. Sweden is one of those countries that has kept close tabs on mortality rates and life expectancy for like 150 years. Genealogy is pretty big too. I have a family tree dating back to the 1500's and family members who regularly work on it to go back further.

Either way regardless of any small differences in life expectancy numbers children born today will have a very good chance of living over 100 years. Compare this to when I was born where i think it was in the 70's.
 
That's assuming if kids today are going to be able to afford healthcare and cutting edge treatments in another 80 years.
 
AViking said:
What do you think of this?
[...]
I'm personally OK with it. Modern medicine is far better today and children born today are going to live to be about 104 years old. Life expectency is increasing at a rate of about 3 months per year.
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At some point life expectancy needs to stop rising, you can only raise the retirement age so high until you are trying to employ people too frail mentally and physically.
 
AViking said:
Life expectancy is a nasty statistic to understand. It's an average and it will average in infant mortality and what not. Regardless though a lot of children born today will live to be 100. That number is growing. At least in many parts of the world. I'm honestly not sure if that is true in the US but it's true over here. Sweden is one of those countries that has kept close tabs on mortality rates and life expectancy for like 150 years. Genealogy is pretty big too. I have a family tree dating back to the 1500's and family members who regularly work on it to go back further.

Either way regardless of any small differences in life expectancy numbers children born today will have a very good chance of living over 100 years. Compare this to when I was born where i think it was in the 70's.
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The lifespan may be increasing but what that means is more sick people living longer, and a primary reason health nations with a significant Boomer population are in serious trouble.

Also remember that projected life expectancies are a statistical fiction. They are based on assumptions not linked to causation.

There's another problem with living longer even if healthy and that is what do younger people do for a living when jobs that would have been freed up are still occupied. "What happens next" is what purple should be asking.
 
If my family history of cancer holds true for me I will kick off in the next 10-15 years thus negating any personal retirement worries ...
 
100 years? yeah eating crap food, job stress, crap economy makes it even worse, depression, heart attack, cancer, anxiety, diabetes etc most common illnesses now, in this way we wont make it past 50-60 years
 
Sonikku said:
That's assuming if kids today are going to be able to afford healthcare and cutting edge treatments in another 80 years.
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Well if you consider that in 80 years the cutting edge treatments of today will be old news, and right now we can literally zap tumors with photons that leave little more than a mild surface burn...

Being cynical is easy; which is why it's typically mastered around age 13/14 when kids think they know everything and falsely deem it a sign of intelligence. However fact is life is better for many than it's ever been, and it's getting better. It's not a constantly positive slope, and there are some spikes and valleys, but the average is going up with no sign of stopping.
 
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shortylickens said:
Greece let people retire early. Look how well that did.
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Greece's economy is in shambles because they quadrupled salaries in only a few years, gave tons of benefits, didn't work, and fudged their own economic numbers to trick the rest of the world. Hardly relevant.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
There's another problem with living longer even if healthy and that is what do younger people do for a living when jobs that would have been freed up are still occupied. "What happens next" is what purple should be asking.
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This is very true. It's pretty obvious in dire economic times. I think the average age of a fast food worker is mid 20's now because they're stuck there. It might not be the best example but unless we create more jobs then as life expectancy and retirement ages increase it will become pretty nasty for the extremes of our workforce. I still imagine that in the US at least they'll continue to let older workers go to hire cheaper and more modern younger workers but that's not really the case in Europe. They might offer early retirement here to cut their payroll costs but they're not cutting elderly workers to replace with younger as far as I can tell.

They're raising the retirement age to bring in more revenue to pay for pension plans and to reduce the time they pay pension but without jobs this is all pointless.
 
AViking said:
This is very true. It's pretty obvious in dire economic times. I think the average age of a fast food worker is mid 20's now because they're stuck there. It might not be the best example but unless we create more jobs then as life expectancy and retirement ages increase it will become pretty nasty for the extremes of our workforce. I still imagine that in the US at least they'll continue to let older workers go to hire cheaper and more modern younger workers but that's not really the case in Europe. They might offer early retirement here to cut their payroll costs but they're not cutting elderly workers to replace with younger as far as I can tell.

They're raising the retirement age to bring in more revenue to pay for pension plans and to reduce the time they pay pension but without jobs this is all pointless.
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Yeah, and I doubt this is going to change. As technology increases each individual becomes more capable. Eventually we're going to have to switch over to a more socialistic model or just ignore efficiency for the sake of maintaining a labor-based society; as there won't be enough naturally occurring jobs to go around. Doesn't mean we eliminate democracy, just that resource allocation becomes more centralized out of necessity.

That or we finally develop viable interplanetary spaceflight and colonize/open up mines on the moon/mars/whatever.
 
AViking said:
I'm talking basic education. High School. Not University. Whether someone goes to University or not is up to them but basic education is inevitably going to be extended as people live much longer and complex lives.

I graduated High School when I was 17 and basically learned nothing until University. I'm going to have a skewed view because of this but I'm of the opinion that people need more and higher quality basic education. Far too many idiots out there. I can't even imagine a world where everyone is living to be 100 yet they only studied for 12 years and are functionally illiterate, can't balance a checkbook, and are stupid.
Click to expand...

If people aren't learning anything in High School, why on earth would that be motivation for extending it?
 
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