Want to Create Jobs In A Hurry? Lower The Retirement Age to 60

[Yavin4]

And pay out a big bump in SS payments for two years. IOW, offer a financial incentive for people to retire early.

Doing this would instantly free up a lot of jobs across all sectors of our economy. Many Americans are forced into working longer than they want to largely because they cannot afford to retire, and this creates a drag on job turnover.

Secondly, let's be honest, there is ramapant age discrimination in the work place. Many people in their 50s and 60s are taking jobs beneath their pay and career status in order to survive, if they're lucky enough to get hired.

How would I pay for this? Return the defense budget to the Clinton level of $200 billion a year from the over $700 billion that it currently stands at. We're spending more money on defense than we did during the height the Cold War, and guess what, the Cold War is over.

In sum, given the global labor competition and advances in technology, the current 8% UE rate may just be the new normal. Why not pay people to leave the labor force in order to free up more jobs? And, giving people a financial incentive to leave the labor force may be the best over all stimulus for our economy.

[bklyncowgirl]

1. As someone who's close to that age I'm all for it :)

Not likely to happen but I'm all for it.

[econoclast]

2. Creates NO jobs

Juat a shell game shuffling new workers to existing jobs

Two situations:

1 - person A is unemployed and collecting unemployment. Person B has a job.

2 - person A has the job and person B collects Soc Sec

No net change. Still one job. One person employed. One person collecting benefits from the government.

Just shuffled who's who

[magical thyme]

4. it gets young people who are currently shut out of work into the work force

where they can gain the experience they need to have a stake in the game.

It absolutely does free up jobs for those who should have opportunities and be working.

I would take it in a heartbeat. I have been working for over 35 years. I am bone tired, underemployed in a job with future growth and in a field dominated by people nearing retirement age who can't afford to retire. I can live on very little and am desperate to retire before I keel over and either die in the street or cost the healthcare system a fortune.

I also know people who are semi-retired and working *only* to pay for health insurance until they can go on medicare. Lower the medicare age instead of raising it, and a lot more jobs will be available to young people who should be gaining good job experience, not flipping burgers or hanging out in mom's basement plotting revolution because there is no place for them in society.

[econoclast]

7. "freeing up" is not creating

I'm sorry, but as a job creating tool, This is one of the dumbest ideas ever.
I repeat .... Before and after, there is still only one job, one worker and one person on govt support. Nothing changed except who is who. Nothing created at all.

[Yavin4]

8. Fine. It Won't "Create" Jobs, But It "Frees" Up Jobs

Is that better language for you?

I could go into consumption patterns for elderly vs. young people, and use that to say that young people spend more than do older people. Thus, if more young people are working, then there will be more consumption. Thus, more jobs will be CREATED.

Additionally, more employed young people would then be able to form families and buy homes, which also CREATES more jobs.

In sum, older workers spend less and save more because they are preparaing for retirement, a retirement that's years away. Getting them more retirement security earlier frees up money for consumption which CREATES jobs.

The whole idea of forcing people to work into their late 60s is nuts given the current reality of a global labor force and the pace of technological change. Wake up. There are no more factories. There are no more IT jobs going for the begging.

[magical thyme]

9. directly, it does not create jobs. indirectly, yes it does.

My purchasing power after retirement will be close to what it is now.

The unemployed person who replaces me will have purchasing power they didn't have before.

That will increase demand for goods and services, which will create the need for more employees.

The more that money circulates through the economy, the stronger the economy.

[leftstreet]

5. 'collecting benefits from the government'

You make an excellent observation about numbers - but we need to move away from the 'government benefits' nanny state language that's crippled the left.

How about 'one person would still need assistance from the commons for basic needs because this shitty capitalist system is designed to maintain an army of unemployed people so that a few rich assholes can make enormous profits while the majority starve.'

[limpyhobbler]

3. makes sense to me. k/r

[KG]

6. whoa! I'd be right in line for one of those cushy wal-mart greeters jobs!

[magical thyme]

10. the job I'd be leaving pays 2-3 times that, depending on experience and degrees

and I can think of 3-4 co-workers who would jump too. All of them with more advanced degrees and much higher pay level than I have. And another one already semi-retired and working part time only to pay for health insurance until she can get medicare.

That would be almost 25% of our team. In the meantime, 5 local students graduated last spring in our field. They hired only one of them, per diem/part time.

[econoclast]

13. Frankly, it seems like a ploy to scarf up one last freebie

Glommed 10+ years of Bush tax cuts. Plus two years of SS tax reduction and now it's time to get outa' Dodge with one last freebie....early retirement !!!! and trying to spin it so it sounds like you are taking one for the team ..... I'll admit ... It's audacious .... Maybe even genius .... But definitely NOT helpful.

To quote from the South Park Mormon episode sound track .... Dum dum dum dum dum.

[magical thyme]

14. I have no idea what you mean by that

Who "glommed 10+ years of Bush tax cuts"? I have no idea what that even means.

Who is trying to spin what as "taking one for the team?" If by "you" you mean "me," that's getting into personal attack area. Where in stating that I am exhausted does that suggest I am "taking one" for anybody? Where am I spinning anything?

You claimed that an earlier retirement age would not create jobs. I answered that claim.

Maybe you could try writing in English?

[taught_me_patience]

11. Bad idea

look up broken window fallacy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

[magical thyme]

15. guess I am dum dum dum as ikonoclast says

because I don't get the connection.

Deliberate destruction (e.g. war, Banks tearing down bankruptcy properties, etc) fit the parable you link to.

Where is the destroyed property/resources or lost wealth in the OPs suggestion?

I see 1. increased purchasing power, 2. a younger generation with a "lost decade" getting some opportunities, 3. increased demand for goods and services that leads to more job creation.

Right now there are millions of people, many of them young, without work and therefore without futures. There are millions more people close to or at retirement age forced to continue to work because they can't afford to retire.

Enabling older working people to retire will open up jobs for young people who currently have no futures.

[econoclast]

16. Scam

And all those needing a job would be so much better off if only we/they would pay You to relax and retire. For the right amount of money - enough to make retirement affordable - you'd magnanimously hand over the reins, step aside and retire in comfort.

As I said. This near 60 group benefited from 10 years of low taxes in their peak earning years ( complained bitterly but somehow never managed to eliminate them ) and 2 more of reduced SS. Now the 60'ers want a buyout? "pay me off or don't work"

And it is spun to make it seem like the 60'ers are doing the rest of us a favor. Nice.

But nothing will have changed. No new job created. Just swapping who gets givt support. No surprise that the group who stands to get paid not to work thinks its a swell idea.

[magical thyme]

17. actually, I spent my "peak earning years" swinging between unemployed

and underemployed when the high tech market crashed, followed by 9/11 right when I was pushing 50. That is how I lost most of my retirement savings.

So I didn't benefit from Bush's tax cuts in any way, shape for form. If I, personally, never managed to eliminate the tax cuts, maybe it's because my lone vote wasn't enough to do that. And maybe because I was too busy just trying to survive.

When it became clear I couldn't get hired at a halfway decent job again, I went back to school for 3 years in health care because it supposedly has 100% employment and supposedly is growing at 14%/year.

But it doesn't have 100% employment, and at least half my fellow graduates were unable to find employment in the field.

My "affordable retirement" will be less than minimum wage. I already set my thermostat at 55 in the winter when I'm home and at 50 when I'm at work, buy food in bulk and cook it solar in the summer. I think I'll be able to get by when I don't have to spend gas to drive to work and as the winters here warm.

If you think the status quo is better: young people shut out of society, either mooching off their parents or becoming small time thieves in lieu of meaningful work with a positive future, by all means go for it.

In any event, your bogus claim now has degenerated to a personal attack on me.

If the suggestion I support amounts to a "Scam" then you are, by inference, calling me a "Scammer." Welcome to ignore.

[econoclast]

19. Not a personal attack against you

But a vigorous attack against an idea that is indeed a scam

1 it purports to create jobs but in fact just shuffles who gets to work at the jobs that exist. The number of jobs doesn't change. Only which group gets government support. Same number of jobs same number on government support.

Yet if we actually DID this we'd get to say that unemployment improved because while we counted the members of the old group receiving support as unemployed, we wouldn't count the new group receiving govt support as such because the new group are "retired" and not in the work force! So the whole idea is a bit of accounting chicanery to allow reporting a lower unemployment rate. Problem still exists but we can massage the numbers to pretend it doesn't

2. If you ( personally this time ) were not in "peak earnings years, statistically the near 60 cohort As A Group certainly was

3. This time is personal .... Re scam. Dont think you are a scammer, but do think you have been taken in by one. And that probably hurts to hear. Sorry about that but it can't be helped.

[fadedrose]

12. Maybe 62 might be better

Last edited Mon Aug 20, 2012, 11:17 PM - Edit history (1)

But part time would be okay - it would keep the retiree happier and less likely to get sick....

[magical thyme]

18. note the 310 posts and suggestion that Social Security is a "freebie"

when in reality people pay into the system for decades and by the time they have, often have exceeded the minimum requirements in every way except age.

I suspect a troll.