Swedish PM wants people to work until age 75

[FarCenter]

"If people think that we can live longer and shorten our working life, then pensions are going to be lower. The question is, are people ready for that?," he asked.

Reinfeldt said people should be prepared to make a career change when their profession becomes too difficult physically or too stressful.

"The left-wing believes that when your job gets too difficult you should go off on early retirement or get some type of social benefits. But I think that when work gets too tough I should do something else."

"We have to start asking ourselves, 'How are we going to do that? How do we change careers in the prime of our lives? And how do we make it possible to work until we're older, maybe even much older?'," he said.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120207-swedish-pm-wants-people-work-until-age-75

[limpyhobbler]

1. i reject this proposal.

maybe in Sweden. I don't know. But not in the US please.
Have of us wouldn't live to see retirement.

[Angry Dragon]

6. That is a big part of the plan

[xchrom]

2. ...

[Nuclear Unicorn]

3. Is there even a real issue or is he just trying to ride the anti-safety net/pension wave? n/t

[HughBeaumont]

4. Dumb.

There's going to come a time where you're just not going to be physically or mentally able to go into a job, ANY job, at 6 AM and work until 5-6 PM. Humans cannot work until gurneys carry them out. They can't, and it's phenomenally stupid to expect them to. People working longer in life because they're forced to is one of the myriad of reasons why the employment situation is a huge problem in America.

Now, if someone wishes to work longer in life and it's their choice, then fine. But don't start giving me this rightist claptrap that a human, regardless of age, isn't worth a plug nickel unless they're contributing to a corporation's productivity. We're not our fucking jobs.

[kemah]

5. People should be allowed to retire at the age of 65.

SS now stops collecting at a certain wage, this should be removed and all taxable income should have SS deductions. A lot of people are working longer because SS doesn't pay enough to retire. Studies show that most people are unhappy with their jobs but work only to support themselves and their family.

If people had a decent retirement they would retire and there would be more jobs available for younger workers.

Those politicians who think that people can work till their 75 have office jobs with administrative assistants have maids and grounds keepers to take care of their physical needs. They live in a bubble but would they be able to work as a greeter standing on their feet for 6 hours at a time. I doubt that.

[Yo_Mama]

7. Consider it a reality check

Reinfeldt said Sweden's generous welfare state and pension system would not be sustainable with an ageing population unless people worked longer.

American citizens are locked into the idea that someone, somewhere, has figured out the Holy Grail of socialism. Some do better than we do, but there's no free lunch on this topic anywhere in the developed world. Our current welfare systems were based on a rapidly growing population, and that's not the case anywhere in the developed world, so none of them are sustainable in current forms.

That having been said, I think the Swedish PM is nuts. I do not think that most people can work anywhere near full time in their 70s. The appropriate response to an unpleasant reality is not to build a social welfare system dependent on fantasy!

In fifteen years, many of the countries now seen as stable cartwheel into disaster. Here, for example, is Germany's population pyramid as of 2010:


2025, game over.

[Snake Alchemist]

8. You've got it 100% backwards.

Should be a mandatory retirement age of 55. Let the young work.

[sarcasmo]

9. Work until you die, are they tring to copy the USA?