Retirement Wars

The retirement wars are starting to Mainstream in the Media, but from what I've been able to see Germans are sleep walking when it comes to an aging population. The only time I've seen it mention was when one of the members of the CDU (I think) youth wing mentioned that seniors will have to pay more of their medical costs down the road and he got death threats. I can see it know, "I'm going to hit you over the head with my walker sonny!"

In the UK people are starting to wake up and realize that the retirement age for you and I will be 67 or latter while anyone in the public sector will be off in sunny Spain at 50. Currently 25% of council taxes go towards paying retirement pensions.

I read somewhere a while back that Civil Service pensions in Germany are forecast to exceed 100% of the current budget (up from 50% now).
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May I pose a simple solution to this "problem". The concept of a retirement pension at 65 came from the days when most people did not live that long, or only lived a couple more years beyond it if they did. Nowadays people are generally living longer and the system can no longer cope. We have created this problem ourselves through our own attitude!

Because why do or should people have to "retire" - unless they become disabled, too frail or sick to work? How come we have this concept? Why shouldnt people who are healthy and able continue to work for as long as they live? Surely they ought to be earning their living and contributing whilst they are alive on this earth

Unless you belong to one of the aforementioned categories in your old age, I dont see why we have this concept of "retirement". Its there and we continue to live with it and try to keep it going simply because its been there for the last 100 years or so. But in practice, "retiring" is something for a few lazy milllionaires (some of whome even retire at 20 or 30), not ordinary people. Most people simply cant maintain the lifestyle they have when working when they retire and no longer work. It aint possible, the figures dont add up.

So just abolish retirement and retirement pensions and get ourselves out of this hole we have dug for ourselves. Of course that would also require a change of attitude all round, including amongst employers. None of this "early retirement" as right now with VW. And showing full willingness to employ older people instead of younger ones.

Easy

With the on-set of globalisation, an appropriately modern solution would be to off-shore a significant part of the elderly population to Turkey, India and other developing countries where the weather is better (less heating costs), health care & beer costs significantly lower. They can then teach the young hardworking educated people German in preparation for them to move to Europe to get a better job

This would reduce the rate of local taxation, stimulate the German economy as well as investment in developing countries

Problem solved!

Q.E.D.

Time did a cover story a while back on the Great Retirement Ripoff. Very interesting it was a scary accounting of how many companies, aided and abetted by Congress, are screwing millions of old, faithful employees out of promised benefits. I mean what would you do, a few years before your set to retire your company pulls the plug on your pension plan. I will prove very interesting when in a few years the baby boomers begin to retire. The pension and health care systems in the US are a huge mess.

I don't think anyone really objects to retiring at the age of 67 if this becomes law. The only question is though where do we work until this age? Earning peanuts filling grocery bags at the local supermarket? (not in this country). You'll probably be mobbed out at the age of 50 to make space for a younger, much more dynamic employee who doesn't cost as much.


This man also "suggested" that elderly people requiring hip replacements and so on be denied them because of their high age, ie. it's not worth the investment. Many of these people have paid into the system all of their working lives and shouldn't be dumped by it when they reach a certain age.

Of course the best thing would be to die at your desk before you retire.

I would have liked to retire at 60 never mind 67 but after losing my job at 50 I found that employees didn´t want to know when I told them how old I was, even the language schools were not overkeen about employing someone my age.

I haven't a snowflakes chance in hell of working until I'm 65 let alone 67. The French already allow their truck drivers to retire at 55 due to the strain of the job (and a certain amount of motorway blackading to draw attention to their plight). For years I was averaging 330hrs per month, by the time I hit 55 I'll have done my fair share , and I'll be unfit to continue in my job much after that. Of the 8 elderly drivers that have retired from where I work, only 1 actually worked until his 65th birthday, 1 took early retirement voluntarily and the rest stopped suddenly due to work related illness... 67? yeah right.

I have to agree, right now, tax and labour (I'm so used to the American spelling it feels weird inserting the "u") policy make it very difficult to work till age 65. What I'm interested in is how demographics will play out, they are predicting a shortage of labour in a few years, as so few Germans are having kids any more.

Don't worry, I became unemployed by choice (for several reasons) last year in Germany, and I'm 28 and no one was interested in my skills, knowledge or services back then. It's a poor state of affairs over there. Germany was not a place I wanted to grow old in, well it still isn't, I'm afraid to say!

That's a hell of lot of hours good god you'd think your in America or something. According to my calculations you could have retired 10 years ago Speaking of such are drivers here paid by the mile (kilometer) or by the hour or by the job. Long distance drivers are by the mile in America and by the hour for local drivers.