Bring Retirement Age Back Down?

[BlueBrian]

Should people in their 60s be offered early retirement by the state to allow more young people to get jobs?

Risk of 'dole queue' future for young people after Covid-19 crisis.
www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/06/risk-dole-queue-future-young-people-after-covid-19-crisis

Everybody slows down though that’s a fact. Health generally doesn’t improve as you get older it declines.

But not at 60! Not these days.

When they retirement age was set at 65 for men, most people used to die before they got to 70 after a life of hard manual labour.

Women also led physical lives in the home. The weekly wash for example was physically knackering

These days we sit on our bums behind a desk, or in front of a TV, we eat well and we have good medicine.

There is no need to lower the retirement age

Calm down.
I agree if people want to work they can. A lot of my colleagues do as it keeps them busy and some of them don’t need the money.

The age is 67 and that’s the matter at hand.
I work in the medical field and a lot of people have conditions by 67. By no means am I saying at 60-67 you can’t work of course do what makes you happy. It does depend on your role though. I’m late 20s and I don’t run round like I use to at 18!! That’s all I was stating

There is higher risk for those aged 60+

It would reduce the numbers of deaths if 60-66 year-olds could choose to quit paid employment and receive an amount equal to full pension, non-means-tested, until they qualify for pension.

Some people would choose this,
e.g. maybe those on low income ZHC, or those with independent investment income / pensions they could take early

Others would not

I chose to retire at 63.5 on a reduced private pension

• from 1 February 2020, great decision ! 👍

I would have retired even earlier with such a scheme

So that would be me leaving a job open for someone younger and also being able to mostly stay home, as advised for my age group.

OP you've fallen into the trap of thinking that anyone can do any job. It's the kind of trap people fell into a hundred years ago saying that women shouldn't work in some fields because there aren't enough jobs, turns out it's not true! Some people create opportunities, work and wealth, some other people spend a lifetime developing skills and knowledge that they then use for everyone's benefit. They aren't doing basic work that an 18 year old can do and it benefits nobody for them to retire early. Scientists can't be skilled engineers however smart they are, they lack the skills and experience. Now try a young unemployed person, give them a decade and they'll start achieving, but they need even more decades to be on top of their game and they need the range of experiences of the full workforce to get there.

Unemployment before coronavirus was at a record low; if returns to work this year suffer from insufficient jobs for young people then increasing apprenticeship benefits is the way to improve that, not removing those who would teach them what to do.