Retirement

[Serial_Apologist]

This is David Graeber's "bullshit jobs"* phenomenon in another guise. Raising the retirement age means that people will have to work for longer, when automation and AI in the next few decades will make an increasing proportion of jobs unnecessary. The result should be that people ought to have a massively increased amount of leisure time, but the result will be that people are forced either into penury because the jobs aren't there, or into doing jobs that don't really need doing at all, while the "1%" enrich themselves further. Raising the retirement age is class war, nothing more or less.

* "In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century's end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless."

In a certain sense they are pointless jobs; in another they're part of the "pelmet" created to think it holds the curtains up - namely the "service sector" Thatcherists spoke of as replacing the need of a wealth-creating manufacturing sector. Those working in the latter had to be accused of having "priced themselves out of the jobs market", whereas what really had happened is that the "unecomomic" jobs had been "subcontracted" to third world countries where third world working conditions were enforced without redress, enabling repatriation of the profits built up with the help of investments by those selfsame companies in the companies of their friends operating the selfsame system of exploitation, plus a huge amount of currency speculation in accordance with the aforementioned maximised results according with the biggest returns. That's before we even get onto periodic scarcities inbuilt into the system helping police workforces threatened with asking for too much, (while all the time adverts say get this or that unsustainable product or socially exclude yourself), as well as capital locked up in property which should, like all other commodities, only be worth the value of number of hours put into building it, paid for by equally distributed earnings in a system not built on envy and divide-and-rule. And it ignores the fact that the "service sector" is not wealth-creating per se; in the end it is often a cost and, in capitalist terms, were the NHS not there to keep the producer class healthy enough to produce, a drain on resources.

People are being made to work longer before they drop because the system, rationalised, courtesy AI, to produce more value with less human labour, needs fewer people on the production line. Fewer people working on the production line = fewer paying into the pensions schemes that subsidise the once yearned for twilight years. This is the logical outcome of the drivers determining the "overall health" of a system in the hands of wealthy companies presided over by vastly overpaid CEOs that is essentially out of any government's control. Except that, having told us so, the politicians then relied upon to restore things messed up by the banks in 2007, are now milking it with regards to global over-reach by playing up to voter nostalgia for a past age when state power acted as the basis on which national economies competed and patriotism was thought to mean something.

We're talking the realities of systemics here, not moral values, which would presuppose a different, inclusive society.

[LezLee]

I took early retirement combined with redundancy in 1991 when I was 50. Never regretted it for a minute! My friend is still working at 73, part paid, part voluntary and doesn't want to retire any time soon. The money pays for holidays and entertainment. My sister, also 73, is able to spend lots of time with her grandchildren.

[Serial_Apologist]

I took early retirement combined with redundancy in 1991 when I was 50. Never regretted it for a minute! My friend is still working at 73, part paid, part voluntary and doesn't want to retire any time soon. The money pays for holidays and entertainment. My sister, also 73, is able to spend lots of time with her grandchildren.

While having no evidence to back me up, my belief is that most people look forward to their retirement and the idea of becoming their own boss at last. I know I did - life is no longer the constant unconscious rehearsal for avoiding slipping up and threatening losing ones job. You become your own person. I always felt sorry for those who wept at their retirement presentation, some of whom, I know, had found nothing to replace the daily drudgery of wage slavery, and soon died from grieving for their lost sense of identity.

[MrGongGong]

I always felt sorry for those who wept at their retirement presentation, some of whom, I know, had found nothing to replace the daily drudgery of wage slavery, and soon died from grieving for their lost sense of identity.

It really doesn't have to be that way.
The idea that "work" is something you do for someone who you despise and has no respect for you nor you for them seems completely ridiculous to me.
I know that some folks are "trapped" to a degree in circumstances BUT there are many ways (and places) to live that mean this doesn't have to be the case for so many.

I also think that some folks with "wage slave" jobs need to be a bit careful of what they wish for. The benefits of someone putting money in your bank account every month are many (not that it has ever been the case for me).

[ahinton]

“Arbitrary qualifier “ or not, it still takes 10% of my salary over about £150 pw , and is also effectively a levy on work, one that helps to subsidise the wealthiest and earliest retiring generation(s) of pensioners we have ever had, and which according to some calculations has better incomes than equivalent cohorts that are still in work.

Oh, it can be a lot of money, I grant you that!

[Serial_Apologist]

It really doesn't have to be that way.
The idea that "work" is something you do for someone who you despise and has no respect for you nor you for them seems completely ridiculous to me.
I know that some folks are "trapped" to a degree in circumstances BUT there are many ways (and places) to live that mean this doesn't have to be the case for so many.

I also think that some folks with "wage slave" jobs need to be a bit careful of what they wish for. The benefits of someone putting money in your bank account every month are many (not that it has ever been the case for me).

I agree with para. 1 - but the problem comes with trying to organise an entire society on that basis.

[ahinton]

Raising the retirement age means that people will have to work for longer, when automation and AI in the next few decades will make an increasing proportion of jobs unnecessary. The result should be that people ought to have a massively increased amount of leisure time, but the result will be that people are forced either into penury because the jobs aren't there, or into doing jobs that don't really need doing at all, while the "1%" enrich themselves further. Raising the retirement age is class war, nothing more or less.

Dead right - except that I think that there is something more which is not being considered as it needs to be, especially in UK, namely that a basic income will need to be provided by the state to people beause, for the reason that you state, there simply will not be the jobs around from which most of them can expect to derive an income, let alone a living one.

[MrGongGong]

I agree with para. 1 - but the problem comes with trying to organise an entire society on that basis.

I don't think anyone organises "an entire society"

and anyway why are people worrying when we are all going to get magically richer and happier after the 31st October

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't think anyone organises "an entire society"

and anyway why are people worrying when we are all going to get magically richer and happier after the 31st October

[Petrushka]

I always felt sorry for those who wept at their retirement presentation, some of whom, I know, had found nothing to replace the daily drudgery of wage slavery, and soon died from grieving for their lost sense of identity.

I was 22 when I was witness to one of our most respected directors uncontrollably weeping at his retirement presentation and it made such a strong impression on me that I swore there and then that I would never do that when it came to mine. Well, it's coming up in December and the only tears from me will be those of joy.

[un barbu]

I'm sure I'm not alone in filling my 'retirement' with useful and enjoyable activity that was crowded out by the demands of teaching a full timetable in a large secondary school. My time has been filled with teaching adult literacy classes, WEA classes, archaeological digs, working in the local archives/museum (most recently becoming adept at reading 17th century Scottish secretary hand). I don't regret for one moment having gone early at 54.

[Petrushka]

My retirement celebration meal was booked weeks ago for December 12.

Isn't something else happening on that day?

[DracoM]

<< 17th century Scottish secretary hand >>

Crikey! Just googled it.
How's the eyesight doing?

[Nick Armstrong]

I was 22 when I was witness to one of our most respected directors uncontrollably weeping at his retirement presentation and it made such a strong impression on me that I swore there and then that I would never do that when it came to mine. Well, it's coming up in December and the only tears from me will be those of joy.

[Petrushka]

My retirement day is here at last! I'm finishing tomorrow afternoon and will hopefully now be able to spend more time with my CDs and a mountain of books! Well, that's the theory anyway.