My good friend and colleague Ron Tate who posts on The Boomer Blog sent me the following article. Boomers and Silents must stay longer in the work force if we want our nation to stay strong.
As you know, I just turned Seventy and I am drawing full Social Security, plus I work full time. It is enabling me to put aside enough money for retirement is I ever decide to retire, which I doubt I will ever do. I will work until I fall over if I am able.
Read it and tell me what you think.IS RETIRING EARLY UNPATRIOTIC? By Jay MacDonald
Bankrate.com
Want to do something truly patriotic to help preserve the American way of life? Don't retire. At least not yet. That's the advice of Andrew Yarrow, vice president and director of the Washington, D.C., office of the nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization Public Agenda. Yarrow urges the nation's 78 million baby boomers to forgo traditional or early retirement and work for a few more years, for their own sake and the good of the country.
If boomers all turn in their keys at age 55, 62 or 65 and head for the Tuscan hills, that great sucking sound you'll hear is untold amounts of taxpayer dollars being leached from the economy. That is money heirs will either have to replace or do without. It's an act Yarrow calls "profoundly selfish and unpatriotic.""The argument for working longer is not just about people working to pay more taxes; it's about people working to have more income and wealth themselves, to save for their own lives and their children and grandchildren," says Yarrow, who is also a professor of U.S. history at American University in Washington, D.C.
"This is an intergenerational issue," says the author of "Forgive Us Our Debts: The Intergenerational Dangers of Fiscal Irresponsibility."
"This idea of 'getting what's mine as soon as possible' really doesn't think about future generations." Yarrow notes that when people work longer, they not only continue to pay taxes and produce additional goods and services to spur the economy, but also slow the growth of the national debt. The debt currently stands at $9.3 trillion and is largely driven by rising Medicare and Social Security costs.
Today, the average retirement age is 62. If millions of Americans worked five more years and retired at 67, the added income would provide about $800 billion in additional tax revenues and reduce benefit costs by at least $100 billion in 2045, according to a 2006 Urban Institute study.
Elephant in the living roomWorking longer would also be a gracious way to begin to deal with the elephant in our collective living room: the Social Security mess. Back in 1935, when Congress passed the Social Security Act, the average U.S. life expectancy was 63, according to Yarrow. Today, the average life expectancy is 78, and if you make it through your 50s, you're likely to live into your 80s or beyond.
"If you retire at 62, you may live another third of your life in retirement," Yarrow says."Maybe that's right for some people, but a lot of able-bodied Americans could contribute to their employer, their society, the economy, themselves and their children for at least a few more years."
Although the 1983 reforms by the Greenspan Commission gradually nudged up the age for full Social Security benefits by a year or two, our increasing longevity continues to dog the program. Economist and actor Ben Stein says a change is gonna come. "That retirement date is for sure going to be pushed way, way later," says Stein, author of "Yes, You Can Still Retire Comfortably!" "I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years that date were 70 years old, given the fact that people are more vigorous in their old age, generally speaking."
Stein also expects the cap on Social Security taxes to disappear. "Wealthy people are going to pay much, much, much more tax," he says. "The 6 percent tax is not just going to stop at $90,000 (income), it's going to go up to $1 million or several million. That's going to affect this whole situation quite a lot."
"I would guess that in 20 years, there simply is not going to be any Social Security for wealthy people; that will be thoroughly means-tested, and probably should be," he says. "I mean, why should very rich people get Social Security? More and more, the whole program will be skewed toward helping poor and close-to-poor people and ignoring people who are already well-to-do."
As for the 63-year-old Stein, he has no plans to retire."I don't ever expect to stop working," he says.
"I love my work. I don't believe there is a meaningful life without work. You're not a whole person without work."Who will hire older workers?Every boomer who delays retirement or starts an encore career will help offset the coming shortage of American workers, especially in areas such as education and public and social services.The 2000 Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act helped pave the way by allowing workers ages 65 through 69 the freedom to earn as much money as they wish without losing Social Security benefits.
But the coming worker crunch runs far deeper than a shortage of ready hands and welcoming smiles."The problem is, companies aren't looking for older workers.""It's not just a shortage of people who were born 18 years ago, it's a shortage of people with the skills companies need," says Melanie Holmes, vice president of world of work solutions for Manpower.
"It's a combination of a warm-body shortage and a skills shortage."Holmes says American companies are unprepared to attract and accommodate older workers or transfer the knowledge from retiring workers to their successors.
"The problem is, companies aren't looking for older workers," she says. "When we surveyed about the aging workplace in 2007, only 18 percent of the employers we talked to said they had a strategy to recruit older workers, and only 28 percent had a strategy to retain older workers.
"Older workers have a wealth of job and life experience to offer employers. They tend to be more loyal and dependable too, she says."The main advantage is (boomers) have a work ethic," Holmes says. "When our clients complain to us about the temporary employees we send to them, it's not because they don't have the skills necessary to do the job, it's that they don't show up on time, they're not dressed appropriately, they may not treat their co-workers with respect -- all that work-ethic stuff that older workers have.
"On the negative side, older workers may be set in their ways, resistant to training, less adept with technology and judgmental of younger co-workers. Employers fear the older worker will want a higher salary and cost them more in health coverage and special accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Still, the number of older workers is growing, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics. A boomer herself, Holmes figures her generation is predisposed to continue working in some capacity as long as mind and body permit."Most of us have always been workaholics," she says. "We don't want to quit cold turkey.
The challenge for business, she says, is to prepare now to attract and retain older talent before retiring boomers drain the bathtub of skilled workers."Are we part of the problem because we're retiring and there's going to be a talent shortage, or are we part of the solution?"
Holmes says. "The answer is really 'yes' to both of them."When we get to the height of the baby boomers retiring, I think companies are going to be seeing a lot of knowledge and productivity walk out the door. That's when they're going to start feeling the pain. Those are the people they need to retain by offering flexible work arrangements and changing the way some of the jobs are done to compensate for the decline in our physical abilities. Companies are going to have to work hard to get people to stay."
Jay MacDonald is a contributing editor based in Texas.
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