Posted on 02/18/2006 7:25:29 AM PST by Paleo Conservative
The age of retirement should be raised to 85 by 2050 because of trends in life expectancy, a US biologist has said.
Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University says anti-ageing advances could raise life expectancy by a year each year over the next two decades.
A longer life could mean a longer
working life
That will put a strain on economies around the world if current retirement ages are maintained, he warned.
He also told a science meeting in St Louis that 50-year or 75-year mortgages may not be unusual in the future.
Dr Tuljapurkar was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in the Missouri city.
"People are going to do things they didn't get round to in their working lives. Current institutions are really not equipped at the moment to deal with such long lives," Dr Tuljapurkar said.
"We are going to have to plan a lot more carefully, which people are not very good at."
Lifestyle trends
The Stanford researcher has been looking at relationships between historical trends in ageing, population growth and economic activity.
Based on this, he came up with a scenario in which anti-ageing technologies will increase the most common age of death by one year per year between 2010 and 2030.
Dr Tuljapurkar then applied this scenario to four countries: the US, China, Sweden and India.
In the US the cost of social security and medical care would almost double if people retired at 65
He found that his projected trends in life expectancy would have profound effects on the economy, lifestyle and population demographics.
"It might be possible to go through two mortgages, for example, or even have 50-year or 75-year mortgages," Dr Tuljapurkar explained.
In the US, the cost of social security and medical care would almost double if people retired at 65 under Tuljapurkar's scenario.
But an increase in the retirement age to 85 would bring costs down to today's levels.
However these trends would also create a "permanent underclass" of countries where opportunities for increased life expectancy were not the same as in the industrialised world.
"We can't even get retrovirals to some countries now," he told journalists.
But thats not a solution for a free capitalistic society. At some point we have to choose...either we want socialism or capitalism. This in-between BS really pisses me off.
I'm ready to start my run.
=====================================
You must be one of those young freepers who have espoused euthenasia for boomers. Either that or you have not seen the multiple threads over the past couple of years where it is espoused.
Idea goes way back. I imagine that young cave men thought that old men running things "ain't right".
Jonathan Swift in Gulliver chapter 26 ridicules both sides in this matter - remember the "Struldbrugs"?
From your lips to God's ear....
But don't forget, the politicians will count the votes before they do anything.
I will be retiring from 9-5 work at age sixty. I will not need SS or Medicare and wish I could opt out of both.
Yeah, the idea is old but it is disconcerting to read freepers suggest it as a way of dealing with aging boomers.
You must have a death wish. And your disdain for younger people is a personal problem only you can deal with.
Personally, euthenasia, whether forced or voluntary is very wrong in my book. BTW not all younger people have such a coarse and disrespectful attitude towards their elders, much less the old and infirm. Its a shame that a minority of the a-holes have shaped your opinion.
My circumstances are exceptional however. There are those that never plan for the future and those that do but just don't know how much the future is going to cost.
I have significant savings already and have been planning for 30 years out for a decade now. My unfortunate circumstance is that my wife and one of my two children are disabled. My son will never be able to live on his own and I'm hoping to make it so that neither us or he is ever a (financial) burden on his sister. The problem is that he will most certainly outlive us and I don't know what will happen afterwards. The state already has a waiting list for group homes that is in the hundreds long and when the large number of Autistic kids today need housing in 30 years (after their belabored parents die), there will be no money or housing for them. I'm doing my darndest to ensure that my current house can perhaps be turned into a private group home when the time comes but without charity or government support, I don't know what will happen to him after I'm gone.
Thus my "retirement years" will not be spent on the beach or traveling, they will be spent caring for the disabled while trying to keep a job that has health coverage. So yes, I plan on working until the day I die.
Sorry for the downer
Thus my "retirement years" will not be spent on the beach or traveling, they will be spent caring for the disabled while trying to keep a job that has health coverage. So yes, I plan on working until the day I die.
Sorry for the downer
Birds of a feather.
My teenage stepson is a manic-bipolar. He's 17 now...while its not austism (severe or mild) similiar things apply to both of us.
What a joke. It's like the Donner Party deciding on inheritance rights...or should I say..rites.
>>>>In the US the cost of social security and medical care would almost double if people retired at 65....
Triage and selective elimination; the only way we can afford our "Great" Society.
A 50 or 75 or 1,000 year "mortgage" would have payments not terribly smaller than the payments in a thirty year mortgage.
Innumeracy is common amongst those claiming to be "scientists". Mann's "hockey stick" shaped climate change curve (and therefore "global warming" theory) is a good example. One might call me harsh in describing such and eminent climate scholar innumerate, yet otherwise Mann must be a fraud -
This is why I am going to start saving for retirement immediately once I begin working after college. No waiting except for maybe a couple months to get myself oriented. It has to start soon, for I can't count on getting ANY SS and heaven knows how little that covers anyway.
I certainly appreciate your desire to make me work 20 years longer so you can stand back and laugh.
Thank you, Mr. Boomer.
I'm in my mid-thirties, and I've just accepted the fact that there's no way on God's green Earth that I'm ever getting any Social Security, nor will I ever really be able to 'retire.' And I'm darn bitter about the majority of the Boomers who feel like they've "earned it," and deserve a handout (earned on my ass) at every turn.
I am planning on 75 or so in any event before retirement. If the retirement age is raised to 85, I will retire at 75 and use the rest of my savings to cover me for the 10 years.
The difficulty with all these doom-and-gloom scenarios is that don't take into account the fact that intelligent men and women adjust to changing conditions. Healthy 70-year-olds who want to start new careers other than the ones they've been stuck with for a "lifetime" will have the time to do so. That isn't a bad thing. And those careers will not be in competition with the young pups in most cases. It was fun, but I don't want to be a stud in a Turkish harem anymore - let the young folks do that now.
Anyway, I have a backup plan. We increase the retirement age to 64 on my 65th birthday, to 74 on my 75th, raise taxes to support the whole thing, and the X'ers WILL BE MY SLAVES FOREVER!!! MOOOHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Sorry.
Hopes?
Their entire structure is BASED on it!
SS is a Ponzi scheme.
No problem, I'll be in my 90's in 2050. And retired. Bwahahahaha!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.