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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is the increasingly long span of life when people are not working but still consuming, possibly requiring expensive personal and medical care. The goods and services consumed have to come from someone working somewhere.

What we could really do with is establishing some new norms for short-week working for older people (and the not so old). There are plenty of people who'd be happy to do a few hours a week to top up their income and stay in contact with the world, but are starting to be physically incapable of the 40 hour + commute week.

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>The problem is the increasingly long span of life when people are not working but still consuming, possibly requiring expensive personal and medical care. The goods and services consumed have to come from someone working somewhere.

This seems like a Lump of Labor Fallacy. Productivity-per-worker-hour has been growing for decades, while we've kept work-weeks and retirement ages the same (or even, in some countries, increased the retirement age). If people work the same amount and productivity keeps growing, there ought to be more goods and services to distribute to the retired as they live longer. And indeed, the per-capita GDP has been growing.

Of course, the generation ratio (retirees to workers) is rapidly becoming problematic, but given the sky-high youth unemployment rates, I don't really trust that's driving the supposed inability to fund pensions either.

indeed, per capita GDP is increasing, and the proceeds have not flowed proportionately to the workers...so it is a fallacy that we don't have enough goods to distribute, but it's a truth that those goods are relatively scarce/expensive to the workers......sucks.

How does this differ from any other part-time job (which a lot of retired folks have, even those with plenty of money).

> The goods and services consumed have to come from someone working somewhere.

Like your former self? Retirement fund contribution is compulsory in Australia (as a %age of income), and probably elsewhere.

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