Why not reduce retirement age to 40 but require people to work much harder? | Hacker News Reader

Why not reduce retirement age to 40 but require people to work much harder?

5 pointsamichail18 comments

Not to encourage age discrimination but the brain does decline with age...

This option is already open to those who want it.

I mean not just with startups. Everyone would be expected to retire by 40.

1) Even lawyers and doctors don't make enough money to retire by 40.

2) Lawyers and doctors frequently work 80-100 hours a week. The amount of productive output is not 2x as much as the 40 hour week; due to fatigue and stress, the productive output only averages out to about 150% more work...in other words, a 25% loss in productivity as compared to just working 2 40 hour weeks.

3) The stress of working 80-100 hour work weeks kills the body good. Literally. It easily ages the body 2-3 years for every year on that sort of schedule. That's why all our presidents have gray hair when they retire.

4) The pyramid scheme: younger generations would have to work even longer to pay for the retirement costs of the retired. People live an average of 25-35 years (depending on sex and race) after 40. So you've made the already unsustainable equation (which sets the retirement date for federal benefits so that only 1/2 of all adults are expected to live past the eligibility date) even worse.

5) France. Enough said.

The amount of productive output is not 2x as much as the 40 hour week; due to fatigue and stress, the productive output only averages out to about 150% more work

No, because someone working 40 hours a week has a large set of problems they can't solve -- e.g. anything that takes 160 man-hours to do and needs to be finished in two weeks. Someone who works insanely hard is going to be first to finish a lot of stuff, and the prize for first place can be enough to justify the cost.

indeed. you're totally allowed to retire whenever you want, and, on the flip side of that coin, you can continue to work long after your standard "retirement" age.

work hard, save enough, and live off the interest. there's no timetable on that any more than what you put on it.

So why is it that most people retire much later than that?

so you really can't think of any good reasons why people wouldn't want to work 80+ hour weeks to retire at 40?

Is it the case that most people know just how much their brain will decline will age? If they did, I think most would consider early retirement appealing.

and what exactly will you do once you retire early?

find someone to marry? although the statistics are shifting, odds are a lot more slim at 40+ than if you had the time to look around earlier.

play some sports? have some sex? hike the grand canyon? unlikely, as your body also deteriorates with age. if only you had the time to do some of that earlier.

have kids? sperm count and quality drops drastically across your 30's.

spend time with your friends? what friends? working the 80+ hour weeks means you probably didn't have much of a social life, and therefore don't keep many friends. it might be a good time to try to look for some, but most people in their 40's are now very busy with their own lives -- kids and bigger job titles means less free time.

i could go on, but i feel you get my point. time is money, and older people would (and do attempt to) pay huge sums to regain their youth.

Just how much will it decline with age?

Other folks pointed out that 40 is too late to do many things.

I'll point out that most folks won't produce 2x as much working 80-100 hours/week as they do working 4-50 hours week.

Most people are incapable (either by lack of talent or lack of drive or lack of comprehension) of generating enough value in a 20 year career to feed themselves for the next 50 years.

Two things:

1. You're in an industry which is obsessed, quite irrationally, with youth. Steve Jobs might have been a young entrepreneur, but he didn't create the iPhone at 29. Rupert Murdoch might be ancient, but he's still a player (in all respects, apparently!). Older people are a lot more interesting and competent than for which our industry, and our youth-obsessed culture, give them credit.

I would also like to note that people who get too much too quickly tend to burn out, lack social context, and suffer from other ailments which lead to general weirdness. Pop stars aren't the only ones who face these issues. Work is important, but you can't buy back your youth -- so enjoy it. It is the single most valuable asset you have.

2. My good friend Inflation would like to have a word with you about your retirement fund.

People overlook how much you need to make to retire early. Let's say a guy makes $50,000 year, and saves $20,000 of that. Every year he retired, he'd:

Have his savings go -$30,000 at the same quality of life NOT have his savings increase +$20,000

This seems obvious, but most people miss something when thinking about retiring early: It's an extra year you have to pay for out of savings, and you're not earning in that year.

Have you people stopped to think about expertise? It takes 10 years of meaningful practice to get very good at any profession. If you factor the reality that you have to put up with your share of unedifying grunt work, it takes more like 15 to 20. Retiring from your profession just when you are barely making it sounds like a plan. :P

This things take time and you cannot speed them much further. You cannot make 9 women to produce 1 baby in 1 month!

Sounds like you have drink the pg's cool-aid. You turn 30 and your brain dries off. Hope you enjoy cleaning the toilet, old man!

What if you work much harder and don't live to be 40? Do you get to try again under your scheme?

If somebody works minimum wage, they can't save up enough by then. It is just basic math. Sure, some people can get rich off of stock options and so on, but that is not a universal principle. So yes, some people can retire by age 40 but it is an exception, not the rule. Really, to save social security we recently increased the retirement age from 65 to 67 and it will like increase again within the Gen X/Y working life time. I am 28 and do not expect 67 to still be the retirement age all those years down the road.

Yeaaaaahhh, why don't people work, like, triple the hours a week, and retire and 40, and spend all day rollin reefers and sunnin by the beach man! Old people aren't so smart as us, you know, plus, beach.

Also, like, if you and I look at like, the same color, and we both say "orange," how do we know that, like, it's not a totally different color EXPERIENCE we both have, but, like, we all learned in kindergarten to say "that's orange," even if like, maybe it looks totally purple to you!

We know we agree on, like, the labels, and stuff, but... oh man... you can never know what goes on in, like, another person's HEAD man!

Deep.

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