Should older workers retire instead of working to support their adult children? (contractor, employment)

[DauntlessDan]

No. Older adults should boot their adult children out and force them to get their own job and place to live. Older adults should retire when they want to regardless of who they have living in their house. Two different issues here. It is not just working to support adult children these days. It is working to support yourself. Look at those poor city workers in Detroit that just had their pensions reduced by 85%. I bet they are not looking forward to going back to work but I bet some have to.

[cupid dave]

Originally Posted by curly_Q

Before the recession of 2008, there were probably baby boomers planning on retiring who are now still working.

Is it possible they are still working because they are financially supporting their adult children? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to retire, so their adult children could eventually get work experience and start supporting themselves?

Maybe instead of paying for the children's college, they save first for their own retirement.

Younger people can earn less and save less, and still have more at retirement age.

LOL

No way.

The women in the Unskilled Labor Pool need go back to raising response children and give back the job they took from some guy in the 1965 Sexual Revolution.

Full employment in 1965 was equivalent to the number of people working today, for instance, when adjusted for population increases.
With the down turn in the economy, it only seems that Unemployment rose.

All that happened from 1965 forward was that women doubled the Labor Pool for employers who lowered the wages by half, as the Law of Supply and Demand dictated.
Today, a man who once was paid enough to support a family now in single while he works beside a woman at McDonalds for half what one good efficient employee would have to be paid.

[Bluesmama]

Originally Posted by curly_Q

Before the recession of 2008, there were probably baby boomers planning on retiring who are now still working.

Is it possible they are still working because they are financially supporting their adult children? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to retire, so their adult children could eventually get work experience and start supporting themselves?

Maybe instead of paying for the children's college, they save first for their own retirement.

Younger people can earn less and save less, and still have more at retirement age.

I've known more people in this situation than I should. And in most cases, they've enabled their unmotivated adult children. Right now one person I know lets her useless son ~ whom I don't think ever held a job ~ live in her house because she doesn't want him in the streets (and, yes, I think it's High Time she throws him into the streets, if that's what it takes). We are required to toilet train them only once.

However, I don't believe that's the reason why they work. Anybody in my age group is working because they need the benefits ~ it's the only reason I'M still working.

[berdee]

Originally Posted by cupid dave

LOL

No way.

The women in the Unskilled Labor Pool need go back to raising response children and give back the job they took from some guy in the 1965 Sexual Revolution.

Full employment in 1965 was equivalent to the number of people working today, for instance, when adjusted for population increases.
With the down turn in the economy, it only seems that Unemployment rose.

All that happened from 1965 forward was that women doubled the Labor Pool for employers who lowered the wages by half, as the Law of Supply and Demand dictated.
Today, a man who once was paid enough to support a family now in single while he works beside a woman at McDonalds for half what one good efficient employee would have to be paid.

Chauvinist Masculi [aka - Chauvinist Porci Masculi]
Eponym: Nicolas Chauvin of Rochefort, a laughingstock in Napoleon’s army. - Chauvinist
Male Chauvinist - first coined by the American actor and playwright Clifford Odets (1903-63), in his 1935 play Till the Day I Die.

Archives of General Psychiatry:

[Male] Chauvinism was found to represent an attempt to ward off anxiety and shame arising from one or more of four prime sources: unresolved infantile strivings and regressive wishes, hostile envy of women, oedipal anxiety, and power and dependency conflicts related to masculine self-esteem.

cupid dave:

Full employment in 1965 was equivalent to the number of people working today, for instance, when adjusted for population increases.
With the down turn in the economy, it only seems that Unemployment rose.

All that happened from 1965 forward was that women doubled the Labor Pool for employers who lowered the wages by half

McKinsey & Company, Inc. - An adviser to businesses, governments, and institutions around the world. One of the most prestigious management consulting firms in the world.:

How women contribute to the economy
Between 1970 and 2009, women went from holding 37% of all jobs to nearly 48%. That’s almost 38 million more women. Without them, our economy would be 25% smaller today—an amount equal to the combined GDP of Illinois, California and New York.
GDP growth is driven by two factors—an expanding workforce and rising productivity. Back in the 1970s when women and a huge cohort of baby boomer men were entering the workforce, 65% of GDP growth arose from workforce expansion. Today, nearly 80% of growth is related to productivity increases, according to the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI).
To sustain the historic rate of GDP growth of approximately 3% and maintain the United States’ leadership in the global economy, MGI reports that the nation will need a combination of some workforce expansion and a burst of productivity—driven by innovation and operational improvements. Women are critical to both forms of growth

Harvard Business Review (2012):

More Women in the Workforce Could Raise GDP by 5%

cupid dave:

The women in the Unskilled Labor Pool need go back to raising response [sic] children and give back the job they took from some guy in the 1965 Sexual Revolution.

According to you, women should be kept barefoot and pregnant, eh?

[gypsydoc]

Social security started in 1935. The average life expectancy was in the mid 50's, but you couldn't start drawing on it until age 65. Clever original plan. Most people worked until they died so retirement was a relatively new concept, beginning in Germany in 1890.

In Germany, they began a pension program to pay older citizens not to work so that the young ones could enter the work force and support their families.

Then, in the UK, a similar program began and a portion of that plan was used as a model here in the States.

If older workers are working to help support their adult children, then the adult children should be taking over the home making duties... clean the house, shop, laundry, lawn care, cook meals; anything they can do to help create a smoother running economic unit and lessen the burden their parents are carrying on their behalf.

I have issues with adult children expecting to be cared for and not contributing at least "sweat equity" to help their parents. The attitude of entitlement is a cancer that has very rotten roots.

Today, the SS system bears little resemblance to the original program. It was never designed to support generations of people for 20 or 30 years as is happening today. The program is paying out more than it is taking in and the very real question is, "how long can this go on?"

In the meantime, I never thought it would last this long, but to be honest, I am grateful that I have benefits today.

[brad4143]

That's all young people do now is blame everyone else, when they need to look at themselves and make improvements. You control your own life, no one else can be blamed for the poor decisions you make. I was willing to take any job when I was young, from stacking crates full of tomatoes everyday for 12 hrs a day 7 days a week to hard warehouse work, then after college starting out at the bottom of a company and slowly working my way up and still at 57 routinely working 8 straight 12hr shifts before time off and never complaining. Give me a break. Young people need to quit blaming others and work hard and quit complaining. You need to pay the dues buddy

[sholomar]

I don't have kids, but if I do I intend to teach personal responsibility to them like my father taught it to me. I'm not rich, but at age 32 I have my own net worth and don't need to rely on my father for anything... but there's so many 'problem children' that I know keep getting bailed out by their parents when they make mistakes... to the tune of thousands of dollars. I guess some people are just really nice, like the guy I work with who bails out his daughter all the time. I'd like to think I'm loving but I believe in learning life lessons... fall down, pull yourself back up. People who receive handouts end up becoming dependent on them.. I've never seen a case where this is NOT so.

On the other hand, all the good paying manufacturing work the boomers had are gone, and I don't believe that people should have to work 2 full time jobs to get by.. people deserve time off... so no I'm not a workoholic.... I'd rather live cheap myself and have more time to spend with family... but a person should have a job to get themselves by... move if you have too... find ways to live cheap... hide any assets you do have if you do not have really good health insurance.. until we get reasonable rates and reasonable out of pocket caps anyone could be stuck paying over $10k just to have something fixed... health care in the US is pretty broken right now so beware of that... turns a middle class person into a slave paying 25% of their annual income just for health care....

[ncole1]

Originally Posted by curly_Q

Before the recession of 2008, there were probably baby boomers planning on retiring who are now still working.

Is it possible they are still working because they are financially supporting their adult children? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to retire, so their adult children could eventually get work experience and start supporting themselves?

Maybe instead of paying for the children's college, they save first for their own retirement.

Younger people can earn less and save less, and still have more at retirement age.

Not as long as life expectancy is going up - having 50% of the population do 100% of the production is very difficult unless people are willing to take a cut on their standard of living. Savings rates and growth rates aside, the producers must consume only half of the real goods and services they produce, on average, if people are non-producers for their first 20 years, producers for their next 42 years (24 months of which was spent unemployed or on maternity/paternity leave), and then non-producers for another 18 years!

Two consumers to the one producer = each producer produces twice what each consumer (including producers) consumes!

[texdav]

Older workers are free to do as they wish or situation demands.

[ohio_peasant]

I work in an engineering office. Part of the work is engineering research, part is management of research done by subcontractors. And part is just general office-wide bureaucratic sycophancy. Many of my coworkers are older Boomers or Silent Generation. I find many cases where the fathers (my coworkers) are the first in their extended family to graduate from college. They are also the last. Their sons and daughters did not become engineers. Either they pursued a liberal-arts major and found themselves without gainful employment, or did not graduate, or never even began college, instead enrolling in some certification-class at a for-profit “college” – only to find themselves underemployed. There is no simple solution to the dilemma of Dad working longer to cover for Junior’s mistakes, or just kicking Junior out. Sometimes the consequences of ejecting Junior are family strife (with the extended family) and all sorts of conflicts that are simply not worth Dad’s dwindling energy.

The upshot is lots of older men hanging on to their jobs. They are at most marginally effective. In our system, there is a scheme for hiring “n” new people, in exchange for “m” retirees. “m” is larger than “n”, maybe by a factor of two (the ratio is not publicized), so yes, we are actively downsizing. But most definitely we can not hire a promising young candidate until and unless enough present employees retire.