Monday 20 December 2021

Various retirement ages?

An interesting idea by somebody using the nick 'makem' appeared as a comment under an article about a proposal not to raise the state pension age as currently intended: "It should be worked out by job type. Somebody working in an office / shop indoor type job will live longer than somebody working on building site or other manual outdoor job. Also they reckon that working nightshift takes about 5 years off life expectancy."

It would certainly be fairer. On the other hand, I suspect it would be impracticable. For one thing, to make it really fair you would also have to differentiate between grafters and skivers, and how on earth would you achieve that? For another, it would probably lead to more everlasting haggling about which jobs deserve what pension age.

And then, you'd never know beforehand when will you become entitled. Because of course lots of people change the kind of job they do during their working lives, some of them quite frequently, and so their pension age would change all the time as well. Yes, these days it should be easy creating software for making swift adjustments. But would people like never knowing when they can retire until actually able to do so?



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