I still remember a fellow dorm hall resident at Virginia Tech who stated very clearly that he wanted to become a CEO at a major corporation.  He was already dressing the part.  At the job recruitement events it seemed like everyone wanted to work for somebody like “Big Blue.”  You would be set for life.  They even had a special career tracks for engineers who did not want to be in management.

Now I watch people in their 50′s and 60′s start their own companies because they got laid off and so many work places find reasons not hire older workers; but they do not “discriminate.”  Sadly, some of these people have as many as 40 or even 50 years of their life ahead of them.  Under our current typical retirement strategies, there are not enough of us in the succeeding generations to create an economy that will support these guys from now until their death under our the economic model we have used for the past 50 years.  Academically speaking, I guess these laid off workers could “go out to pasture” as a greeters at Walmart; but if we keep not hiring laid off older workers, the competition for greeters is going to get tough.

Considering that something like 90% of all small businesses fail in a few short years, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur for a whole long laundry list of ideas.  Based on these types of statistics we need to find real jobs for these folks.

Which makes me wonder–

Is there anyway in which we could gracefully allow people to keep their dignity and sense of well being by continueing to work at jobs they enjoy or need.  The business they work for would still need to make money with the employee, so there would have to be some sort of decrease in pay.

Nevertheless, could someone who is 65 in a physically demanding job in construction be considered full-time if they only worked 25 hours a week. Could a 70 year old grandmother and 30 year old mother of small children team teach a 5th grade class so that they both work half time but receive at least some benefits?  Instead of retiring, could the Cheif Financial Officer of a company become an auditor of the work of the next CFO in the company?

Can we change our current way of thinking?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.