Posted on 04/23/2006 7:49:45 AM PDT by SmithL
One of my readers is an underemployed 59-year-old man from among us here in the South Suburbs. Call him Harry. He works in information technology. Slowly and wearily, he says: "Once you get past 50, I swear, it gets tough, it gets really tough."
For instance, Harry applied for a job with a city of Chicago department that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He got an offer for some contract work. There were no benefits, but it was a paying job.
A woman from the city called him one Monday morning and wanted to know if he could start at midnight. Harry said he'd like to give his current employer a week's notice. That wasn't good enough. The job was gone. The caller told him: "This is a brave new world. Learn to live with it."
(Excerpt) Read more at starnewspapers.com ...
I'm just finishing up a contract working at a government site for the DOD. I'd say that the average age of the government employees working there was about 50.
Easily affordable? Now that a year at a state college is approaching $20,000? Years ago I put myself through college with a part-time job and a partial scholarship. Those days no longer exist. Student loans? Yeah, you can find young adults who are csrrying $50,000 student loans. How long ago did you go to college?
In retrospect, yes. But our economy depends on the purchases of those who failed to plan their careers effectively.
If all this country can say to laid-off workers is "too bad you can't find a job, you should have planned better," I guarantee you there will be a revolt as disgruntled, out-of-work have-nots overthrow their corporate overlords.
It won't be pretty, and it won't be good when it happens - but if corporate America and the Establishment don't wake up to the fact that it is unsustainable to pay executives ridiculous golden parachutes while expecting the worker bees to work for peanuts, then an economic revolution is inevitable.
America's working class puts up with a lot, what with unemployment, low wages, out-of-control health care costs, and the like. Eventually, the workers of the world will unite. It won't be pretty when they do. Unless Corporate America wakes up and rediscovers the concept of nobless oblige, then some sort of Communism will be inevitable.
Market capitalism isn't free. Corporate responsibility is the price for keeping communism at bay. Call it enlightened self-interest. If corporations keep screwing 59-year-old retirees, eventually the workers will say "Enough."
Having worked with military retirees, even those involved in the developement of new equipment, being ex military myself, and currently working directly with those sorts of military and military civilian employees, I can safely say that most of them do not in fact have such skills. Some develop them later, or on the side, but the plain fact is that government employees manage contractors, they rarely actually do such work. That's hardly y a recent thing either. My own military experience, doing exactly that kind of thing, is now 30+ years old. But as I say, I've also kept in touch with that world, both as a military reservist and as a defense industry engineer, so it's not like things could have changed for the better (they've actually changed for the worst) and I'd not been aware of it.
That's not to say there's not a place for such folks. They can make good managers, since that's what they've been doing all along, and they can also be "marketeers", in both the negative and positive aspects of that term. The positive aspects being they know the system, and the needs of the military, and are technically savvy enough to be able to translate the military "requirements" into something the engineers and software folks can actually work to.
I don't know what your smoking, but I'd like some. This isn't 1958 anymore. Talk about being out of touch with reality and the cost of modern living. I don't know any one that's 59 that most likely has children that are in college that "should have enough so that he could retire". Get a grip!
I've already retired once (in my 30's). My job ticked me off and I quit. Stock was high. I took the penalty and cashed out and my husband built our house. Nothing fancy but I'm not having to work two jobs to pay for it either. We also drive older cars. They are comfortable and paid for. Maintance required but it seems like the news ones always breaking down nowdays too. Insurance is also cheaper that way. I don't buy into the American dream by debt. Been there. Life is much better this way.
that's the very sort of thing I'm talking about.
The government is not too concerned about hiring old people since they can count on the taxpayers to foot the bill for their health insurance. Small businesses don't have that luxury. They will go out of their way to hire young people.
If you hire a 25 year old single person for a $40,000 a year job, the health insurance premiums for that job would be about $2400 per year. For a 59 year old married man, that same insurance premium would be closer to $10,000 a year.
Now if you have two remotely similarly qualified people applying for that job in your company, who are you going to hire?
Then retire and make room for Harry.
The only answer is: get yourself trained in another field,
improve your educational level.
That's true, but knowing the media, they would have had that in the story, if that were the case, just to make this guy's story that much more "heartbreaking".
LOL!!! You're right. My situation is obviously not real. We all must spend on the BIG house, new car, fancy boat, second home, rather than save. Here I was stupid enough to be smoking something that told me to plan for retirement!!! Darn evil weed!!!!
We have eight current IT openings he would be able to apply for just this week alone:
https://secure.azstatejobs.gov/pljb/azgovjobs/mainjb/applicant/index.jsp
If current plans hold, I'll still have two little girls in elementary school! Fortunately their grandmother (an IT type as it happens, who just got laid off due to a corporate merger), who the courts will not let care for them, is starting a college fund for them now. I'm their great uncle by marriage, and we are probably going to become their legal guardians and perhaps adopt them.
Wow! That's great! All the best.
and, this kind of thing coming from an AGING population where the "average" shift is rising.
Not everyone can plan and execute a perfect "30 year retirement plan." Merde se trouve.
I am 56 and worked for 20 years. I also had a nice "nest egg" put aside, which was used up to feed and educate 9 kids.
Now I am broke and I haven't been able to find another job since my last contract almost a year ago.
Oh, and my husband experienced a major medical catastrophe and now lives on disability.
So screw you and your superior attitude.
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