Best of the Bunch?

Do older people offer essential experience? Should they be forced to retire to make way for younger workers?

In this time of economic meltdown, these are valuable questions that need careful consideration.

Raising the retirement age further has not been the focus of the lively debates on future budget cuts.

But last week, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) published a report suggesting that the UK do just that.

The institute’s economists think that debt will rise to nearly 100% of GDP by 2015, not 78% as the Treasury forecast in the budget. It will fall by about 90% by 2023.

Most of us agree that we need to get debt back below Gordon Brown’s former cap of 40% of GDP. But how to do that?

NIESR have proposed 3 solutions. They are fairly extreme measures and I think, if the government adopt them, they will be in a watered down form.

But they are practical solutions to our debt problems:

We could cut all public spending by 10% over the next decade.
We could raise taxes by the equivalent of an extra 15p on the basic rate of income tax over the same period.
We could raise the retirement age by five years by 2023.

I think that, out of these rather sobering options, the last looks the best of the bunch. This will cause income tax receipts to rise whilst spending on pensions will fall.

With our life expectancy increasing, we should value the experience that this valuable workforce have to offer. Elderly people really do have a lot to contribute.

This is in line with the EU drive aimed at ending ageism in employment. When similar ideas were floated a few years ago, the charity Age Concern felt that raising the retirement age was a positive first step in tackling discrimination of the elderly in the workplace.

Perhaps it is time to acknowledge the value of our seniors: quite possibly the best of the bunch!

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