Don’t Retire Early! says government
An attack on those who leave the workforce:
[Early retirement can] have a major impact on people’s mental health, leading to “boredom, loneliness and poverty” and create a huge dent in the British economy.
The findings are part of the research behind a new “action plan” to get older people back into work, launched by pensions minister Steve Webb. The report, Fuller Working Lives, concluded that the British economy missed out on £18bn last year because people left the workforce early.
The report focuses on those who have been forced to leave the workforce, largely through redundancy or ill health, rather than those who have chosen to retire in their 50s because they can afford to do so.
As if people aren’t knackered enough as it is, and as if the slave mentality weren’t already drummed into us almost from birth, but now the sick, the elderly, the redundant (lovely term, that, by the way), and those already physically damaged by work are being hassled into returning to work.
Again, the obsession with looking after the economy (ooh, the economy, everyone should roll up their sleeves to help the poor old ailing economy, will no one spare a thought for how the economy must be feeling?) leads to the reluctant enslavement of people who should be living their lives, should always have been living their lives, and have already given away the best years of their lives.
There are ways to address “boredom, loneliness and poverty“. Working in some demeaning job at the age of 50 is not one of them.
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About Robert Wringham
Robert Wringham is the editor of New Escapologist. He also writes books and articles. Read more at wringham.co.uk
I wonder what David Gross’ angle is on this one. I think early retirement is bad news for a government (whether it be the British goverment or some other government) because it means less tax revenue, and less tax revenue means less energy for the government to live on.
On a side note, I’m sorry I haven’t replied to your posts in a while. My wife and I are about to quit our jobs and we’ve been caught in a final quagmire. Many of your recent posts speak to us, namely the one titled “Should I Quit?”
I think a lot of people stay in a job they hate because it gives them a false sense of security. They’d rather stay put than rock the boat.
We obviously can only have economic value. That’s why stay-at-home mothers, the mentally and physically knackered, the “scroungers” and the lay-abouts are scorned and status-less – all have less with which to feed the beast.
Having been “retired” from the conventional workplace for nearly 8 years now, I assure all those considering the jump that I am neither bored, lonely nor wallowing in squalid poverty. In fact I look back and wonder how on earth I afforded (financially, physically and mentally) to maintain a job for so long. It was a crazy, all-consuming, fifty-pound-note-burning luxury that I have little to show for now.