- does society still have an obligation, or an aspiration for that matter, to protect every memeber and give us all somethinig more than we get ourselves? Are we to busy looking out for number one (and our closest family or friends) to bother with the big picture?
Is it right when people retire at 67 (or 62, or 60 based on special deals made during the good years)? Should they be allowed to or rather forced to? Is it so wrong to want to work - when the slogan "it's not a job - it's a lifestyle" still rings in our ears? Certainly a large number of those on the sidelines of retirement would like to contribute, to solve problems and "add value"... but they can't - not if the companies keep focusing on cutting direct measurable costs, and if the government thinks that old people should sit somewhere and do handiicraft (maybe drinking a glass of red wine - if it is Saturday, that is).
There has been talk of "brain drain" [ref wired, guradian ...?] from low-cost countries, with for example nurses moving from Sweden to Norway to make more, or educated people in general fleeing Iran. But should we launch the term "age drain" or "knowledge loss" to describe the daily reduction of overall competence? When someone retires today at age 67, they probably started working around 1960 - and have been doing their job longer than the "new guy" has been alive... how does this affect us? The worst challenge is probably coming up in the universities. In some areas 75-100 % of the professors are over 55 - that means that in 10 years or less, the majority of established knowledge and experience will drift off, to sit in the sun in Spain and drink cheap red wine. So what to do?
