Old, Smart, Productive Old. Smart. Term Paper

Another possibility is to allow companies to convert traditional defined-benefit pensions, which encourage retirement as early as age 55, to cash-balance plans, which have no built-in incentives to retire. Perhaps the most controversial idea is to break the typical link between pay and seniority. As more people work into their late 60s and 70s, pay should be adjusted to match how much people work and what they accomplish on the job.

Basing pay on performance is a controversial idea because what the criterions of performance for most hi-level professional jobs that older workers are performing are ambiguous at best. How does one determine success at a professional job? Unlike a manual job, where productivity can be measured in, for example, widgets per hour, professional job performance involve intangible factors such as interpersonal relations and communication skills. In many cases, performance may be defined solely in terms of what your boss thinks of your work performance.This raises issues of fairness and equity. Seniority provides an objective standard.

Another issue is raising the retirement age to 70. There are many people who may not want to work and/or are physically unable to work on a fulltime basis until 70. Raising the retirement age does not take into account these people. What is definitely needed is liberalization of the disability standards so that people who are unable to work can start collecting their Social Security benefits at an earlier age.

The article did not mention another issue, that of part-time work while on Social Security. At the present, there are work disincentives for Social Security recipients under 65. For example, people collecting disability retirement can not earn over $830/month or their Social Security gets cut off. It is important to realize that there are over 35 million collecting disability benefits, many of whom are over 50. Liberalizing the work requirements and raising.....