Someone gets it

I found this link whilst googling the problem of older workers. I suppose it figures that one has to go as far as Australia to find some common sense about the growing problem. Note that this dates from August 2008, before the global recession had deepened. Above all note that here is a job pundit, Malcolm King, who isn't afraid to say what I've been waiting to hear:

Ageist attitudes to employment are not new but I suggest that as the boomer cohort ages, ageist attitudes are becoming more entrenched - and I don’t know why.

Do note the comments. First, most are far more intelligent than one can expect to find on a similar topic posted in the USA. Second, they outline both ends of the problem. Third, they indicate the growth of a global bias that bodes very ill.

If age bigotry is not contained, and soon, workers' careers will run from ages 25 to 40. Typical entry-level employees will be shut out of meaningful work until they acquire, somehow, "experience." At the other end, anyone who has amassed more than 15 years of experience will be shut out of meaningful work.

Workers will either have to figure out what they're going to live on between the date that their profession shuts them out and the date their retirement income begins, or that retirement income will need drastic change. Are age bigots actually prepared to (a wild estimate) double the compensation of skilled workers or professionals to enable them to amass a retirement fund in 15 years? Are they willing to increase government retirement contributions at the same time and accept the beginning of entitlements at 40? Are they OK with the idea that the few who are allowed to work at a skilled or professional level for 15 years will have to pay for the entitlements of the many who are not? Pay them for half of the lengthening human lifespan?

Or will these people finally realise their "19th century" attitudes (thanks for that, Malcolm) are altogether unsuited to the 21st century? Shutting down the working and purchasing potential of half the population is a recipe for permanent economic crisis. And why does it happen? Either because the people making these decisions cannot rid themselves of age perceptions that are more than a century old...or because they can't face their own fears of mortality. That fear makes the people in the middle of the working demographic fear equally those older, and those younger, than they. I believe fear motivates this two-front war they wage.

In a LinkedIn thread on this subject, I commented that legislation and torts won't entirely cure age bigotry. So far, all they have done is motivate concealment. The model for such business is the cultural shift away from smoking. When this behaviour becomes shameful, or at least uncool, it will fade away.

Whether that happens in time to help those of us between 40 and 65 is another matter.