In Denmark, you also have to have a medical exam to maintain your drivers license after you turn 70, but they have no problem with carpenters running around on roofs until they're 74.

Well you normally don't kill someone else if you fall off a roof.

Running a car at highway speeds into something or someone else has a much higher chance of injuring or killing multiple people besides the driver.

“Older drivers have 3 to 20 times higher risk of fatal crash than non-older drivers” [1].

We simply don’t have those data for roofers.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01674...

I think OP was saying that it's riskier for OTHERS in traffic - which should be the main thing with reissuing a drivers license.

Like motorcycles are orders of magnitude higher risk for (including fatal) accidents - but they aren't as dangerous for other traffic participants so they get licensed.

If motorcycles were killing orders of magnitude more pedestrians or other traffic participants than cars they would get banned immediately.

> OP was saying that it's riskier for OTHERS in traffic - which should be the main thing with reissuing a drivers license

My point is whether it’s others who are dying is irrelevant. We have evidence of increased mortality with age for driving. I’m not seeing similar evidence for roofing. If geriatric roofers were constantly falling to their deaths, we’d see a movement to regulate them, even if they’re falling on flowers and not people.

I think part of the reason that we don’t have those numbers is that there is in general not that many geriatric roofers, or geriatric craftsmen for that matter. Most physical crafts takes a toll on the body, and while it has gotten a lot better in recent decades with machines doing most of the heavy lifting, the people retiring now will still have decades of bad lifting and old injuries. I think only farmers have a higher incident rate than craftsmen.

Every single craftsman I know have abandoned their craft for something else because of body issues or injuries. Also, you’re nowhere as nimble at 50, 60 or 70 as you were when you were 20 or 30, so the risk of work related accidents increases, assuming you’re still doing the same tasks.

> part of the reason that we don’t have those numbers is that there is in general not that many geriatric roofers, or geriatric craftsmen for that matter

This is a good hypothesis. Whatever the reason, I see no evidence for old roofers causing death or injury to anyone, including themselves. There is zero hypocrisy in regulating old drivers while being laxer with old roofers.

Of course it’s relevant. If geriatric roofers want to risk their life that’s up to them. They don’t get to risk others lives though.

> If geriatric roofers want to risk their life that’s up to them. They don’t get to risk others lives though

Nice theory. Doesn’t work in practice. Most societies are not okay with people taking excessive risks, even if it only impacts them. It’s why we require seatbelts even for single-occupant vehicles.

That attitude is a very recent phenomenon and may not be as widely supported and obvious as you seem to believe.

I for one use seat belts, and I want them to be required to be manufactured in vehicles, but I believe it should be a personal choice whether or not you wear them.

Are you asserting that older roofers are in fact killing other people by falling on top of them?

If not, I think you may have missed the point that licensing is to protect others rather than the driver/roofer themselves.

So that's the plan ? Make sure enough people die before reaching retirement age ?

My point is, if you're unfit to drive a vehicle due to cognitive or physical decline, you're probably also unfit for most jobs involving those skills, and yet you have to soldier on for 4 more years.

What happens when they're putting a new roof on a building next to a crowded street, and the 73 year old carpenter drops a bunch of tiles to the ground 6 floors below ? or he falls and slips off, taking another colleague with him ? Or he simply operates heavy machinery somewhere and gets caught in it.

You can concoct these make believe hypotheticals, or you can look at countries where this is the reality (South Korea; high elderly poverty), and how there is no "elderly employee accident crisis". Whether it is right, moral, just etc. is the issue. I would just say to not wait until retirement to "live your life".

What does the unemployment statistics say about craftsmen in the age bracket 60-70 ? Or any other line of work ?

Many craftsmen in Denmark are working contracts where they get paid more the faster they finish the job, and nobody wants a 70 year old dragging down their hourly wage just because they can't keep up, so the 70 year old will just have to "keep up", either making mistakes along the way, or wearing out their already worn out bodies some more.

There are options for "early" retirement at 70, provided you've spent 46 years employed. That means you started working at 24 at the very latest, and was not unemployed for longer periods.

Saving up for your own retirement is also hard with low to medium income wages in a country where you pay 40-50% income tax, 25% sales tax and retirement funds are taxed at deposit (meaning capital gains will be lower).

    > South Korea; high elderly poverty

It is interesting that you selected South Korea as your example. There are as rich as Japan, but have much worse social benefits, including national pension. I don't understand why.

I think South Korea is just a horrible example for almost everything in general anyways. There are South Koreans still alive that remember when it was still 90% peasant farmers living a 15th century lifestyle, that basically did a single skip through industrialization, and it is now one of the most technologically advanced countries on Earth. And it is still plainly evident by all the fairly unique major social and cultural problems they face today.

There's a huge difference between endangering other people vs endangering only yourself.

The carpenter isn't endangering himself, he's being endangered by his employer (and the politicians who voted for that retirement age)

Yeah, it's not like operating heavy equipment at a construction site will ever endanger anyone.

Yes, doing so at a construction site it is considerably less dangerous to society in general than public roads. Not to mention the individual is more likely implied to be operating at some baseline of function (observed by foreman and others at the work site) which is not the case when a private individual is just driving on public roads.

You are straining credulity.

you've clearly never been fallen upon by a septuagenarian roofer

That makes perfect sense though?

That requirement was removed in 2017 by the right wing government at the time. It was a populist move to secure the elderly vote.

Part of the reason employees are reticent to hire someone past 50 is before they worry they’ll retire soon, even if they’re mentally and physically in good shape. So increasing the retirement age might actually improve the ability of folks in their 50s to find work.

Not saying this is a great trend, but it’s unavoidable due to the low fertility rate (already a problem everywhere in the developed world and soon to be a problem the world over, as by 2050–before I retire—the global average total fertility rate will have dropped below replacement.).

I don't buy this at all. I've hired many people in my career, and:

1. I've never had more than a max 2 year time horizon when thinking about a hire.

2. If anything, I've found younger people more likely to job hop than those 40+.

This might not be the case for your hiring principles, but this doesn't reflect the reality and statistics in my European country. People after 50 have a near zero chance of getting hired here as confirmed by the unemployment office.

I responded to a comment that said the reason getting hired over 50 is difficult is because employers are reluctant to hire someone who may retire soon. I objected to that rationale, which makes no sense IMO. I have no doubt that getting hired over 50 is more difficult than for younger people.

And somehow you think your perspective is the only one out in the job market and everything else doesn’t make any sense

I didn't see them say it's not harder getting hired over age 50, I think they're questioning that the reason is really job hopping.

Employers will never say what the real reason is because they don't want to get sued for age discrimination.

We’re on an anonymous forum. Many of us make hiring decisions, and are willing to be honest about it.

    > People after 50 have a near zero chance of getting hired here as confirmed by the unemployment office.

What are the causes for this in your country? I assume that you are an advanced nation with strong labour laws.

Yes that a big part of the reason, laws here make it harder to fire those over 50 versus those below 50 where it's basically at-will. So companies fire you before you get to 50. Same with pregnant women, they get firing protection so companies are less likely to hire you if you're pregnant or if you're at that age were women tend to get pregnant.

You can have regulations all you want, but private companies are still profit driven and will discriminate and take dehumanizing measures to satisfy that profit incentive. Otherwise they wouldn't have moved manufacturing to Asia if they cared about labor so much.

How many people over 50 have you hired?

We already have 15y to go here, at age 50. That’s WAY longer than the median occupancy.

Also, large companies go out of their way to offer early retirement packages to their workforce, often starting even with 55 year old employees. That does not fit the expectation of people working till they are 70. Politics and employer orgs need to talk about that.

Companies that have an average churn of more than 7%—which is most of them—have no place worrying about some 50-year-old retiring.

Not that that stops managers, of course...

That’s not a plausible theory to me. IME older people are just less likely to work hard. They bring a “rest n vest” mindset. If an older person rounds a 40hr week down to 35 hrs, and a younger person rounds up to 45 hours because they are passionate and ambitious, all else equal the younger get person is better ROI for the team. Obviously this is stereotyping and may not be accurate but that sentiment can explain many decisions.

depends on the type of work you’re doing. “Work smart not hard” can apply to many jobs. Other jobs not so much…

In addition - when i was a younger engineer i appreciated have a few older engineers around the office because they were always a wealth of knowledge.

> (...) the global average total fertility rate will have dropped below replacement.

My pet theory is that when the system becomes untenable, procreation slows down, which will in time trigger a kind of reset - not that it's going to be fun to live through or anything. Self-regulation.

Young people today job hop like there's no tomorrow.

Young people today can't get jobs, this take seems a couple years out of date

Companies today get rid of employees like there is no tomorrow.

What do you mean by "young"? I'm 51.

> they worry they’ll retire soon

Sorry but how is this different from hiring someone in their 20s and they are very likely to job hop to another company 1 / 2 years later ? I don't think anyone will believe this.

You won't work in your career field at that age unless you have profound skill and expertise. You will put cans on grocery store shelves.

Shorten lifespan.

Cut all things that promote or enable public health.

In neo-feudalism, only lords and perhaps some of their most favored serfs, deserve private for profit health care, and the barrier to entry is cost. Why be wealthy if you can’t buy things other people can’t?

There’s always a surplus of peasants in this model.

When people talk about raising the retirement age the assumption is that the people affected will all be unemployed, not that they'd still work in some capacity.