This was a feature of many union workforce, defined benefit pension plans back in the day. I know much more about Canada than the US, but I used to do lots of work on union DB pension plans for, say, mining companies in Ontario where if you worked in the mine you were in Plan A, unreduced pension at age 60 or age 55 with 30 years of service, if you were in management you were in Plan B, unreduced pension at age 65.
100% the reaction of workers in the US (and Canada, frankly) should be âIâll work past 65 if you actually tax the billionaires and put the ones that evade taxes in prisonâ. Social security retirement programs are an actual formal âsocial contractâ and the idea is supposed to be to protect the interests of the oldest and most vulnerable in society. Itâs a joke to ask older Americans to stretch out their retirement dollars a little further because God forbid we fucking tax a billionaire. SOCIALIST ACTUARIES OF THE WORLD UNITE!
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Of course, as an IT guy who has a job thatâs mostly non-physical but also has periods of insane stress, Iâd be pretty pissed if the government told me âyou just sit on your ass all day, so you donât get even your minimum SS payout until 70â or whatever. I feel like Iâd be the prototypical guy that drops dead of a stroke at 69 1/2 as a result, which of course is perfect for the system.
FWIW socialist paradise Norway is aiming for a 70 year retirement age, gradually phased in over time. Also with a lower limit that reduces payout, now at 62, which also will increase to 67.
Broad agreement among political parties and unions, though with some disagreements, particularly.when it comes to people with tough physical jerbs.
As someone approaching 60, I can say that most people working in their 60s are like 32 year old NFL running backs. Sure there are exceptions, but your general office drone is retired in place.
The thought of having to work until 58.5 to avoid a pension penalty makes me want to inject myself with radioactive material in order to transform into some hulk-like savage and start tearing shit up. 70? hyachachahcahchacha.
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Hm maybe differences between countries? donât find this to be the case in my enviroment (IT/engineering culture, big company), nor is that my general impression of the work force. Also feel fine personally about working until 70 
Huge caveats that this isnât based on research ofc.
Serious question though, what kind of hours are you putting in and how much time off do you get every year in that socialist paradise of yours? I think that can have a pretty serious effect on oneâs willingness to keep working, if you feel like you have an actual life otherwise.
That would go under âdifferences between countriesâ imo :)
Like many N-W Euro countries we have 5 weeks+9 days paid vacation, the average work week is 37.5 hours. Overtime is definitely a thing, but nothing like in the US is my impression.
For sure.
Edit: on the flip side, weâre having a huge discussion on how we can fund our socialist paradise healthcare system given the explosion in olds now and even worse in the future, so itâs not like everythingâs great here either (remarkably enough).
Large corporationsâI think the people that were stars Are still stars, they just donât pull a hard 40+ Hours (great USALol)
This right here would absolutely floor most american workers. That is so much more time off than we are conditioned to accept as normal.
roughly 2.5 times average
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And that average is including a fuckton of people who get zero.
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And, do you actually get to legitimately take that time away from your work and disconnect? It is common among my peers that a day off means youâre only monitoring email/responding to stuff here and there throughout the day/evening, unless âsomething comes upâ and out comes the laptop.
When I take time off Iâm basically out. I might respond to a quick text question or something like that but Iâm not monitoring emails and responding to stuff.
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Last summer, six days after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Tampa prosecutor Andrew Warren, one of the governorâs top aides drafted a public records request seeking copies of emails from Warrenâs time as state attorney for the 13th Circuit.
DeSantis Communications Director Taryn Fenske sent the proposed request to a writer at a newly launched, conservative news website â who then submitted it to the State Attorneyâs Office in his own name.
It was, records show, just the beginning of a collaboration between the DeSantis administration and âThe Florida Standard,â which would go on to publish a story alleging that Warren may have misused taxpayer resources â a story that DeSantis staffers then promoted to others as if it were an independent piece of journalism.
The episode is a case study in how DeSantis, who is widely expected to run for president, has cultivated a network of sympathetic conservative news organizations that he and his strategists use to promote the governor â and attack his opponents.
And DeSantis is building this cheerleading machine even as he uses his powers as governor to weaken legitimate journalism.
Weâre basically reverting back to the time where newspapers werenât any much more than partisan rags and itâs being weaponized by the right
Heading towards an Hungry Orban model where a political party gets direct subsidies to push out their agenda throughout society, Almost all the conservative states are doing things like this though, attaching a conservative policy machine to the university so that it gets the imprimatur of impartiality and prestige from the flagship while doing nothing but propaganda.
âWe have to get out of this idea that somehow a public university system is a totally independent entity that practices academic freedomâa total fraud, thatâs just a false statement, fundamentally falseâand that you canât touch it or else youâre impinging on the rights of the gender studies department to follow their dreams,â he said. Instead, conservatives must have the guts to say, ââWhat the public giveth, the public can taketh away.â And so we get in there, we defund things we donât like, we fund things we do like.â
In terms of the former, he elaborated, states should defund diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and find creative ways to undermine university departments perceived as too liberal, like changing state teacher accreditation laws as a means of rendering teachers colleges irrelevant. Both suggestions have become common conservative talking points over the last year. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reported this week, South Carolina legislators have requested information from its stateâs 33 public colleges and universities regarding training around race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, following similar moves in Florida and Oklahoma.
In terms of what the right does like, Rufo advised state legislators to fund the creation of new, independently-governed âconservative centersâ within flagship public universities to attract conservative professors, create new academic tracks, and serve as a âseparate patronage systemâ for the right.
âSome people donât like thinking about it that way,â Rufo said. âBut guess what? The public universities, the DEI departments, the public school bureaucracies are, at the end of the day, patronage systems for left-wing activists. And as long as thereâs going to be a patronage system, wouldnât it be good to have some people who are representing the public within them?â
In many ways, thatâs an old idea. Big-money donors on the right like the Olin and Koch foundations have been establishing âbeachheadâ academic centers in universities across the country since the 1970s, as a means of shoring up academic arguments for right-wing policies, creating a pipeline of conservative talent, and endowing professorships for right-wing scholarsâsome of whom, more moderate academics suggest, are unemployable on their own merits. (Of possible note here: Corcoranâs appointment to New College follows his failed bid to become Florida State Universityâs president in 2021, when he was passed over, apparently, in part for lack of qualifications.)
But these days, the model has been adapted, so that funds for such programs and institutes are increasingly coming from state legislatures directly, as numerous red states have passed bills establishing new âclassicalâ and âcivicsâ institutes with barely-disguised agendas. In Arizona, the legislature effectively replaced private donations from the Koch foundations with taxpayer funds in order to create a new School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State, to address a claimed lack of ideological diversity. In Texas, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has sought to establish a free-market think tank at University of Texas Austin, partly as a response to critical race theory. In Tennessee, Governor Lee paired his proposal to create dozens of Hillsdale charters with a call to build a $6 million, Hillsdale-inspired civics institute at University of Tennessee Knoxville to combat âanti-American thought.â
The US-based company i work for was recently acquired and the biggest outcry was over vacation policy. We had (and still do) an âopenâ policy most people love ⌠tje new company said they were stopping that and replacing the open system with PTO tracking and minimum amounts of time off, which would have resulted in many/most(?) people taking more time off.
For me it would have been amazing-- basically doubling the time I took off last year.
People pitched a fit and the UK based company relented and now we have our open vacation policy back. Yay freedom.
Anyway today is my 7th day of vacation this year and Iâve already got 2 more weeks on tje books so fuck em Iâm taking that much anyway.
Last week they were talking layoff potential anyway so may as well. âŚ
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