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Actually, People Can Start Work Later and Retire Younger
The New York Times reported on plans in France to raise the retirement age from its current 60 years. The article included a quote from France's recovery director, Patrick Devedjian: "We start working later and later, and we stop, or at least we used to stop until now, earlier and earlier, and we live longer and longer,” Mr. Devedjian said. “Such an economic model is impossible.”
In fact, this model is not impossible. If workers opt to take the benefits of higher productive growth in the form of leisure time, a continual increase in the length of retirement and shortening of normal work lives is entirely workable. Since there is a strong correlation between income and greenhouse gas emissions, this approach is extremely desirable from an environmental perspective.
--Dean Baker
COMMENTS (7)
Tell me the French take time off to sleep also. What a bunch of slackers!
Posted by: some guy in a cube | June 26, 2009 7:56 AM
The economic model which is impossible is the one that assumes continual population growth and continually increasing rates of exploitation of resources.
Posted by: skeptonomist | June 26, 2009 8:34 AM
Regarding the French, they take all that free time to sleep and are actually significantly healthier than we are, too. They're despicable!
Posted by: Maryellen | June 26, 2009 10:39 AM
i have a bad feeling productive growth in coming decades will be very busy with ecological remediation and preventing total breakdown. all the estimates of future costs i've seen so far fall into five categories:
1. "BAU is fine" (aka skunk's law) (apologies to family mephitidae)
2. "the end is nigh" (aka misanthropy)
3. "inadequate disaster prevention pays for itself" (aka "another form of evidence for misanthropists")
4. "full-steam disaster prevention has the lowest costs" (aka "banging your head against the wall makes you think extractive economics is a rational process")
5. "we need a spiritual quest to accomplish this"
case 5 is interesting not because it's slightly goofy but because it involves redefinition of "leisure time." generally when people model the economics of appropriate 10x cuts in the ecological costs of comfortable living, they put a note in the margin about "increased labor intensity" or they don't talk much in public or they're someone like james howard kunstler who writes ghost stories BOO!
seriously what does "leisure time" mean in age of cleaning up and fixing nearly everything by a factor of ten or more? i don't think you could call it "casual" anymore, no.
we need to know, to be able to finance it all, and i don't think we know.
Posted by: hapa | June 26, 2009 11:14 AM
however i highly highly recommend bruce sterling's the caryatids if you're stuck thinking of the future as "like the recent past but faster."
Posted by: hapa | June 26, 2009 11:21 AM
The only thing most French respect is a Prussian occupation. They're kinda overdue for one. When it comes to stopping an invading horde, the French take "get to work late" and "retire early" seriously!
Posted by: anomalous | June 26, 2009 2:21 PM
i like
Posted by: Tiffany Bracelets | September 22, 2009 7:55 AM