Outside In | Joe Biden, 80, will run for re-election. Why are other seniors being put out to pasture?
- A person who retires in Hong Kong at 65 can expect to live about 20 more years. Why should this time be spent unproductively?
- Companies, government policymakers and educators must plan for the reality that people are going to be living and working much longer
The connection? One of my longest-standing hobbyhorses: age, ageism and the urgent need for a fundamental rethink of what the world means by “retirement”.
While there has been some controversy over the fitness of either Trump or Biden to lead the world’s most powerful economy into their 80s, it seems American voters – Republican and Democrat alike – are to this day very comfortable with being governed by people who in most countries and most professions would have long been forced into obscurity and inconsequence.
US senators Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein will be 90 this year. Both Democrat congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell are in their 80s. About 25 per cent of US Congress members are 70 or older. Hogan Gidley at the America First Policy Institute observes: “You need the wisdom of someone who’s been around the block several times.”
Or as Pope Francis, now aged 86, has argued, he “governs the church with the head, not with the legs”.