Koreans Finding It Harder to Retire
The AFP has an article about how difficult the retirement years can be for the elderly in Korea:
Out of work and out of pocket, South Korean retirees are struggling to force their way back into an unwelcoming job market in an effort to supplement meagre or non-existent pensions.
But President Park Geun-Hye’s vision of a new “creative economy” seems to have little space for a generation that grew up with shipyards and steel mills rather than smartphones and start-ups.
Kim Min-Su, 69, receives a monthly pension of 590,000 ($562)– the sole source of income for him and his wife who live in a mini-apartment in Seoul.
“I wasn’t able to put much aside when I was working because nearly all of it went on raising and schooling my four kids,” Kim said after a morning spent scanning job vacancy notices at a Career Transition Centre for the elderly. (AFP)
You can read much more at the link, but something the government is trying to do is have companies pay workers less as they become older to keep them working. It seems like this will cause the unemployment of young college graduates to only become worse in Korea.
This is a sad story for the generation that built today’s modern and successful Korea through truly hard labor.
A good solution is to rebuild segments of Korea’s manufacturing economy using older people as competitively-priced labor for necessary but non-demanding tasks… though many of those tasks can currently be done by robots cheaper and better.
This should be a wake-up call to the younger generation of workers… including those here who have no real skills… or have stagnated in an easy job and have not kept their skill relevant.
…looking at you, English teachers… contractors who lucked into their current job but may be downsized in the future… GIs who don’t have skills that translate to the civilian world but don’t intend to retire from the military… and those of you who aren’t pushing your kids to get useful skills, either by accepting their slacker attitudes or sending them off to university to major in something useless (so they can become one of the 36% of 18-31 year-olds still living with mommy and daddy).
With the globalization of labor, there is a glut of unskilled workers who will work more cheaply than you could ever bring yourself to do… and there is increasingly a pool of skilled laborers from from developing countries such as India and China who will also work more cheaply that you would. There is less and less of a place for an overpaid American who expects a good job as they rush to save for retirement… even in America.
Further, EVERYTHING is being automated… even things nobody could guess would be automated. There is even an amazing robot being tested now that looks at a tomato plant, inspects the tomato for imperfections, and picks it gently without damaging the tomato or plant. It can be made with off-the-shelf components, yesterday’s computer power, and is cheaper to manufacture than one season of a Mexican worker’s pay. Think about that.
In fact look at this picture and consider what it means.
http://cdn.wonderfulengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Tiger-Stone-Paving-Machine-6-798×350.jpg
The problem in Korea with there being no place in the job market for older Koreans will be worse in the States as cheap immigrants and cheaper robots take jobs older Americans have traditionally taken.
Plan accordingly.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that most would agree that if I had a job that earned 60k/year and I spent 55k of it every year that I was living beyond my means. Now I’m out of the work force with little left to actually live on none-the-less sustain my quality of life.
Does it matter if the 55k I spent was on material possesions or educating my children?
-_-
In ‘Merica we call them thar folks TAKERS!
Smokes, in this case, it is a matter of old-timey values where you put much of your resources into making all of your children successful…
…so that when you retired, you had a place to live, food on the table, and money in your pocket.
Like many old-timey things westerners gaspingly point out in Korea, this was the standard in America just a couple generations ago… but we have forgotten that.
That family model was replaced with company pensions, Social Security, and various forms of welfare and other government programs… along with smaller families and a growing culture of parents being responsible for themselves.
It can be debated if the conservative family-takes-care-of-its-own/let-the-market-resolve-it policy or the liberal government-must-look-after-everyone policy is best… though it is likely somewhere in between.
Korea made a very rapid switch from big families taking care of each other to small families taking care of themselves… and old people and government policy have not yet caught up to that reality.
Probably in all cases, if you are spending your 55K on hookers and blow, you are living beyond your means. If you spend it educating your children so they can make 155K/year than it may or may not be a good investment depending on your relationship with your children and your shared expectations of how to care for old mom and dad.
f you spend it educating your children so they can make 155K/year than it may or may not be a good investment
CH: But then only the children get hookers and blow.
“If you spend it educating your children so they can make 155K/year”
And there’s the fault in logic, just because you dump a gob into someone’s education doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to make a ton of if any money. They could all be a bunch of Van Wilders.
Investing in your children’s education is a human form of investing stocks.
And btw Leon in CH’es family it doesn’t matter where the money goes, CH always gets the hookers and blow in the end, get it? In the end?. 😉
“And there’s the fault in logic, just because you dump a gob into someone’s education doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to make a ton of if any money.”
Agreed… but this presumes you guide your children away from majoring in Comparative Medieval Lesbian Poetry Studies and toward something a little more solid.
“Investing in your children’s education is a human form of investing stocks.”
Perhaps… but if you raise your children well, you are buying Apple in 1998… otherwise, you are buying SmokesTrannyLovin’… which never seems to make any money… though it does move a lot of trannys. Hmmm… sounds like there might be some embezzlement by the CEO.
So then why is Korea importing hundreds of thousands of foreign workers every year?
Crazy multiculturalists don’t think about their own unemployed. These old people who worked in shipyards and steelmills can be given their jobs back, by letting them work less, and hiring more of them. At the VERY LEAST, all those foreign workers should be forced to pay into the special pension fund for the Korean elderly, as a priviledge of working in South Korea, which then could be used to help the Korean elderly. If they collect that fund, it would be huge source of revenue for Korean elderly.
Many of the foreign workers are doing heavy labor that elderly Koreans cannot do… and doing it in areas far from where the elderly Koreans live to be close to their family and friends… so that makes some sense.
On the other hand, a country should look out for its citizens… and the globalization of labor, while helping poor countries, is injuring the middle class and poor of developed countries at the same rate.
In the States, there are lots of people getting some kind of welfare… yet Obama wants to give “amnesty” and bring in millions of unskilled workers “to do the jobs Americans won’t do”…
…which I presume means vote Democrat.
Of course Big Business likes cheap labor, too… so the Republicans speak of “immigration reform”… which seems to be the same turd with a thicker coat of varnish.
What America needs is not “amnesty” or “reform”… but enforcement.
Then Americans need to be weaned from welfare and put to work with a sense of ownership in America… picking up trash along highways, cutting grass in parks, painting over graffiti, rebuilding America’s infrastructure… earning their government check… while the government starts disassembling all the barriers to free enterprise that keep many people reliant on government or corporate money.
Please, Korea, learn from America’s past and current mistakes.
Holy kalbi.. I actually agree with Tom on something. Help yourself before you go around trying to help others (or show others you belong at the adult table).
Anyone notice who has been picking up the recycle stuff and selling it for around $20 a day after working all day to collect it and bring it to recycle center?