Opponents of raising the retirement age use bogus arguments such as the labor market. The Federal Council also went along with such nonsense. Now a study ordered by the federal government says what many do not want to hear.
If older colleagues stay longer in the company, that does not mean that there are generally fewer jobs.
When the AHV was introduced in 1948, 65-year-olds lived an average of just under 14 years. Today it is more than 23 years. Not only are people getting older, they are also staying healthier for longer. It would therefore be logical to adjust the normal retirement age to life expectancy. However, the retirement age for men is still the same as it was in 1948, and for women it is even a year lower.
The retirement age debate is characterized by mendacity. This autumn the people will decide whether at least the retirement age for women should again reach the level of the retirement age for men. The opponents use women as an argument (“no AHV restructuring on the backs of women”), but this is easily exposed as hypocrisy: just ask such people whether they are in favor of raising the retirement age from 64/65 to 66 /67 would be.
Federal Council rejects initiative
A general increase in the retirement age is also under discussion. The Federal Council should send its message on the pension initiative of the Young Liberals to Parliament on Wednesday. This initiative calls for the retirement age to be raised to 66, with a subsequent link to life expectancy. The Federal Council rejects the initiative because it is “too rigid”.
Opponents often use “the job market” as a convenient excuse: raising the retirement age only brings more unemployment because older people can’t find jobs or younger people are pushed out. Even the Federal Council had used the job market as a reason for rejection in the past.
At least the government should now find a few warm words for the idea of raising the retirement age, at least in principle. The study commissioned by the federal government by the Bern-based research office Ecoplan on the effects of the pension initiative serves as an aid to thinking. The paper is essentially reminiscent of what economists have not disputed for a long time.
Employment increases for everyone
This is particularly true of the following principle: the amount of paid work is not fixed; therefore, an additional worker does not automatically mean that someone else will be displaced. In day-to-day life, one may have doubts about this – for example, when an immigrant is given preference over a national when there is a vacancy, or when employees remain in the company up to the age of 68 and therefore no younger person is hired.
Overall, however, new workers bring additional qualifications and, via their income, new demand – which can also increase employment. This isn’t just theory. On average for the members of the OECD, the employment rate for 55 to 64 year olds has risen from 47.5 to over 60 percent since 2000, and the employment rate for 25 to 54 year olds has increased at the same time.
Redistribution from the young to the old
The same trend was also evident in Switzerland. Switzerland has one of the highest employment rates for older people in the world and at the same time one of the lowest unemployment rates. So the following finding of the new Ecoplan study should not come as a surprise: if the retirement age were raised, unemployment would spread to the additional working years (until now, the unemployment rate among 66-year-olds was by definition zero), but apart from that, the unemployment rate would continue to be In principle, a higher unemployment rate is not to be expected given positive economic development.
However, raising the retirement age is politically difficult. The real motives of the opponents are not in the job market. They are much more concerned with expanding the strong redistribution in the AHV from young to old and from top to bottom as far as possible, instead of slowing it down with a higher retirement age. Therefore, in the opponents’ script, additional subsidies and wage contributions should rehabilitate the AHV. It goes without saying that this is primarily at the expense of younger people.