“WE’VE got to make old people productive and I don’t think there should be a retirement age. You work as long as you can work and you’ll be healthier and happier for it.
‘You ask me to stop working all of a sudden, I think I’d just shrivel up, face the wall and that’s that. But I’m still functioning, if not at the rate at which I was functioning, say, 20 years ago … I have aches and pains, but nothing terminal and I can keep going.
‘I think the Japanese solve it by giving the old people robots and gadgets to work with. So they are still productive. They take less pay.
‘Now this is where, in Singapore, it becomes very painful. You are (a) superior, suddenly your junior overtakes your position and you have less pay and he is the boss. So they find the psychological switch unpleasant.
‘I think we have to develop that approach to life: You’ve reached the maximum you can do at your age in that position, you move sideways and you take less pay and you move gradually to less and less pay because you are moving slower and slower, especially if you are doing physical work.
‘But that’s very hard to get across and many of our workers have preferred retirement and then they die early. If you keep doing what you were doing for almost the whole of your life, the chances are you will stay interested and engaged.
‘There’s something to do tomorrow and you keep going. If you start saying ‘Oh, I’m old’ and you start reading novels or playing golf or playing chess or Scrabble, you’re on your way down.”
-MM Lee, who is 86, when asked for his comments on how an ageing population might affect the push for higher productivity
Cartoon from My Sketchbook
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Nation Builders by Martyn See:
These days with Resale HDB flats costing over 1/2 a millions $$$, the mortgage repayment carried over retirement is a realty, and it only make sense to continue working until one drops dead and the surviving benficiaries will say :”Hai Yah” even after death, nothing left except to Pay And Pay!
I sensed that our CPF $$$ might be gone with all the failed investments. That is why we are being encouraged to work at longer age till now, being ‘suggested’ to forgo Retirement!
A nice ‘caring-for-old-age’ saying to us but indirectly implying that ‘we can never get back our CPF $$$ till we die’.
Is that how our $$$ being locked into gahmen-linked investments ????
When CPF was introduce, LKY promise that it will be return to us upon our retirement at 55, well i would not want this to be change by any government, so PAP give me back my CPF, do not worry how we manage, work or retire. Anyway we are all getting less pay, but our minister are getting big pay check even those who are over the hill. We have work hard all our lives, its the people that make the country, so do not tell us how great your member has been in bringing us to this stage. I want to retire LKY and work all that he want, but please be assure nobody is inmortal.
debtsmaker 2 August 2010
These days with Resale HDB flats costing over 1/2 a millions $$$, the mortgage repayment carried over retirement is a realty,
………..
i hav a STUPID kaki.. he just got his cpf dues even though is 30% not so long ago..you all know what he did? he didn’t even withdraw the 30% @ all.. i asked him why? he says his 5 bedroom woodland flat still in mortgages..if he withdraw any amount…his elder son would hav a hard time repayin the 5 room woodland hdb flat..meanwhile every 2 days/week without fail..he would visit his 2nd wife in bataam as a poor/stingy man…
by the way..his cpf withdrawal amount entitlement is over $300,000++
“It is not the duty of a responsible government to give its attention to the lowest paid workers than to the improvished bureaucrats over the $1,000 mark. Why strand at a $10 increase when a $100 increase or more has been pushed through without the batting of official eyelid”
The man who said this is now doing the exact thing. What a great actor.
maybe LKY is hinting at old folks who most likely will “shrivel & face a Wall Of Debt” if retire?
QUOTE: “You play golf, read or even play scrabble, you are on your way down”
I strongly feel, if you play TOTO, 4D, Mahjong, or go to the IR, you live longer
why??? Because you enjoy life and apply Gambling skills to work your mind!
But if you work hard you also die!
as “karoshi” is a Japanese word for overwork to Death!
Nice letter in TODAY (newspaper) today (Aug 3). It says…
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Japanese Nobel Laureate Dr Leo Esaki once spoke on the relationship between longevity and retirement age. He revealed that the pension funds in many large companies such as AT&T, Boeing, Lockheed, Lucent, and so on, are overfunded as many who retire at the age of 65, usually die within two years of retirement.
Separately, Dr Ephrem Cheng of the University of Alberta did an actuarial study of lifespan versus age at retirement, based on the number of pension cheques sent to Boeing Aerospace retirees. It found that staff who retire at the age of 50 had an average lifespan of 86. Those who retire at the age of 65 live to an average age of just 66.8.
This study concludes that for every year a person works beyond the age of 55, he lives an average of two years less.
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So this looks like a scheme to make all of us die quickly – otherwise got problems of aging population mah!
Only part I don’t understand, how come LKY never retire and still alive?
dont want to work till u drop. then take all your money move oversea and live happily everafter… u cazn buy a cheap nice house and a car and be happy
Old folks of China normally retire at 60, engage in TaiChi, look after grand children, play Mahjong, socialise amongst old folks and treated with respect!…….Here you work from cradle to grave?
Retire early or late is an OPTION!
Longevity is proven to be in one’s genes!
GOT IT?
Richard, 3 August 2010
quote:-
“Only part I don’t understand, how come LKY never retire and still alive?”
LKY do what type of work compared to most other old folks? most are either cleaners at foodcourts, toilets, security at public places, errant person at coffeeshops, etc… many of those jobs are fast paced.
LKY is doing ad-hoc job sitting down, talking, joking, being interviewed, he sets the pace. got a pacemaker to cheat death if heart fails, of course he can outlive most of his peers. too afraid to face death!
hey richard or mice is nice. y not try doing his job? he slugged his guts out for the past 30 odd years of his life and it isnt enough? would we even have what we have today without him? Selfish Singaporeans. yea Uniquely Singapore.
Selfish
Disgusting
Hypocrites.
Reflect on urself guys
My dad retired and is now dying!
Should he have heeded LKY’s advise? Difference is that he retired at age 50 .. forty-six years ago! Born 1914, retired and lived a well -balanced lifestyle. No hypertension, no diabetes – just plain ole old age.
Yep. He’s 96, frail and not expected to live much longer
Drakerel, 4 August 2010
LKY expect people to work, but does he even consider what profession most of them are in? he is living in his own world, far removed from the realities of the common folks.
S’pore’s success is built by leaders whom mostly are no longer around & the many backs of faceless, nameless people who do not take more credit than they did.
now, who is the greedy, cunning & a calculating hypocrite? who should be the one reflecting?
Like real only this LKY.
Ask Singaporean to work until old ages.
Then the all the hard earning income is control by your son.
Like CPF need to cap at $120000. The reason is for retirement.
Hello wake up LKY. This is our hard earn money since our young age.
You only sit in the Prime Minister Office and give order to minister.
No one can control you that is why u can do whatever u want.
The guy’s a real slave-driver.
But I agree with him that if you don’t work you’ll die young.
There’s plenty of evidence out there of people dying within a few years of retirement.
Basically, if you don’t work; aren’t productive, you’ll just fester like a single bacteria on its own, and when it beats the life out of itself it dies.
It’s important for a germ to spread itself to other germs.
I’m sure there’s a story about the life of germs to illustrate what I’m trying to say, but I tell another story instead.
I’m told that in the police force for instance officers clean the floor, throw out the trash and do a lot of area fatigue as well. Gives new meaning to the expression ‘extraordinary career’.
There was this officer whom I believe was a regular who was cleaning out the loading bay with one of those coconut husks brooms and when passers-by appeared (civilians), the poor guy could be heard saying, ‘Join the Force, they said. For an extraordinary career, they said.’
Well just because the political leaders in SIngapore don’t know how to retire ,learn something new , and widen their knowledge more , they should not force it on anyone else . And don’t talk about productivity and efficiency in SIngapore , it does not exist , just like ideas .
Amazing how politicians can stay in the same job all those years , they say people should be flexible and adaptive , yet they are no example , and cling on for dear life , saying they are indispensable .
get ready – looks like the CPF withdrawal age will be raised to age 90 years old very soon.
MM Lee think that just because he got something to live (ie politics) he will be in good health for a long time.
He is now 87. he claimed that he do swimming, cycling and yoga meditation.
I assured him that none of the aboves will enable him to live beyond 120 years and above as he is a mortal.
I remember PM Goh (now SM) said that he could see 50 years ahead. Please take that as a flattery, do not believe this is to be true.
I am very certain the MM Lee is unable to see when his last day on earth. It could be next few years or next few seconds.
I strongly advise you that take time to spend with children and grandchildren before it is too late.
You have the powers and money that you can leave to your children and grandchildren but cannot bring them with you.
Even your sons and daughter will have to leave this world eventually
Remember no one lives forever.