Japan puts the elderly to work
By Joseph Coleman - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 0 Comments
Solution to an aging society: out of the hammock and back in the office
Jeremy Sutton-Hibb/ Joseph Coleman
Kato Manufacturing, in Nakatsugawa, in central Japan, is hardly a relaxing place. Generators grind, the air pounds with the slam of steel presses, and hundreds of pieces of metal rattle as they’re shuffled and arranged and transported on wheeled carts. In the middle of the racket, 73-year-old Hisao Kitawaki works steadily, showing a new employee how to guide a steel basket filled with grease-laden parts—for autos, airplanes, hairdryers—into a cauldron of cleaning solution. He uses a white towel to pat the sweat from his face; steam clouds his glasses.
A steel-products factory is an unlikely hangout for a man his age. But you won’t catch Kitawaki complaining—he’s exactly where he wants to be. Eight years ago, just as he was growing bored with the hobby-filled life of a pensioner, he saw an advertisement Kato put in the paper looking for special kinds of workers: old ones. “The only condition was that you had to be at least 65 years old,’’ Kitawaki says. “Okay, I thought, I meet that condition. The timing was perfect.’’
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Who will be the first post-boomer prime minister?
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 1:26 PM - 58 Comments
While we’re on the subject of demographics, there is also age.
Differentiating between generations is a bit tricky, the difference being as much about experience, mindset and attitude as it is a matter of timing. For the sake of argument, if you take David Foot’s contention that the baby boom in Canada ended in 1966 and include all those current MPs born after January 1 of that year, you get the following group (listed from oldest to youngest):
Rick Dykstra, Mario Silva, Gerry Byrne, Kirsty Duncan, Todd Russell, Shelly Glover, Rob Clarke, Scott Brison, Pablo Rodriguez, Leona Aglukkaq, Greg Rickford, Andrew Kania, Dominic LeBlanc, Randy Hoback, Lisa Raitt, Jason Kenney, Brian Masse, Blaine Calkins, Russ Hiebert, Helena Guergis, Rona Ambrose, John Baird, Bernard Bigras, Mike Lake, Scott Simms, Glenn Thibeault, Paul Calandra, Dean Del Mastro, James Rajotte, Jeff Watson, Michael Chong, Justin Trudeau, Eve-Mary Thai Thi Lac, Rob Anders, Steven Fletcher, Meili Faille, Nathan Cullen, Jean-Claude D’Amours, Rod Bruinooge, Megan Leslie, Luc Malo, Christian Paradis, Ruby Dhalla, Rob Moore, Brad Trost, Mark Holland, Blake Richards, Tim Uppal, Scott Andrews, James Moore, Ben Lobb, Navdeep Bains, Thierry St. Cyr, Brian Storseth, Patrick Brown, Pascal-Pierre Paille, Chris Warkentin, Andrew Scheer, Pierre Poilievre, Niki Ashton, Nicolas Dufour.
How’s a 2012 election between LeBlanc, Moore, Leslie and Bigras sound?
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Maclean’s Interview: Theodore Roszak
By Anne Kingston - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 3 Comments
Author Theodore Roszak on the boomers’ final revolution, the female caregiver as a radical force, old drivers and the end of sex
In 1969, historian Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter Culture coined the term that defined a generation. His new book, The Making of an Elder Culture, explores the potential social sea change resulting from a gerontocracy in which most of Western society is over the age of 50.Q: You make the provocative claim that baby boomers have a second chance to reshape history due to their demographic clout, even that their place in history could hinge more on their second act as “elders” than their first act as radicals.
A: Yes, the people leading the way toward a gerontocracy are the same people who were raising hell on the college campuses of the ’60s. This is a very special population because they had a special historical experience that acquainted them with the willingness to make big changes. These people are going to be older for a longer period of time than they were ever young and have much more political and financial clout than younger people.
Q: How will this shift in social consciousness begin to shake out?
A: Well, once again the demographic weight is going to force people to think differently, even if they start off with a very negative attitude—which is generally the attitude we have toward aging. But you’re going to have to put up with the fact that we now have a lot of 70-year-olds and 80-year-olds who are not like your grandparents or great-grandparents. They go on working, they’re professionals, they are active. These are not just parasites leaning on the rest of the society. I talk about experience being of great economic value, but we’ve never given it enough weight in our economic thought. And I speak as a historian—this is an unprecedented state of affairs, and so it’s new to people, they’ve never had to think about the demographics of their society in this way. Continue…
