The Old Youth Speaks

 I’ve mentioned it in a previous posting and I’ll happily say it again, but of all the “isms” that we have, ageism is probably one of the worst. Racism and Sexism are good at grabbing headlines. It’s been especially so since the current Occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania got himself plonked into the Oval Office and we got a range of news headlines relating to those “isms.” Nobody seems interested in “ageism,” particularly when so much of the world’s attention is focused on the two Septuagenarians battling for the Oval Office.

However, as any job seeker will tell you, ageism is particularly rife and here in Singapore. To put it crudely, people after a certain age (In Singapore it’s around 35) are unlikely to get a job if they lose their current one. The situation has gotten so bad that it has taken one of our more senior and popular politicians to get out and announce that “Nobody is too old to be hired.” Yet, the problem persists. Just visit any food joint and you’ll notice that the staff are inevitably over 45. When I grew up in the UK, I understood the job at the fast food joint was what you did as a student so that you had a few extra bucks. Here in the “Land of Asian Values and Filial Piety,” working in a fast food joint is what you do when you’re too old to run around because no one else will hire you.

When I got hired by the liquidator in 2014 (my 40^th birthday) everyone told me that I had to stick onto it because it was the only job, I was likely to ever have. I was 40 and had worked mainly freelance for most of my working life and nobody was rushing to hire someone with my track record. So, I held on for five years in an industry that required me to have the one thing I refused to have – paper qualifications and regulation. In the five years of working in an accounting practice, the only job offer I received was from Burger King, which I ignored because, well they wanted me to work exclusively for them, which would have meant I’d be stuck with them for the rest of my working life.

Sure, I get that employers want young and impressionable fresh graduates that they can mold. Old Farts like me can be expensive. We’ve been round the block a few times and we’re a little less likely to get conned. When I had my first agency job, working 24/7 was all about learning the ropes and part and parcel of laying the ground work if you wanted to succeed in life. At 40, when you’re required to work 24/7 all the time, you start to question if you’re working for someone who is obsessed with being inefficient and hates productivity. The only way you’re likely to accept doing this at 40 and dare I say 50 is because you’re paid a criminal amount of money. At 20, you accept things like “sacrifice” for the company and job as being good for you and your future. At 40, it’s a different story.

Yet, if I take myself as an example, I have to question why old farts like me should become less employable. May be its because Covid-19 and the circuit breaker changed my lifestyle but I am healthier than when I was in my thirties. Just take a look at me eight years ago when I was on my first holiday in Vietnam. In the words of my mother “Your tummy is enormous.”

 

By contrast, I am significantly lighter at 46 than when I was at 38 and I feel better for it. While I had significantly less responsibilities then, I actually feel more energetic and a little more confident about taking on the world. Here’s me at 46.

Incidentally, my situation is not a freaky one. I work in an office where the only other person who could last more than five minutes on an escalator is three weeks older than me. Back when I was in my last agency job (Bang PR in 2005), my main director used to make the point that he was significantly older but at the same time healthier.

So, the question stands – if our aging population (ie people like me) are healthier than ever before, why is it so difficult for us to get a job.

I put it down to employers having a “feudal” mindset. They still want employers who will “fit in” and stay with them for years. They still want employees that can be molded into a certain image and are dependent on the employer to provide a livelihood. I can understand this mindset and it worked well for so long. It’s like the weird obsession with the office and all the gatherings that people have. In this frame of mind, you worry that the person over 40 may not fit into your cog.

While this may have been the case in the industrial revolution, we need to understand that we are no longer in that era. I hate this mindset that in order for the economy to function you need lots of people whom you can work for long hours and for cheap, which was precisely the argument that everyone used when it was suggested that foreign workers should not live in conditions that caused disease.

You have a growing population of over 40s. They have skills and the capability of doing work. Sure, if you can’t give them the same full-time job, outsource things to them. May be its less money but it’s better than nothing at all and you can let them find other paymasters concurrently. You have an army of growing and still capable people. Why can’t you find a way of using them? Surely that would help productivity.

Growing Too Old

I’ve been unemployed for a good portion of my working life and when I got a “corporate” job in my late thirties, everybody told me that I had to hang onto it because it was probably the only job that I would have. The reason for it was very simple, I started “working properly” in my late thirties and by the time I reached a certain level, I’d be “too old” to be employable.

Like it or not, one of the worst of the “isms” in Singapore is ageism. While “racism” (particularly with the riots in the USA) and “sexism” make media headlines, ageism affects far more of us and in an age of shorter working life cycles, is perhaps a larger and more serious issue. Singapore is filled with too many stories of people in their mid-forties who have been retrenched and unable to find work but still stuck with mortgages and children whom they need to send to school.

In a way, the down and out situation in Singapore is the mirror opposite of London. When I lived in London, the tramps camping at my door were inevitably young and white, who had fallen into a drug habit. In Singapore, by contrast, the old are inevitably old. In the pre-Covid-19 world, all you needed to do was to sit in any outdoor eating area and you’d find that the people doing the “heavy stuff” like carrying dishes were inevitably old as were the people desperate enough to go round tables trying to sell you tissue paper for a dollar or so.

What makes this scene particularly sad is the fact that Singapore claims loudly and proudly to be an “Asian” society that “respects” elders. Ironically, the biggest proponent of “Asian Values” was the late Lee Kuan Yew, who grew up with a disdain for anything Chinese until he entered politics and realized that it was the Chinese Educated who demonstrated in the streets. The late Mr. Lee was a poster boy for “active aging,” working well past his ninetieth birthday. However, while he was busy ensuring himself jobs in the cabinets of his successors, it was a singular act. All his cabinet colleagues, including Goh Keng Swee, his loyal deputy who did the work, retired in what was called “leadership renewal,” or the process of getting the old to give way to the young.

Mr. Lee was in theory right to focus on “leadership renewal.” There is such a thing known as hanging on too long and letting the things that made you great become a total liability to the people you once cared about. “Arab Spring” old folks on top who didn’t know when to let go.

However, a good idea has been taken to an extreme, where old folks who never had salaries of our well-paid ministers are pushed out of work once they hit a certain age. In many cases its usually at an age where people still have mortgages and other hefty bills to pay. How did this happen?

I believe that the heart of the problem is ideological. Singapore is famous for being the world’s “nanny state,” with the government behaving like a stern parent. For the most part, the parent has been wise in many of its decisions. However, the parent has been unable to listen to the realities on the ground. There’s been an ideological conflict at the heart of our governing philosophy. On one hand we’ve told the people that the only viable source of employment is foreign investors and the government. On the other, hand there’s also a message of “non-welfarism” where the government claims that it does not give out cash because it wants people to be self-reliant.

This was perfectly fine when we had multinationals coming in and hired people for life. However, this isn’t the case anymore. The multinationals may still use Singapore as a regional base but the real markets are in other parts of Asia, with more to offer.

Hence the situation became such that the “big” growth drivers were not hiring the way they used to and people were stuck with rising expenses and less stashed away.

Like it or not, our CPF system, while useful, is inadequate. My ex-boss at Citibank, Mr. Eddie Khoo, told me, “Ask Singaporeans about a retirement plan and they’ll tell you there’s CPF. What they fail to realise is that most of your CPF is used for housing, it doesn’t give you enough cash.”

Mr. Khoo was correct in that most of our forced savings was tied up in housing. What he didn’t add was that the government’s solutions to the “aging” problem has been to tie up CPF monies in CPF. First, they’ve been raising the minimum sum requirements along with the retirement age.  Then they’ve capped the limit of what you can use it for.

If I take myself as an example, the only thing that CPF has helped to do has been to defray my mortgage payments. However, beyond that, it’s become like a mirage, where I see more money being added to the account but with further restrictions on withdrawal, it is money I will realistically not be able to utilize as I age no matter how much I have.

In addition to increasing the retirement sum, the other method has been to raise the retirement age. Like everything else coming from the Singapore Government, this sounds good in theory. Yes, people are aging but they’re healthier than they used to be and can remain useful.  As Senior Minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam has said, “No one is too old to hire, too qualified to adapt.”

Unfortunately, the practice is rather different and getting Mr. Tharman’s words into practice will take time. You cannot change a culture of age discrimination overnight, even if the problem needs to be solved urgently.

Again, I take myself as an example. I am turning 46 in November. I left my corporate job last year between my age and a Covid-19 ravaged economy, I’m challenged to think of what I’ll do next to feed myself. I’ve psychologically accepted that I am unlikely to ever go back to full time corporate again.

So, what does someone like me do? Effectively, my only assets are the fact that I’m relatively healthy and I’ve met a few interesting people and done one or two things.

So, to ensure I have enough money to pay for my bus card, I take up a bit of blue-collar work here and there. It’s not going to make me rich anytime soon but a few dollars in the pocket here and there. In addition to this, blue collar gigs allow me enough time to look at other things.

I write more and I look for a bit of PR work here and there, which I can put aside to pay down debts and to set aside for the day when I’m a bit too old to do very much. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do things.

However, the question remains, while I ever be able to earn enough remains on my mind and the answer for many people my age, is ironically, to look at other places to live. A lawyer I know is looking at Manchester as a retirement venue. An old editor believes that home may be in India. My kid, is telling me that we should look at Vietnam as a possibility. My Dad moved to Thailand and has a decent enough life. His point being, at 70 plus he gets the odd job here and there and he can afford a comfortable life style, which he cannot in Singapore.

Perhaps the government in Singapore should consider this. If the aging are not allowed to contribute to Singapore, why should they stay there and spend retirement funds there?