12-10-2020, 07:58 PM
We have had octogenarian and nonagenarian people in creative activities and politics. But in general, almost all careers are over at age 65. Most businesses are looking for five-year-or-longer solutions for practically all jobs, including even minimum-wage jobs. The surest way to not get hired is to be honest about a job being a stepping-stone to something better. Even a fast-food place might want someone "working his way through college just to get a little knowledge that he'll never get to use again"... to consider working there for a while after graduation, especially to supplement the low pay that many college grads get. The last forty years have been a spectacular time to be in management, corporate law, or the upper echelons of the entertainment industry, as good as usual to be a high-level professional, and not so great for anything else. Donald Trump exploited the resentment of this situation but had no solution except to praise vulgarity and ignorance.
The elderly worker is a risky proposition when there are young, energetic, flexible workers who believe that if they work hard enough with extraordinary diligence and have low expectations for now (it doesn't take long to get disabused of such a myth with the low, rigid glass ceilings in most entities) that things will turn out all right. (Over the last forty years or so the ethos has been to pay workers inadequately and let them go deeply in debt in something of a revival of peonage... what one would expect of a 3T ethos, as for agricultural workers and most industrial workers in the 1910's and 1920's). The exception is the exceptional creative person, entrepreneur, or professional.
In some endeavors, careers are over by age 35 - especially athletic, modeling, and some acting careers. If you are going to go by baseball careers and when the players were appearing as rookies, were at their peak, and then were gone, you would find that the youngest players are about 20 and the oldest are about 40. The very oldest and very youngers are the most talented. Only a very rare person is polished enough to get a regular role in the majors while in his teens (Ted Williams) and only a very rare person has enough remaining skills to be adequate to play the game at age 40 (such as Ted Williams). Pitchers may stick around longer than position players if they have a brutal fastball (Nolan Ryan, probably Justin Verlander) or a tricky pitch that they can throw for long time (the knuckleball of Phil Niekro). All in all, someone who is just a bit above average at age 30 will be marginal at age 32 and will be doing something other than playing major-league baseball at age 34. Coaching? Managing? Broadcasting?
The elderly worker is a risky proposition when there are young, energetic, flexible workers who believe that if they work hard enough with extraordinary diligence and have low expectations for now (it doesn't take long to get disabused of such a myth with the low, rigid glass ceilings in most entities) that things will turn out all right. (Over the last forty years or so the ethos has been to pay workers inadequately and let them go deeply in debt in something of a revival of peonage... what one would expect of a 3T ethos, as for agricultural workers and most industrial workers in the 1910's and 1920's). The exception is the exceptional creative person, entrepreneur, or professional.
In some endeavors, careers are over by age 35 - especially athletic, modeling, and some acting careers. If you are going to go by baseball careers and when the players were appearing as rookies, were at their peak, and then were gone, you would find that the youngest players are about 20 and the oldest are about 40. The very oldest and very youngers are the most talented. Only a very rare person is polished enough to get a regular role in the majors while in his teens (Ted Williams) and only a very rare person has enough remaining skills to be adequate to play the game at age 40 (such as Ted Williams). Pitchers may stick around longer than position players if they have a brutal fastball (Nolan Ryan, probably Justin Verlander) or a tricky pitch that they can throw for long time (the knuckleball of Phil Niekro). All in all, someone who is just a bit above average at age 30 will be marginal at age 32 and will be doing something other than playing major-league baseball at age 34. Coaching? Managing? Broadcasting?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.