So, this got me thinking of an old favourite idea of mine.
I’m going to have to wait until I’m 25 to graduate from this Masters course, then I’ll probably be 28 or so by the time I’ve paid off my immediate, could-bankrupt-me, debt, by which point I should be comfortably, competitively placed in a career. When am I going to explore the world, start a business or do some volunteering?
When I’m old? Pffft, won’t be nearly as fun!
So what I propose is that we get rid or Retirement and from the ages of 18 to 30 we pay people the median wage to do with as they please. Travel the world, start a business, study non-stop, run for office, sleep all day, whatever. Then you hit 30 and work until you die, apart from holidays of course. We’d call it pretirement, geddit?
There are obvious logistical problems.
One would be a sharp spike in suicides around 30, another would be people finding they are utterly unable to adapt to working life (but if we can create nice little workers in school then we can do it to 30 year olds), there would also be more violence as young men are wont to fight, but aside from that it’d be brilliant.
Who’d sign up?
Left Outside 
I should say, when I say “old idea of mine”, I actually mean a recent idea of someone else, I just can’t remember who.
Being able to do whatever you like when you are young is known as “being rich”. It is the happy result of capital accumulation. Spending before accumulating is a bad idea.
Yes, but spending before accumulation is also really, really fun.
Spending before capital accumulation is known as “a credit card”. The advantage of a credit card is that I know I will not be asked to pay your debt at some point in the future. You will pay it yourself.
Just a bit of fun. We already socialise the cost a large proportion of the population’s leisure time, I was just proposing we do this when people are young not old.
I propose that we don’t do it at all.
Er, the “work until you die” part might cause a few problems.
I think longer periods of rest when people are in the prime of their lives is generally a good idea, but I’d settle for a four day work week.
As for “When am I going to explore the world, start a business or do some volunteering?”, think yourself lucky. Compare yourself do the average low income worker who never went into high education:
You – start work late 20s
They – start work 16/18
Both of you will receive a pension at the same age (i.e. they will work far longer before they can retire), and you will earn far more than they will.
Meanwhile, their work will most likely be more physically demanding, you will most likely have better health they will through your life, and your life expectancy will probably be much higher – so not only will you work fewer years, you will probably have a longer (and healthier) retirement too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13836583
Oh, don’t worry, I know I’m lucky! Very lucky.
I plan on being young and well off enough at 27 to go travelling properly, and I intend on working abroad too, just a matter of paying off the bank first (and as Tim says below I just need enough money to get out there, once out there I can odd job my way around).
It’s entirely possible to do this already. Without being rich. Learn how to wait tables and go travelling. Take a few years out, go to uni, pay your way through with a bit of waiting tables. Try out a few things, little business ideas, travel a bit more, pay for it all by waiting tables.
By the time you’re 30 you’ll be incredibly bored with waiting tables, the knees will be giving out anyway, time to get a job where you get paid to sit down.
As I say, entirely possible, I know, because that’s pretty much what I did do.
Yeah, beginning to think the two years between my undergrad and my masters where I was in a shit job spending all my money visiting my (then, but no longer) girlfriend on the otherside of the country may have been a bit of a waste.
Nooo. Working is, well, hard work. It’s best done by people in their 20s who have the energy to do it.
I’m mighty glad I had my best earning years before I was 30ish. This has given me years of some sort of financial security (enough not to worry about bills if not enough to retire), whilst I’ve got retirement to look forward to.
I’m also looking forward to becoming an irresponsible teenager.
But Chris, partying is hard work, too! Some nights, I can barely stay up past 3am because of all the work and study.