There's No Such Thing As 'Old Age' Anymore Summary

In the article, “There’s No Such Thing As ‘Old Age’ Anymore” by Joseph Coughlin it is discussed that the term “old age” was made up about a century ago, and is now fading out as older people are becoming producers rather than consumers. Many older adults are working in jobs such as manufacturing, teaching, and even delivering healthcare. Coughlin states that “Businesses founded by people over the age of 50 are already major sources of employment across the nation.” Many products made by older adults are products that could become a new source of innovation in the United States. In the article it talks about how our society can fail to notice the needs of the older people, but we cannot afford to live this way. Workplaces need to start to utilize the skills and knowledge of older workers. For example, Robotics are not job takers, but job savers. Robots can make tasks that are hard on older knees and hips easier so that the older adults with these problems can have jobs, despite an injured hip or knee.
In my opinion, the term ‘old age’ does seem to be fizzling away.
I agree with the author when he talks says that workplaces need to resist the age-discrimination. I believe an older adult can work just as hard as a twenty-five year old, just like with gender and women being able to do the same things as men. I found it interesting that that the United States alone adds up over a hundred million older people who have the potential to live over 100 years old. This clearly shows that we need to prepare for older people to not retire as early as they usually do. Older adults should be able to have a job until they don’t want to work or can’t work. There is nothing wrong with an older man or woman working in retail or manufacturing, it just increases the number of ideas the company can
have. This article relates to Chapter 10 in many ways. We learned in Chapter 10 about age discrimination, which seems to be a big topic lately. Jobs don’t want older workers because they don’t believe those workers will be able to work as hard as a younger worker would. Some say older people don’t belong out in the workforce because they take away jobs from younger people. Older people need those jobs just as much as the younger people do. Jobs shouldn’t be given to the youngest candidate, they should be given to the candidate that is going to work the hardest and be the best fit for the company, even if that person is over 50 years old. Age discrimination needs to be taken out of the picture because age shouldn’t stop someone from getting a job. Just because someone is old does not mean it will stop them from potentially improving the company.