A brilliant scientist sends me an exciting and lucid letter asking for support to continue working at his public university, which is retiring, velis nolis, at the age of 65. Why do we humiliate our best professionals like this when in the USA, Japan, Korea and the most innovative countries they encourage them to continue in their laboratories, cloisters and companies, making them more diverse in age and therefore prolific?
In the interviews I perceive that the best brains in the United States (there are 80 Nobel laureates and even some 90 in cloisters and laboratories, but also assistants) feel more compensated and happier than the Europeans and therefore they are more fertile, at any age; because no one in their universities and companies, public or private, forces them to leave. Young people form a team with them, with better results than ours. The old – this one has indeed become old – excuse in the eighties and nineties for this waste of talent was that it was essential to give a chance to the younger ones, who were the majority and Spain suffered, along with Greece, from youth unemployment big in europe
Our demography, today, advises precisely the opposite. Another thing is that it continues to be cheaper to replace senior salaries with junior ones, but it is also at the expense of our productivity. Because the most efficient organizations are not those that have more than one gender or others; no more young people or minorities, but the most diverse in everything and, therefore, more capable in their versatility to adapt to changes and never run out of cheese.
This diversity – also in age – is essential not only for the system to be flexible, ergo sustainable, but also more free. No one should be forced to work longer than the cost of their benefits requires; but neither should anyone be forced to stop working with compensation for as many years as they wish in order to continue returning to us with effort and talent what we have all invested in their career and training.
Freedom consists in giving each of us – not just our leaders – more ability to choose. And the great choice of our life is to work or not. At any age.