Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, approaching 80 when he retired on January 31, 2006, should have been put out to pasture long ago, according to some corporate thinking that suggests people are less valuable after 60.
The fact that he guided the world's most energetic economy for almost two decades would seem not to matter to those who view the bottom line as a sprint to the next quarterly financial report.
The same is true for famed heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, who consulted on former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's open heart procedure in 1996. DeBakey continued to show up at his clinic and operate up until his early 90s.
We could toss in architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who had his largest commissions and built his grandest buildings after the age of 65. Then, there is the all-time poster boy for geriatric over-achievement, the Kentucky Fried Chicken man, Harlan Sanders. Sanders, you might recall, was a pensioner when he started his franchising empire that today is simply called KFC.
Stay with me here. I have a point. And it is an important one.
Recently, several of the most capable people I have known in business - one in public relations and one in the oil industry - were forced to "retire" or simply to leave their jobs because they were older workers. They had reached the advanced age of 60 and 61.
Neither, of course, will retire. Both will go on to something new and different, and probably just as challenging as the companies with which they had given it their all for many years.
I think about this now with a birthday approaching this month, my 61st, and about how chronology has substituted for competence as a measure of worth.
It seems corporations are rather myopic when it comes to judging value of an employee. They often look at how expensive the person is, and feel sure a younger firebrand is up to the task of the job.
This might be true. But often it is not. It strikes me as callous and intellectually barren. Stupid, really.
In the case of the public relations executive, he had pulled in millions in business for his company over several decades. The oil executive was one of the first women engineers in a business dominated by men. She took the job right out of college.
Both were well respected in their professions; and, as if to punctuate her energy for everything, the oil executive ran in the Houston Marathon recently, and now has her eyes set on other marathons. The decision made, she now seems happy to be out of the corporate bridle.
The PR guy was considered a professional's professional by people such as Harold Burson, who himself was voted public relations man of the 20th Century by PRweek when he was 81. Burson still is an active PR man, and when Coca-Cola has a crisis, he is who they call.
I have an personal involvement with the PR executive and the oil industry lady. One is a fishing buddy from years back, a former newsman like me. The other is a high school classmate and friend with whom I reconnected through the internet after many years.
In Ukraine, retiring at 60 is not unusual, but here the mortality charts, particularly for males, extends just a few clicks beyond that age. Still, I find many older Ukrainians not wishing to retire at 60 or 65. Several work for this magazine, contributing stories each month. In fact, our new editor, Jim Davis, masks his 69 years particularly well.
I recently had an opportunity to read a speech by Lord John Browne, the British Petroleum CEO, who is fast-approaching the mandatory age of 60 when he should retire from BP.
In Browne's speech, he notes that in 1908 when Prime Minister Lloyd George introduced the idea that people should stop work at a particular age, and be given a small but secure pension, England's leader was acting in a spirit of decency and humanity.
But the world of work has changed. So has medical science. We live in a different world and we live in that world for much longer.
Lord Browne, who makes megabucks and to whom "retirement" will simply bring a host of other CEO opportunities - If he wishes - rails against a mandatory retirement age.
He gives several reasons:
"First, because the countries in which we work, including this country (Great Britain), need people to work longer, and need to ensure that the balance between those in work and those not working doesn't move to the point where the burden of taxation and transfer payments is intolerable, and uncompetitive.
"Almost all the countries in which we (BP) work have aging populations. By 2010, 23 percent of people in this country will be over 60; in Germany 25 percent, and in the United States 18 percent."
Browne points out that when he was born the average lifespan, worldwide, for a man, was 45 years. For a woman it was 48. Now it is 63 for men and 68 for women. In the UK life expectancy is stretching to 80 and beyond, and the figures show that the life expectancy of a man at the age of 65 has risen by 3 years in just the last decade.
The oil chieftain adds that the second reason why mandatory retirement at a fixed age is inappropriate is the changing nature of the economy. More than 70 percent of the European economy is now based on services, rather than manufacturing.
Many of the jobs involved in all parts of the economy are based on knowledge gathered through experience. That is true in business, but it is also true in the health service, in education at all levels, and in many other activities.
The third point, Browne says, comes down to the basic demographics of the oil industry.
"In key disciplines such as engineering, a disproportionate share of BP's workforce is over 45, and indeed over 50. In our exploration and production business, which is populated by highly skilled scientists and engineers, 50 percent of the workforce is over the age of 45. In the United States the figure is over 60 percent.
"There are a number of reasons for that including the fact that fewer people, in this country at least, are studying maths at A-level. That is despite the fact that a good grade in Maths has the strongest positive correlation with future earnings."
Browne rightly suggests the same is true in other businesses and professions.
"But there is another reason why this issue deserves attention. And that is the need for a civilized society to overcome prejudice," said Browne in the speech.
"Slowly and imperfectly we have come to accept over the last few decades that it is a matter of prejudice to judge someone simply on the basis of their gender, their religion or the color of their skin.
"We've accepted that it is wrong to say you are a woman, there's no job for you or to say you're black or Irish or Jewish, you can't work here. But too many people seem to think that it is still acceptable to say you've reached the age of 60: We don't want you any more.
"When did you last see people aged 60 or more used as the symbols of success in advertising, or indeed used to advertise anything other than medical care or specialist holidays for pensioners?
"The cult of youth is very strong. And the consequences are serious because they affect the lives of millions of people."
Lord Browne went on to argue that the waste of talent "was shocking and the prejudice intolerable." He was talking
on a global scale.
My beef is strictly personal.
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