Grey Index

My mum is worried that our government will force people to work later and later in life (by withholding the pension) but that there won’t be any jobs for older people, leading to late age poverty.

She thinks that this problem will get worse as our population ages; a result of the boom in babies during the baby boomer era, decreased birth rates of late, and continually improving medical technologies.

I suggested to mum that we develop a ‘Grey Index’ so that the products and services of companies are rated by the relative age of their employees.

You can imagine this sort of like the energy 5 star rating sticker on white-goods but where 5 stars in this instance would mean everyone in the company is over 60, and 1 star would represent a company full of teens.

All products or services would be accompanied by a grey index notice, whether that is on the web, in the window of a hairdressers, or a sticker on the side of a fridge.

Since the population is aging, companies would have to take the purchasing mass of the elderly quite seriously and promote age friendly employment. Otherwise a large fraction of the buying masses might silently boycott their products or services.

A side benefit of this idea is that it could be used to further protect Australian domestic companies from foreign competition (we love doing this). Even on the web a failure of a foreign firm, say Ebay, to publicise their grey index might lead to some sort of retaliatory action.