National Service for 50 Year Olds

Every so often I'll meet someone who says how the country's problems could be solved if everyone had to do national service at age 18.

My first note is that it (unscientifically) feels to me like these people have never themselves done national service.

My second note is that they're always saying that young people should do national service, and they're always past the age where you'd have to do it.

So here's my proposal: mandatory two year national service, but you do it at age 50.

This would have a large number of benefits versus national service at 18:

1) many people get stuck on their career tracks, and want a "reset" but can't quite get one. Many people say "oh what I'd love to do now is just go become a teacher", but life goes on and you still need to show up at your current non-teacher job and there's never a good moment to retrain and start over. National service for 50 year olds would give an obvious moment for people to switch to a second career.

2) national service for 50 year olds would help disrupt some of our current gerontocracy issues: at a lot of organizations, the younger people never get a chance at management, and (hopefully) this would give some young talent the opportunity to step into bigger roles for a while and prove their capabilities. (I admit that in practice the 50 year olds would just get replaced temporarily by 80 year olds, then come back and reclaim their existing sinecures, but a guy can dream).

3) national service for 50 year olds would allow people to give back to their communities after they've actually developed skills and abilities: imagine how much more service you can serve if you've got 30 years of training and experience under your belt, versus an 18 year old with (at most) enthusiasm.

4) national service is many things, but one of those things is a near-100% tax on selected individuals: while you're doing national service you get paid little-to-nothing, and it's very hard to work elsewhere for money at the same, so it's equivalent to being taxed for almost-all your income for the duration.

Young people generally have less money (on average), and for low-income young people national service can be a really significant burden, delaying their ability to get on a career ladder and earn a reasonable income by multiple years. This is a component that the wealthy older people who (in my experience) advocate national service never seem to acknowledge, and frankly one reason why their blaséness about the whole proposal irks me. But if you believe in progressive taxation, and you're calling for a near-100% tax on anyone, it should obviously be richer people rather than poorer ones paying it.