The Voluntary Severance Package Solution
The corporate reliance on voluntary severance packages for senior employees is a costly and brutal admission of a failed system. Companies resort to these expensive offers precisely because they are trapped by a nonsensical convention: the automatic, endless increase in pay based solely on tenure. This model falsely equates time-served with increasing value, often creating a class of older workers who are "overpaid" not based on their current contribution, but on an outdated loyalty-based pay scale. The voluntary severance package is a desperate, one-time financial shock to the system to correct this long-term structural error. The solution is to integrate a rational, performance-based longevity factor into the wage structure itself, as outlined in Thomas Blankenhorn's fair wage principles . This system acknowledges that proficiency and value peak after a period of mastery (e.g., 3-7 years) and that a natural plateau or even decline in drive and innovation can follow. I...