The first thing I would say is that every action has consequences and that governments are very, very deficient in their understanding of that basic concept. This is a very good example of that deficiency in both intelligence and knowledge.

It has been the unfortunate practice of many businesses to dispense with expensive but replacable workers on almost any pretext ever since industry began. This is a result of two key factors:

1) Regular above inflation pay increases causing workers' wages to rise to an economically unsustainable level for the skills and experience required.
2) The dominance of economics over ethics and compassion in industry as a consequence of competition  it's simply capitalism. Review the industries of the Democratic Republic of East Germany and the Soviet Union before being too crtical of this! 

As an example of (1) I clearly recall a factory in Pretoria South Africa that was an excellent employer of decades standing. It was sold to a smaller company because it was no longer economic. The first thing the new owner did was to implement massive retrenchments of technicans. He told me that many of those technicains were long-service staff and that their wages were around double the new hiring costs for excperienced people doing those jobs - he had no choice.

I'm sure many people here will contribute examples of (2)!

Of course there are issues attending experience and training, but sometimes, those issues are of lesser magnitude than those attending an inflated wage bill.

In this particular case though the question is posited that an experienced worker might be replaced with one or even two younger workers. I think not. If a business needed more workers it would often already have hired them.

Finally - and please, I am NOT attacking youngsters here, it's just that societal changes make this obvious  - the work ethic of the over 50's is much different to that of many youngsters, and many employers prefer those 'safe hands'. 

On a related note, one thing that really puzzles me is the perception that older people are not 'tech savvy'. This is nonsense. It was our generation that existed at the inception of today's technological world and we are as tech savvy or more-so that any generation. It's one thing to understand how to use email or Instagram, bit quite another to understand how wireless communication actually works, or how a computer works, or how to write stable, professional software - and we're really quite good at that because we invented the many of the damn things! if we weren't, i think the consequences in defense products such as nuclear missiles would have becoime apparent long ago.

Thanks for the question. I think the most important point here is: unintended consequences and government idiocy.
 

This question has me wonder about training costs, the return on investment of highly skilled/effective employees, company culture, and more.

@Keith Rowley , I have a feeling you'd have a lot to say on this one.