seeCseasNo retirement: Why are more and more people over 70 still working?
Ok retirement used to be the last 5-10 years of your life - retire at 65, average life expectancy was 70 to 75. As average life expectancy goes up, it’s now closing in at 20 years (retire at 65, live to 83 which I think is new life expectancy).
It really shouldn’t surprise anyone we can’t maintain this. It was only doable for that brief period of cheap energy. (And yes, we should tax the rich in case anyone doubts my sentiments.)
Seems like that would only be a problem if real wages were stagnant, which they have been for 40 years but that might mean that THAT is the problem.
The typical worker is producing 2.5x the value that a worker produced in 1950, seems reasonable they should be able to afford a 15% increase in life expectancy (or whatever).
When the government is expected to provide such generous benefits (half his salary in Spain, per the article) it seems that something has to change. It’s even good that some people are working past that age, and continuing to pay into it for others. My US-centric view is less rosy.