I imagine that the people writing these recommendations that people should work longer are also comfortably high up in the income distribution. They don't seem to consider the significant difference in life expectancy at age 65 between those at the top and those at the bottom of the distribution. And perhaps even more relevant are the differences in disability-free life expectancy by socioeconomic status/income/education levels that surely affect people's ability to keep working.
There is the income distribution aspect, but also I think a lack of recognition of what *physical* labour is like. House painting and truck driving and being a short-order cook wears you down in your 60s - that we live longer doesn’t necessarily change that fact.
Exactly. I had meant to add something along those lines. I am continually reminded of that issue because I live in a nursing home, where the older staff inevitably have to contend with back problems and other injuries. The oldest ones who were still hanging in there are in their late 50s. In my first brief stay in a nursing home a few years ago, I remember one of the younger staff members saying that choosing this kind of work involved consciously sacrificing yourself in that sense.
Right. The "sweet deal" problem is not that those people don't work it off somehow, it's that we've short-changed generations since in terms of offering them the same social supports that the current elderly received--the real cost of living has gone up considerably, home ownership and rents are way more expensive in real terms, higher education is ridiculously more expensive now that we've withdrawn so much public funding, health care is both more expensive and much worse than it was for most of the lives of the now-elderly, etc. It's a super-weird bit of advocacy, that somehow to justify being treated fairly and well in a society that used to be closer to social democracy, the elderly now must be sentenced to their time on Devil's Island breaking rocks in the quarry. Austerity ideology leads to some really strange places.
I imagine that the people writing these recommendations that people should work longer are also comfortably high up in the income distribution. They don't seem to consider the significant difference in life expectancy at age 65 between those at the top and those at the bottom of the distribution. And perhaps even more relevant are the differences in disability-free life expectancy by socioeconomic status/income/education levels that surely affect people's ability to keep working.
There is the income distribution aspect, but also I think a lack of recognition of what *physical* labour is like. House painting and truck driving and being a short-order cook wears you down in your 60s - that we live longer doesn’t necessarily change that fact.
Exactly. I had meant to add something along those lines. I am continually reminded of that issue because I live in a nursing home, where the older staff inevitably have to contend with back problems and other injuries. The oldest ones who were still hanging in there are in their late 50s. In my first brief stay in a nursing home a few years ago, I remember one of the younger staff members saying that choosing this kind of work involved consciously sacrificing yourself in that sense.
Right. The "sweet deal" problem is not that those people don't work it off somehow, it's that we've short-changed generations since in terms of offering them the same social supports that the current elderly received--the real cost of living has gone up considerably, home ownership and rents are way more expensive in real terms, higher education is ridiculously more expensive now that we've withdrawn so much public funding, health care is both more expensive and much worse than it was for most of the lives of the now-elderly, etc. It's a super-weird bit of advocacy, that somehow to justify being treated fairly and well in a society that used to be closer to social democracy, the elderly now must be sentenced to their time on Devil's Island breaking rocks in the quarry. Austerity ideology leads to some really strange places.