Slowing Down..or Not

IT IS  DIFFICULT FOR US TO IMAGINE today, but there was a time when there was no such thing as "retirement", when the very thought of ceasing work and living out one's days in leisure was, simply, unthinkable. People worked until they no longer could, then, if they were lucky, were taken care of by their own children.

Of all the inventions which followed world war two, the idea of retirement at the end of a decades long working career is as significant as any to american society. Nationwide mass marketing for an abundance of corporate manufactured consumer goods, television, and a culture dominated by tennaged tastes in music and dress come to mind, but retirement as a pregogrative of senior citizenship changed the very nature of american society.

Leaving one's official capacity at the age of sixty five is not new, or an american invention. Otto von Bismarck, the unifier of germany into a single nation, devised the notion by essentially choosing the number sixty five at random, as the age at which prussian military officers and civil service bureaucrats could conclude their service to country and draw a pension.

But the idea that everyone who works through adulthood should be able to quit by the age of sixty five and live off savings, pensions, and social security began, in this country, with the advent of social security, in 1935. Social security was never intended to induce retirement, but rather, to supplement a person's income in old age, when workplace income would naturally decrease with decreased capacity for sustatined work.

Since world war two, the trend has been for americans to retire as early as possible, earlier and earlier, to make it big, then get out young. Government civil service employees can retire at fifty five, career military people even younger. The american government, if nothing else, takes care of its own.

But now we hear that the very idea of retirement is threatened. Baby boomers in general are ill prepared for it, with meager savings, and generations after the boomers are on a path of even less preparation. Then too, the social security trust fund, having long been raided by other government programs, is slated to run out entirely in the year 2033.

And so, with longer life spans, a declining standard of living and savings rate, and an insolvent social security system, we may live to see an america with an ancient labor force, working until the end of our days.  If nothing else, this new arangement will give us all something to do, and keep us off the streets. And, if we are lucky, machines will by then do most of our work, and we can sit comfortably nearby, looking after our mechanized masters.