Comment on These 100-year-olds say working beyond retirement age is what keeps them going: 'I'll work for as long as I can'

ProbablyBaysean@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

The concept of retirement for working class people is new

Before invention of retirement, the working class had the mentality that you work until you are dead with 99% of the working class in brown collar work. During the industrial revolution where most people transitioned from brown collar to blue collar work, retirement became much more common with social mobility.

During the great depression, USA legislators picked a number “65” to be the “age of retirement” with the reasoning that it would get more young people back to work. The average age of mortality at that time was ~67 years old. They did not index that age with the average age of mortality, so as life expectancy increased, there is now a period in people’s life to be “retired”.

Problems with how this developed:


With that perspective, I don’t know if corporations are entitled here, or the people are just doing what their ancestors did for 1,000s of years and are owning it in a positive way.

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