Eat The Old

You know what?  I want to work forever.

I do.

No, I mean it. 

I want to be 93, with big coke-bottle glasses and an out of style suit (because, come age 93, I don't expect to give a fuck), striding into my office.  Okay -- at 93, I probably won't stride much, but I'll do the best I can.  And I want to greet my many young colleagues, make old Jewish guy jokes as I wind my way to my desk, sit down at my holographic laptop (which will now be a hopeless relic compared to the Cornea Computers others will use), and blog for a bit.  Then I'll work the phones for awhile, trying to figure out what my next column will be.  Then I'll blog a bit more.  Work phones.  Have lunch with somebody interesting.  Go out with my wife to dinner.  Etc.

Yes, I want to work forever because what I want to do sounds like it'll be fun forever.  Maybe it won't be, of course, but David Broder is nearing 130 and he's still at it, so there seems to be a chance.  Now.  I would really not like to work forever if I was a tailor.  I wouldn't not enjoy trudging into the office each morning and, at 93, bending down to hem pants.  I would not enjoy standing up all day to adjust the merchandise.  I would much rather be sitting at home, acting the dirty old man towards my wife.

John Tierney, because he does the first job, has written a column addressed to all those lazy asses doing the second.  Those malingerers and loiterers who're checking out at 62, collecting reduced Social Security benefits, and hanging out with the grandkids.  And John Tierney, as with all the columnists who offer this suggestion, is tough for doing it.  He's taking on a sacred cow, saying what pols fear to say, going where lesser men wilt, speaking the hard truths to AARP's power. 

Raising the retirement age is the most offensive serious public policy suggestion in American life.  What it says about us as a culture, what it says about our chattering class -- it's just embarassing.  It'd be one thing if Social Security really were bankrupting this country, if its costs stretched into the stratosphere and the poor American economy was being crushed under its weight, an Atlas without the quads.  But it's just not so.  What's needed to keep Social Security safe and solvent is so minor as to be laughable.  Indeed, it's so minor that, with some good productivity growth, we'll never need to do it at all.  But rather than advocate that, our chattering classes immediately reach for the nearest blunt object and begin clubbing the working class.  So what if they need to work 8 more years at an unpleasant job?  Why're they being so lazy?  I'm going to be working when I'm 75, what's wrong with them!?

Well, nothing.  It's not what's wrong with them, it's what's different about our chattering class.  The folks retiring at 62 aren't Times op-ed columnists.  Neither are they my father, a mathematician with a deep and abiding affection for hanging out at his office.  Nor are they Senators (as Bob Dole said, "Inside work, no heavy lifting", or as Strom Thurmond noted, "What?  Speak up, I can't hear you!").  They're folks who've worked at jobs they don't like for 45 years and want to stop.  Prioritizing the repeal of the estate tax above letting the working class escape little-liked occupations while they still have healthy years to enjoy the time off wouldn't just be bad policy, it'd be wholly immoral.  And so John Tierney, no matter how many "truth to power" points he gets for calling retirees lazy and indigent, should be punished for this column.  He thinks Americans aren't getting more lazy, they're just being tricked into it by a pension system that encourages sloth and lolling.  Next time he tries to write it, we should make him prove it.  For each year he wants to raise the retirement age by, he has to spend 365 days as a short-order cook.  On the last day, we can ask him if he'd like to retire from the profession despite his young age.

What do you think he'll say?