Changing Retirement, Considered Within the Box
Enforced retirement by regulatory decree is a great injustice, one of the many perpetrated by government employees around the world. It must go - and retirement as an institution is clearly unsustainable in a world of increasing healthy longevity. But most people think about this issue within the box: change government regulations on retirement, don't remove regulation and let it be the choice of the individual. Sad. Here is an example from Maria Konovalenko: "schools of thought on this from biogerontologists and longevity experts including myself believe that the focus should be about making the elderly population less of a burden on the healthcare system and more productive in the workforce for longer periods of time through a global initiative on combating aging. To truly combat this crisis, a mass-scale collaborative effort similar in size to the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Project is needed so that the mechanisms that cause us to age can be identified and better understood. ... The other way to tackle this problem could be through initiating a change in retirement policies where retirement would be dependant upon biological causes as opposed to chronological age. Insurance companies could pay for appropriate medical testing to determine health status, which would be an important measure in itself. Under this scenario, individuals would be more motivated to keep their health optimized because good health would be more valuable in terms of earning potential as compared to a small monthly pension."
The current and recent goings on in France and Greece make it clear that earning potential and optimal health are not high priorities for compliant citizens of the welfare state.