this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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You're accidentally tapping into the problem here. Wealthy Americans can and often do retire very early, enjoying decades of comfortable retirement. That is made possible by the people who break their bodies for very little pay and who get little or no opportunity to retire at all.
It's pretty bad everywhere. But in the US it is especially obscene, thanks to the lack of universal healthcare and the enormous disparity between pay at the top and bottom, and the leaky to non-existent safety nets.
I don't know how you manage to grasp half of that picture without apparently even realising that the rest of it must exist.
If you want to propose that the US should have better healthcare and other social safety nets, you’ll get no argument from me. If you’d like to propose that the wealthiest should pay for these things via taxes (or other lawful disincentives), I’ll agree with that too.
But depending on how left or right you consider yourself then a significantly reduced, government sponsored, retirement age is a more complicated question. Someone on the right might tell you that an earlier retirement is a reward for the effort and ingenuity you expended through your life. Likewise, someone on the left might argue that you have a responsibility to be a productive member of society for as long as you are able. Even moreso if you are particularly talented. I, personally, believe that there is plenty of room for diversity of outcome without compromising equality of opportunity.
My only point in my first couple comments was more than a decade of government retirement is not only possible but also likely for anyone in the US that makes it through their heart-attack years in their 50s, and that retirement earlier than that is possible based on education, career, choices, and luck. As illustrated by the fact that just over 50% of the US population is retired at 55. Everything after that was just antagonizing a troll. Which I find hilarious. YMMV.