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I keep seeing this "living to 150" BS but the actuarial tables are no where near that. Longevity growth has moved like a snail. It may reverse given the waning fortunes of middle class people in most developed countries. Waning fortunes = shorter life expectancy.
Some people want to keep on working till they die at their desk. And that's OK. If you love your job and you want to keep on, great! I can understand professionals like doctors, lawyers, architects wanting to continue working in a field they love.
But there are also scads of us who look at work like a 30 year prison term. 30 years with good behavior and you are out the door. Good for you too! There is nothing wrong with putting in your time and leaving.
I just don't want to be forced one way or the other. 150...I will believe that when I see it! And so far it's not even on the event horizon. Maybe it will happen and maybe not. I can remember hearing about this when I was in my 20's. There have been modest increases in longevity but nothing huge like 150. This would be great as long as the quality of those years is good. When it happens we can renegotiate the whole retirement age question. But it's worthless if all it gives me is an additional 60 years of existing as a vegetable!
If a person can make the numbers work after putting in 30 years then have at it. But attachment to arbitrary years-of-duty numbers has resulted in many an impoverished elder eating crummy food and having no life.
Well, surely there are people who work from age 18 to age 65 which is 47 years.
And surely there are people who work from age 18 to age 68 which is 50 years.
And people who work from 22 to 68 which is 46 years.
E.R., not sure why you say 40 years - when so many people work from college graduation at age 22 to full retirement age at age 67 or 68......which is 45 yrs and 46 yrs of working.
My folks were in tech. Both started to work full time at 22. Then 50 years of solid employment. Then some consulting after that.
The headline said "Maybe" you should never retire. Maybe you should and maybe you shouldn't.
Also, the illustration in the article on the OP showed an artisan working on something creative, likely in his own studio, on his own terms, doing something he loved where he can extend his creativity. He's also likely dressed in a way that he feels comfortable.
The work world (and the prospect of retirement) looks very different with autonomy than it does with every move being scrutinized and micromanaged.
I did a google search of the young whipper snapper author. He's lived in many places all over the world. Seems to me he's more of a blogger type. Let's see how he feels in 35 years. I'm perfectly happy being retired at 61. Headed to Alaska for the first time on Friday. I wouldn't be doing that if I was "working."
Anyway, it's about financial freedom. Once you reach it, then if you want to keep doing what you were doing..have at it! Then there must be no other place in the universe you'd rather be!!
I asked my wife if she thought that we should go back to work so that we could become more energized. I'll just say that her words and look were a definite No vote on that subject.
When Christian missionaries first went to Japan and tried to tell the peasants the promise of eternal life, the peasants recoiled in horror. It was the worst thing imaginable - to live forever their life of back-breaking labor and suffering. Their only hope was to someday die a clean death.
In these modern times, I wonder about workers in chicken processing plants, computer assembly lines, seasonal farm workers, and others toiling in the near slavery conditions of some foreign countries.
How would they react to being told they should work forever because they would suffer in retirement without that job to give their life some meaning?
Love my career, hate the current work environment. I'll retire in a year maybe two max, because 35 years has taken its toll. I see this as a chance to reinvent myself and try new experiences, which may include some work. I see retirement as the next step earned through hard work. I worked, I saved, now its me time.
All these numbers made me check mine. This year will make 43 years total that I have SS income, 38 full time, 37 in my field. No gaps. I took a 3 week vacation in the late 80s; all other breaks under 2 weeks. So if I work 6 more it will be 44 full time years. I am ready now.
The problem with SENS proponents like De Gray is that they almost never address the fact that we don't really understand how advancing age causes increasing risk for those pesky things that tend to kill you - heart disease, cancer, stroke, dementia, etc. In fact, we cannot even prove that telomeres have anything to with it, in most cases. We are left guessing.
Sure they can argue that cell toxicity and those factors are responsible, but that is far too vague as a causal explanation and does not really allow one to definitively claim that controlling those factors in a specific way will necessarily lead to a doubled lifespan.
To draw an analogy, in 1950 you could have argued that everyone who dies of CHF succumbed due to the fact that "their pump went out". All we need to do is give them a new pump, that is, some sort of improved heart-lung machine, and then CHF will no longer be a death sentence.
But here we are, almost 70 years later, with people STILL dying of CHF by the thousands, every single year.
If we can't go from there to there in 70 years, what makes you think SENS, which is far more ambitious, is any less of a pipe dream?
The problem with SENS proponents like De Gray is that they almost never address the fact that we don't really understand how advancing age causes increasing risk for those pesky things that tend to kill you - heart disease, cancer, stroke, dementia, etc. In fact, we cannot even prove that telomeres have anything to with it, in most cases. We are left guessing.
Sure they can argue that cell toxicity and those factors are responsible, but that is far too vague as a causal explanation and does not really allow one to definitively claim that controlling those factors in a specific way will necessarily lead to a doubled lifespan.
To draw an analogy, in 1950 you could have argued that everyone who dies of CHF succumbed due to the fact that "their pump went out". All we need to do is give them a new pump, that is, some sort of improved heart-lung machine, and then CHF will no longer be a death sentence. But here we are, almost 70 years later, with people STILL dying of CHF by the thousands, every single year.
If we can't go from there to there in 70 years, what makes you think SENS, which is far more ambitious, is any less of a pipe dream?
Your points are valid, but I think the answer is that those rare individuals who make it over 100 in reasonably good health and eventually suffer some organ failure or trauma from a fall or whatever rather than succumbing to some dread disease might not have "the parts wear out" in that span if they did not have the degenerative cell production problems. Making it possible for some lucky individuals to live much longer may only require fixing one problem (if they are on the right track) but for it to become the norm they have to fix a lot of problems.
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