Most of the people who retire in Florida are wrinkled or they lean on a crutch…
— from ‘Migration’ by Jimmy Buffet
I’m retired in Florida. I have some wrinkles – but don’t lean on a crutch. Nor did I move to Florida to retire. I’ve lived here all my life.
I’ll get to why the idea of retirement is (to borrow a contemporary phrase) a ‘social construct’ shortly. But first, let’s examine how that ‘construct’ has existed in my lifetime.
Being a Florida native, I’ve been around retirees my whole life. Half the residents of the neighborhood I grew up in (many of whose lawns I mowed) were retirees from ‘up north’. I’ve seen first hand how retirement used to be, compared to how we boomers see it.
The ‘traditional’ chronology of retirement, in post-WWII United States, was to work until age 65, then ride off into the sunset to enjoy your ‘golden years’ while waiting (in Hamlet’s words) “to shuffle off this mortal coil”.
I grew up not far from ‘God’s waiting room’: St Petersburg, Florida. The St. Petersburg Times belatedly acknowledged that nickname in 2004.
For many retirees in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the golden years were spent sitting on the green benches in downtown St. Pete awaiting the next pension or social security check.
From the Tampa Bay Times:
“The city’s era of the green benches officially kicked off in 1916, when Mayor Al Lang set about regulating the color and size of benches that had begun proliferating throughout downtown. St. Petersburg was to become the city of the green benches, which numbered in the thousands at the peak of their popularity.”
Or they spent their time shoving a ceramic disc back and forth on concrete at the ‘World’s Largest Shuffleboard Club’. https://stpeteshuffle.com/ The more energetic played softball in a league that has been competing continuously for 92 years – with a 75-year-old minimum age requirement. https://stpetekidsandkubs.com/ That’s what’s referred to as “active retirement”.
But, according to the results of a Pew Research study, we boomers — particularly those of us with college degrees — are redefining retirement by continuing to work beyond the ‘traditional’ age. That includes me.
I didn’t retire from my full-time State job until age 67, then became a part-time law school professor. A heart attack, followed shortly by COVID, cut my post-retirement professorial ‘career’ short. Now I just teach law to young prosecutors, and fill in at my old State office when they are shorthanded — if I feel like it.
“If I feel like it” is the essence of retirement. Whenever I’m asked “How’s retirement?” by people not yet retired, I always respond, “It beats working for a living!”
To those (lacking a sense of humor) offended by that attitude, I point out that I had my first ‘job’ at 16, and have been totally self-supporting since age 20. I paid into Social Security for 51 years before I collected from it — in addition to contributing to my own 401(k) through voluntary deductions from my salary for 30 years. I’ve earned not having to work unless I feel like it.
But I choose to continue to work — and will as long as my health permits — for a couple of reasons. First, I like the intellectual challenge, and collegial engagement, that my profession affords. Second, I earn extra cash to frivolously spend. I suspect many other boomers share those reasons.
Oh, and there is a third reason that especially appeals to Mrs. Beatty. It gets me out of the house! (You old married guys can grok that.)
But are we boomers really “redefining” retirement as the Pew researchers conclude. How can an invented concept — ‘retirement’ – that did not organically evolve be “redefined”?
It has only been within the past century or so that the idea of sitting on your ass, not working, when you reach an arbitrary age has been an aspiration. My dad ran his business into his 70s, and only gave it up when his mental faculties began to fade.
His predecessors who lived on farms (and distilled bootlegged whiskey) just assumed they’d work the farm until the day they kicked the bucket.
So did most people — simply because since humans have existed, they’ve needed to keep roofs over their heads, and food in their bellies. Continuing to work as long as you could was just a fact of life.
Native Americans who got too old to “chew the leather” wandered away from the village on a cold winter night and unburdened the tribe from having to feed them. That’s the way of nature.
Lions on the Serengetti too hold to hunt and keep up with the pride get left behind and killed by other predators. They don’t kick back, waiting for the pride to feed them.
The idea of everyone retiring (as in ‘not work’) emerged concurrent with industrial labor unions. Unions collaborated with management to retire older workers — making room for younger ones. Unions move older workers out to pasture so younger newly recruited members have jobs — thus expanding membership. Management wants younger workers to replace older ones with seniority who get paid more.
By the mid-20th century that arrangement morphed into the idea that everyone should retire at age 65. The government fostered the idea by handing out free money to anyone reaching that age who chose not to work. The idea of retiring, and getting paid for it, is a modern ‘social construct’.
Eligibility for a government subsidy to sit on your ass begins at even younger ages in socialist countries. Earlier this year violent protests erupted in France, fomented by workers opposed to plans to raise the age of eligibility for a government pension from 62 to 64.
So how are we American boomers “redefining” what has only existed for a “blink of an eye” in terms of human history. Seems to me we are just reverting to nature by continuing gainful employment!
Not to mention that we are better employees…