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Comment by chatwinra | Hacker News Reader

For me, this is the most important aspect of this paper:

"People say, ‘Americans are living longer, so we ought to delay the age of retirement,’ but … it’s a little bit unfair to say to low-income people that they’re going to get Social Security and Medicare for fewer years because investment bankers are living longer.”"

As the divide between the rich and poor keeps growing [1], we need to start doing something about it in all areas, and this seems like a really important finding for that.

[1]http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/employment/in-it-together-why-l...

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They already DO get SS for fewer years, and are forced to pay into it for more years, because wealthy bankers can afford to retire earlier than people who live paycheck to paycheck.

Social Security in its current formulation (not means-tested, cap on income which is taxable for it) is pretty regressive.

Means-testing would probably lead to Social Security being killed by the cap on income should go.

Can you please explain to me what a hedge fund manager in Connecticut retiring at 35 has to do with a 60 year old Wal-Mart employee's social security?

At 62, the hedge fund manager is eligible for social security, on top of the capital gains he's been living off of comfortably for the prior 27 years. The Wal-Mart employee may never be able to afford to stop working because of the penalty on income over the minimum. That's how the system is set up.

> They already DO get SS for fewer years, and are forced to pay into it for more years, because wealthy bankers can afford to retire earlier than people who live paycheck to paycheck.

The Wal-Mart greet is not forced to pay into SS because of the hedge fund manager's wealth.

The fact that one person can retire early does not exacerbate the financial problems of someone else.

The origin of social security/pensions in France was that they set the retirement age at 70, an age 1-2% of the population made it to. (My link actually claims Germany, I can't find the French data and I'm on mobile so the intrepid reader may set out on an exploration of the pension system from here.

In such a system, the tax burden of sure porting the population is obviously minimal.

As standards of living and life expectancy improved, the proportion of people making it to pension age increased, and the pension age decreased (generally in line with expansion of social welfare programs, as well as a recognition that retirement was more of a right than a privilege for those who lasted long enough).

Is it so wrong for pension ages to creep up? Demographics certainly had. I for one expect to be working for my entire lifespan (although as a doctor this is probably easier for me than many other professions)

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension

You could easily live to ninety. If that happens, you expect to be working until ninety?

I expect to work until I drop. And to be enjoying it

According to the original article, life expectancy differences "were not significantly correlated with access to medical care, physical environmental factors, income inequality, or labor market conditions."

https://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2513561

So in fact doing something about the "divide between the rich and poor" is unlikely to help. It might even be counterproductive if it reduces income (which is highly correlated) and if this effect is causal.

The point you're referring to relates specifically to geographic differences.

From the results section: "inequality in life expectancy increased over time. Between 2001 and 2014, life expectancy increased by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women in the top 5% of the income distribution, but by only 0.32 years for men and 0.04 years for women in the bottom 5% (P < .001 for the differences for both sexes)."

So I think the co-authors had a point when they talked about retirement age!

See Figure 8 for numbers on "Population-weighted univariate Pearson correlations estimated between local area characteristics and race- and ethnicity-adjusted expected age at death for 40-year-olds in the bottom income quartile."

The CIs for income inequality (as well as health care factors and local labor market conditions) do not exclude zero.

But life expectancy in many countries that are poorer than the US is higher, so it's not absolute wealth that matters either.

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.ht...

I suspect that genetics (not measured by this study) and lifestyle factors (big according to this) are probably the dominant factors.

I expect that Delhi/Shanghai magnitude physical environment factors is also important. But luckily the US is a lot cleaner.

I'm not 100% against raising the retirement age, but it would be a lot easier on me to work until I'm 70 than, say, a garbage collector or builder.

Yeah, realistically those people are not going to be able to work till they're 70.

While office work is less demanding in certain aspects, it can be quite destructive in other ways, if you are not careful:

- circulatory issues (hypertension, due to lack of exercise),

- obesity,

- back issues,

- repetitive stress injuries, etc.

All of these could keep you from working.

Exercise and proper diet are key, regardless of your social status. The problem is that lower-status people usually don;t have the knowledge or don't care.

It is entirely reasonable to assume that the average office worker could continue working into their late 60s and 70s. Obviously there will be exceptions and many will not, but the majority certainly can. You're not going to have 80% attrition among management because of RSI and obesity.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone fit and healthy enough to be a garbage collector from age 18 to age 70, even if they're the one driving the truck.

> The problem is that lower-status people usually don;t have the knowledge or don't care.

Or, just maybe, don't have the money or the free time.

Let's not introduce victim mentality here.

- gym memberships start from $10/month (optional, there are plenty of body-weight exercises you can do outside of gym).

- running costs nothing (in recurring fees).

- all you need is 1 hr/day, 3-4 times a week.

It is all really about knowledge and motivation.

I am not saying it is easy, but it has nothing to do with money.

1 hr/day, 3-4 times a week can be an enormous amount of time, especially when you are juggling children, work, and commuting. Higher income people can manage this more easily--often their work hours are more flexible, and the very high income can staff out their child care.

And lower income people are more likely to have jobs that require physical activity to begin with. Exercising is a lot harder if you've already been on your feet all day.

So it is not all about knowledge and motivation and while it may have little to do with money, it has a lot to do with available time.

It really varies. Most people I know in blue collar jobs work 40 hours/week and are free to do what they want after 5pm. They don't take their work home. It is usually the "exempt" professionals - lawyers, doctors, McKinsey consultants who work overtime (because they have to or they think they have to).

In theory true, but in practice, the difference between being unable to work and unable to be hired due to ageism is very small.

If, for example, you're unhirable over 50 for all practical purposes, even if you can do the work until you're 70, its somewhat cruel to use that as a justification to raise the retirement age to 70.

There are stamina issues to consider. My grandmother liked knitting; in theory her retirement age should have been 85 because she was knitting until at least then when the arthritis hit too hard, but in practice she wouldn't live thru a single 12 hour shift at a textile mill, not that it matters because almost all the jobs are gone, and what very few remain would not go to an 85 year old woman. Likewise I am a pretty good software dev but I don't think I could produce under subpar conditions like an open office; its not that I can't program, its that I can't program there.

Some garbage collectors are very sloppy in their job just after hours, not years.. Especially when the heap is too big. :-/

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