The end of American retirement

Cockburn has been mulling over in his mind a gloomy new report about his retirement prospects.

“In a July poll conducted jointly by Axios and Ipsos,” the Hill writes, “29 percent of workers under fifty-five answered a retirement query with, ‘I don’t think I will ever retire.’ Asked why not, three-quarters of the never-retire group said they could not afford to stop working. A smaller share said they didn’t want to.”

With inflation doing a number on folks’ 401ks and future inflation fears rising, Cockburn is not surprised by people’s responses to this poll (except for those who don’t want to stop working — seek mental evaluation). Still, he wonders: what does our future workforce look like if it’s composed of geriatric personnel refusing or unable to retire?

Will our cashiers be past-their-prime Dianne Feinsteins making speeches when they’re just supposed to hand us a couple of coupons? Are our accountants going to be a bunch of Joe Bidens sniffing clients’ heads and calling them by dead people’s names? Will our doctors and lawyers, who can afford it, take on a Nancy Pelosi mystique, their faces defying gravity and unmoving while their dentures rattle away with reckless abandon?

And what will the younger folk do, the generation now gearing up to take the place of the people who aren’t making way for them? Will millions more jobs magically appear for them to do? The most recent jobs report does not suggest so.

Still, Cockburn is not without hope. As the American people watch their decrepit leadership make a mess of the economy with their senile policies, he envisions a future where voters — the sane ones eager to retire, anyway — will come to their senses and elect for a young, fit, more competent candidate with sound economic principles. At least youth turnout is so high these days, right?