Retirement Age Dissolved

You planned to retire at 65. You won't. Retirement age raised to 67. Then 69. Soon 72. Soon never. You'll work until body fails. Then subsist on insufficient pension. Then die broke.

This isn't cruelty. This is mathematics. System promised pension funded by future workers. 1960, six workers per retiree. 2023, 2.1 workers per retiree. 2040, 1.4 workers per retiree projected. One worker cannot fund their own life plus support one dependent plus pay system overhead. Math impossible.

Either cut benefits, political death. Or raise taxes, economic death. Or extend working years, slow death. They chose slow death. Your death.

Pension funds promised 7% annual returns. Actually delivering 3%. Shortfall compounds. Cannot cut benefits, retirees vote, riot, sue. Cannot raise contributions, workers maxed out paying 15% of salary already. Cannot grow investments faster, returns driven by economic growth that isn't happening. Only option, delay payout. Extend retirement age. You work longer, receive benefits fewer years, die sooner after retiring.

Started working at 22. Expected retire at 65. Forty-three years work, fifteen years retirement. Now retire at 72. Fifty years work, eight years retirement if you live to 80. Most don't. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, decades of stress and poor diet and inadequate healthcare. You'll work fifty years to retire three years before dying.

Meanwhile pension amount decreasing. Inflation adjustment capped at 2% while actual inflation runs 6%. Benefits erode 4% annually in real terms. Receive $2,400 monthly in pension. Sounds adequate. Inflation-adjusted purchasing power, $1,600. Rent costs $1,800. You're negative before utilities, food, medicine.

Healthcare repricing simultaneously. Aging population requires expensive care. Resources insufficient. Rationing inevitable. Already happening through wait times. Need hip replacement, wait eighteen months. Need cancer screening, wait nine months. Need specialist consultation, wait twelve months. Each delay worsens outcome. Some die waiting. Others deteriorate to point where treatment ineffective. System counts these as cost savings.

Two-tier healthcare emerging. Wealthy buy private. Everyone else queues public. Public deteriorates yearly. Budget cuts. Staff shortages. Outdated equipment. Longer waits. Lower quality. You queue six months for surgery that takes two hours. Wealthy get same surgery within two weeks at private facility. Same doctors, they work both systems. Private patients pay premium. Public patients wait.

AI triage implemented. Cheaper than doctors. Algorithm evaluates symptoms, assigns priority, schedules appointments. Accurate for obvious cases. Misses subtleties. You're classified low priority. Actually serious condition. Discovered too late. Now terminal instead of treatable. Algorithm made statistical decision. You became statistic.

Resource allocation questions emerging. Should society spend $400,000 keeping 80-year-old alive two more years? Versus spending that amount on four younger patients? Versus preventive care for twenty people? Ethics boards discuss this. Quietly. In policy papers. Preparing framework for explicit rationing.

You're 75. Need expensive treatment. Costs $150,000. Extends life three years probably. Algorithm calculates, cost per quality-adjusted life year exceeds threshold. Treatment denied. Not explicitly, just delayed indefinitely. Die waiting. Recorded as natural causes. Was allocation decision.

Elderly warehoused efficiently. Nursing homes understaffed. Two aides for forty residents. Minimum care. Feed, clean, medicate, repeat. No enrichment. No dignity. No comfort. Just maintenance until death. You saved forty years for retirement. Spend it immobilized in chair, watching television, eating pureed food, waiting for shift change. Die six months after admission. Pneumonia. Could have been treated. Wasn't worth cost apparently.

Your children inherit nothing. Spent everything on your final care. Nursing home costs $8,000 monthly. Medicare covers $4,000. You pay $4,000 from savings. Savings depleted in four years. Then Medicaid. Then state seizes assets to recover costs. House sold. Proceeds taken. Children get remainder, $23,000 after legal fees and taxes. Forty years accumulation. Gone.

Work until 72. Retire broke. Deteriorate quickly. Enter facility. Deplete assets. Die. Leave nothing. Next generation repeats. Each starting from zero. Wealth accumulation impossible when lifespan repriced.

System doesn't need you old. Needs you working. Paying taxes. Consuming minimally. Dying efficiently. Extended lifespan without extended healthspan creates costs. You're expensive after 70. Non-productive. Requiring services. Consuming resources. Better if you died at 73 instead of 83. System optimizes toward this quietly.

Euthanasia discussions expanding. "Medical assistance in dying." Available for terminal illness. Then chronic pain. Then mental suffering. Then disability. Then poverty. Eventually encouraged for elderly who became burden. Not mandatory, just incentivized. Hospital suggests it. Doctor mentions it. Family hints at it. You're 78, in pain, poor, isolated. Maybe they're right. Maybe you should.

This is lifespan repricing. Work longer. Retire poorer. Die faster. Leave nothing. Next generation repeats. System optimizes for minimal elderly care cost. You're cost to be minimized. Retirement is expense to be eliminated.

You planned to retire at 65. You won't. You'll work until you break. Then you'll subsist. Then you'll die. Quickly, if system functions properly.