Some Thoughts on Retirement and Social Security

A few days ago I attended back-to-back retirement parties. In one case, a full professor who had been serving as the head of an academic center was leaving my university after serving for over thirty years. In the other, a much-loved secretary was returning to Ohio after having been with us for over a decade.
One thing these events had in common is that they provided me an opportunity to visit with many former colleagues who had previously retired. In doing so, I was usually asked about my own plans. Did I likewise expect to retire? To this my answer was always an emphatic No! I enjoyed what I was doing too much to step down voluntarily.
But then I generally launched into a gentle diatribe against retirement. Going into retirement, I opined, was entering the anteroom to death. It was giving up those activities that made life worth living, only to do something like playing golf or going fishing. The latter were surely too boring to keep any rational mind actively engaged.
My colleagues usually replied by explaining that they did not intend to vegetate. They planned on scheduling more than enough to do and therefore expected to remain happy. What was more, who needed the hassle of departmental meetings or inane bureaucratic rules?
I then responded by expanding on how much I personally enjoy the classroom. The stimulus of dealing with both students and ideas is too agreeable to give up. And besides, the joy of oppressing students is too great to relinquish.
To this the rejoinder was frequently that thirty or more years of doing the same thing were more than enough. My colleagues explained that they had earned their freedom and now expected to take advantage of it. Things would surely work out just fine.
What I did not say, because my goal was not to insult these friends, was that if they were in a rut, this was partially their own fault. If they hated what they were doing, why didn’t they move on to something different? And because so many of them were college professors, why didn’t they just adopt research projects that would bring more fulfillment?
Another subject that did not come up in these conversations, but was surely relevant is the current crisis in social security. As almost everyone who has investigated the situation must realize, this program is liable to go broke in the not too distant future. The number of persons who will shortly be eligible to receive a check will be greater than the number of dollars coming in to honor them.
Where once the average age at which people died was less than sixty-five, today it is upwards of seventy-five. Instead of most people expiring before they are able to collect a dime from the federal treasury, most are living for over a decade past when they become a public charge. This means that the number of active workers paying into the system to support each retiree has shrunk to the point that the ratio will momentarily be a mere two for one.
In fact, during the Reagan administration an attempt was made to remedy this imbalance. The retirement age was actually ramped up to sixty-seven. Unfortunately it was also made possible for people to begin receiving benefits at age sixty-two. All they had to do was agree to accept a reduced benefit.
This compromise, however, has proved unsustainable. The numbers simply do not add up. The time has therefore come to raise the retirement age once again. As for me, I suggest that the age of seventy-two would be a reasonable figure. Having almost reached the age of seventy myself, I can testify that most of us in this category remain both mentally and physically fit. We are thus perfectly capable of remaining among the fully employed.
If premature retirement is less necessary than it once once, why should we revere an arbitrary benchmark from an earlier period? All we need to do to maintain fairness is make the proposed changes applicable to those who are currently fifty-five or younger. In this way we can avoid breaking a pledge to those who have already organized their senior years around the old figures.
As for me, postponing retirement is no hardship. I was not planning on stepping down anyway. With respect to my colleagues, they too are capable of doing what their personal dissatisfactions have persuaded them they do not wish to do. Despite their reservations, they will survive quite comfortably even if their retirement parties are pushed back a few years.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University