Posted on 12/08/2010 4:20:42 PM PST by MamaDearest
No, just call it “Recycling and Reincarnation” or R+R.
“They retire, stop working, and bam, they stop living.”
Who can forget how Bear Bryant died three weeks after retiring as Alabama coach?
Of course, then you have cases like Robert Byrd, who really was totally out of it by the end and should not have been reelected to his last term in 2006. But even though he was a senile mess in his last years who required a team of nurses and assistants to get him going in the morning, the West Virginia voters evidently still felt that he served a useful purpose in keeping the flow of pork going.
Yeah, because the job market for individuals who've grown old is just so vast. To put it kindly, the elderly tend to be infirm, and the older they get the greater the infirmities in both number and severity. For most of human history as you put it, medicine was primitive so people tended to die soon after they lost their ability to be productive. That is no longer the case. You can easily live 20 years beyond your productive years.
Most really ambitious people never retire, or if they do, they die soon afterwards because they lose their sense of purpose (ie. one’s job becoming their identity)
“For most of human history as you put it, medicine was primitive so people tended to die soon after they lost their ability to be productive. That is no longer the case. You can easily live 20 years beyond your productive years.”
Kind of makes you wonder what’s the point of modern medicine allowing people to live longer if it can’t help them remain productive?
Personally, I’m looking forward to no longer being productive.
I think I'll "run" ... and "Sandmen" take warning: I also shoot.
That’s the problem though; how do you enjoy yourself if you’re old and slow and physically frail? I guess it’s less of a problem if you’ve got lotsa money to enjoy your retirement, but many poorer people literally have nothing to do.
I suppose if I had a great, crazy family to live with, it wouldn’t be too bad. Living alone or in a nursing home would be awful, though.
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