When I entered the workplace, 65 was the mandatory retirement age, and vigorous employees in their early 60's were always bitching about being forced into retirement. Well, they eventually got their way, and millions who never wanted to work longer than 65 later got screwed for life because of changes to mandatory retirement ages.
However, a couple months after I began working, my department got a new manager who had served in the US Navy for 20 years, just long enough to get his pension. I thought that was great. Ultimately through disability, I actually was able to retire after laboring for less time than that Navy retiree did.
So being "crazy" is what actually spared me from having to slave away for 70 years.
Meanwhile, my girlfriend who I helped earn her PharmD went over $150,000 into debt and got her doctorate when she was older than I was when I qualified for SSDI. Despite a six figure starting pay, the combination of crushing student debt and ongoing expenses means she's stuck working for the next generation, doomed to work until she dies unless she really scrimps and saves. (As recently as 1976, all one had to do to become a registered pharmacist was pass a competency exam. Today, they require everybody to first have a doctorate AND board certification to become a registered pharmacist, forcing them to go hundreds of thousands into debt to qualify. My girlfriend says going to college was the biggest mistake of her life, that she should have remained in bartending and stayed debt free. Turns out that decades before we met, both of us had tended bar in our 20's. College is a major scam and ripoff.)
