Looking at data, it seems that the sedentary-jobbed have a life expectancy of 79.3 while the manual workers have a life expectancy of 75 years. So, there is a difference of 4.3 years (males, UK 2002-2005). It should also be noted that life expectancy for the manual group has gone up about 7 years since 1972-1976 (the sedentary saw a similar 7 year increase).
Governments aren't looking to increase the retirement age to dangle some carrot in front of people they consider too stupid to know better. If life expectancy is going up by 7 years, that means that a pension needs to provide income for more years. That means higher taxes, raising the retirement age, or putting more onus on the individual to save for retirement. There's a genuine question: where would the money come from to give someone a retirement at 50? To provide the average 50 year old male a $50,000 salary for the rest of their life costs over $1M - and that isn't $50,000 adjusted for inflation. What does that come out to per year? Assuming the kind of conservative planning that the government does, over $20,000 pear year. Essentially, we would need a tax of 40% for people to be able to retire at 50 and replace their income for life. Now, maybe 75% income replacement is ok and a 33% tax would do it. But then you have to think about providing inflation adjustments and healthcare for that period and it's just not good. Health costs are rising substantially faster than inflation. Should we lock people into the standard of care at the year of their retirement with newer, more expensive treatments unavailable to them?
There's just a big money issue when it comes to retirement age that's hard to ignore. Ideally, none of us would ever have to work. Unfortunately, that isn't our reality. Not to become too weird, but it's really tragic when you think about it. We're these biological beings trying to strive against what would happen to us if we stopped working to survive. And we've created some awesomeness to make our existence a lot better (medicine, for instance), but it's a thin veil over the harshness of what happens to us in the absence of working to survive. To come back down to earth, it's really crappy that we can't have the same retirement age that we used to have. However, I'm not sure how to go about talking about retirement ages without talking about the money we need to support it. Maybe it's time we raised social security taxes realizing that we don't care as much about iPhones as we do about our retirement. Ultimately, it isn't about governments trying to hurt people, but governments not having the money to offer it.
It should also be noted that a lot of these jobs pay better than similarly skilled jobs that are more sedentary. Construction salaries average $44,630. Office and administrative work averages $34,120. Sales $37,520. Personal Care $24,620. Part of the higher salary might be because of the nature of the work you speak of. The additional money per year could go toward providing an earlier retirement via individual means. I know that most people won't save and that's why I like social security. Maybe we should have a lower retirement age for certain professions along with higher social security and medicare taxes on jobs in those professions.
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I can't imagine how hard it is to lose a parent so young. I'm sorry.