the corner office

Bit of a blow-up today about the retirement age increasing. Being forced to retire if you're still capable and willing is unfair, but forcing people to work longer, is a far more complex issue. Of course it sucks, but 65 was presumably a fairly arbitrary number anyway - just ask Greeks whose retirement age is lower or Germans whose retirement age is higher. Ask women who get to retire earlier in many countries despite having higher life expectancies and not traditionally doing jobs which entail heavy labour.

So many people are rightfully aggrieved at having to work a year longer in their specific types of careers, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that 65 was that much better for all of them, in the first place. (Thus manifests the suboptimality of the State.)

It goes back to a little rule I've learned in life: people are always disproportionately unhappier about having something taken way, relative to the happiness they got from it, than if they'd never had it in the first place.