A Modest Proposal

For the members of the editorial page at the Washington Post, Andrew Sullivan, and any of the other advocates of raising the Social Security Retirement age, I will happily arrange for a field trip in which you can spend an eight hour day laying cinder blocks in the 102 degree heat here in DC.  Oh yeah, and then get up the next day and do it again.  Let's say for 40 hours. 

And then when the temperatures drop into the 30s this winter, we can reprise the trip. 

(I was leaving an employer's shop one day following bargaining and there was a pallet of cinder blocks in the yard.  Now I'm pretty good sized -- 6' tall and about 210 pounds and I lift weights pretty regularly -- and I reached down to pick up a block one-handed just to get a sense of its heft and I couldn't budge the damn thing.  It turned out to be a 65 lb. block and it was not only heavy, but awkward and rough as crap. The notion of spending an entire day -- not to say the next 40 or so years -- installing these monstrosities struck me as pretty daunting.)  

These fucking people have no idea what physical work is like and what it does to your body.  I think about my clients and the knee replacements and the back and neck surgeries they endure and the general aches and pains that they experience by the time they are in their middle 50s and I shake my head at this stuff.  Not to mention that there aren't that many employers who are really keen on having say a 68 year old iron worker out on the job.

When I was a teenager I worked in a super market part time and during the summers.  One summer they had me work wrapping meat so that the woman who normally did it could work elsewhere in the store and get some relief for her arthritic hands.  She had been working in the cold for thirty years already at that point, usually six days a week.  When I think about it, she was my age now.  To blithely suggest that this woman should be forced to toil until 70 seems really inhuman to me.    

As for the rationale of increasing life expectancy, I recommend this chart posted by Yglesias concerning the life expectancy among men in different economic groups.  Interestingly, young bloggers like Yglesias and Ezra seem to have a better feel for the reality of this issue than the middle aged assholes at the Post, none of whom -- and I've met many of them -- could last an hour doing the job I described. 

Update: Ugh!  Before I praise Yglesias I should fully read the post.  Although he is good on the issue of raising the retirement age, his notion of providing a lump sum benefit under Social Security for lower income workers is a truly horrible idea.  Sweet Jesus -- talk about not understanding reality.  The virtue of Social Security (and defined benefit pension plans) is that they provide a steady stream of income for life and they can't be pissed away in one fell swoop on a bass boat, a trip to Las Vegas, or at the race track. 

Comments

[litbrit]

These fucking people have no idea what physical work is like and what it does to your body. I think about my clients and the knee replacements and the back and neck surgeries they endure and the general aches and pains that they experience by the time they are in their middle 50s and I shake my head at this stuff.

From your lips to the ears of the paper-shufflers, C.

I've never understood this "what's another few years of work?" attitude coming from those who, as you once put, never lift anything heavier than a coffee cup or a thick file-folder.

This is just a personal (and admittedly peculiar) prejudice of mine, but as someone whose work involves a lot of typing, and who also paints, sews, cooks, does repairs, makes things with my hands, and oh yeah, takes care of messy kids--and is married to someone who to this day, at age 55, works with his hands (and arms and back and legs) all day long--I have a hard time completely trusting people who have those soft, milky-white baby-hands and sport really long fingernails or nice manicures when it comes to matters like this.

They need to first tend bar, wait tables, or do some soux-chef work for a few weeks. Go make a few dozen hotel beds and haul giant bins of other people's dirty sheets to the laundry. Weld a building and climb up and down ladders all day with heavy equipment.

Unbelievable. Andrew Sullivan is for this? Shame on him. He is not a Brit-aristo; he ought to know better.

[Joe]

Andrew Sullivan is, and has always been, a Tory. He's always been opposed to most forms of social insurance. He's the guy who greenlighted the infamous "No Exit" article over at TNR in regard to the Clinton Health Plan. His hero was Margaret Thatcher, another member of the petite bourgeoisie.

We forget that Andrew Sullivan would be very conservative in every other industrialized country. Because he isn't obviously insane, he's regarded as a liberal-leftist in this country. Objectively, he's not on the Left side of the spectrum in this Country or any other when it comes to most things, including expanding or maintaining the social safety net.

[Toast]

Hey, I drive a desk and shuffle code around - one of the more cushy gigs a guy could hope for - and I don't want to see the retirement age raised by a single month. Work sucks. The reward is those few years you get at the end to do whatever the hell you want. A vicious kick to the nuts of anyone who proposes making those years even fewer in number.

[Sir Charles]

Toast,

Yeah, I almost added that to the mix -- when I turn 65, I will have been doing this for forty straight years, which is way more than enough. And even though my hands are embarrasingly soft, I, too, would like to enjoy the pleasures of retirement.

D.

As Joe points out, Sully remains an acolyte of Margaret Thatcher's and a vicious opponent of the Labour Party -- and not because of its support for the Iraq War.

[oddjob]

For myself, I don't have a problem working until 70, but I certainly see your point, Sir C. I can see how mandating that change for everyone punishes most those least able to bear the burden.

In its way this proposal is not unlike Rep. Grayson's assessment of the GOP's stance on health care:

"Don't get sick. But if you do get sick, die quickly."

[Joe]

Sir C, I think it might be time to post a youtube of "Harry Enfield, Tory Boy."

[litbrit]

Forgive me, I didn't mean to suggest that I was prejudiced against people who shuffle paper or have soft hands; what I meant, to be clear, was that I have a hard time trusting people who do when it comes to them saying "Let's raise the retirement age".

I'm agreeing with you, in other words.

And yes, indeed--our Tories (Sullivan) tend to still be rather more left-leaning than the right wing over here.

I'm thinking about that wonderful Sadly, No! Overton Window post. Here, go look and applaud.

[Sir Charles]

D.

I didn't take it as a slap at we soft-handers -- but I agree with the point that retirement at 65 isn't the necessity for we office workers that it is for those doing manual labor. I was merely agreeing with Toast that even given that, I tend to think that doing forty or so years of any kind of work ought to be enough to justify retirement.

Joe,

I was not familiar with Harry Enfield, Tory Boy. That is fabulous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeLSNzEorbI&feature=related

Ha!

[low-tech cyclist]

I worked on a landscaping crew for a couple of summers back in high school. We didn't plant or trim shrubbery; we were the people who, after they've bulldozed all the trees and built the houses in the denuded lots, came through and put down the lawns.

The largest part of the work involved raking the rocks out of the top couple of inches of soil. That's what we did, hour after hour, day after day.

I was in absolutely excellent shape in those years. I'd run three seasons of cross-country, I rode my bicycle everywhere, I was lean and strong and fit.

So when I say it was hard to get through a week of that work unless it had at least one day where an evening thunderstorm kept us from going out the next day, that gives you some idea. How you do that past 50 is beyond me, but some of our crew were well into that age range - old black fellows who were just doing what they had to do to survive. Sure, they should have been asked to work to 70. Fuck that shit.

And I also regularly see what a lifetime of crawling around under and inside food refrigeration and processing equipment has done to my father-in-law's body, how little he's able to enjoy his retirement as a result, and how impossible it would have been for him to work to 63, let alone to 68 or 70 like the Robert J. Samuelsons of the world would like him to.

So every time people casually talk about raising the Social Security eligibility age, I do a slow burn.

I can and almost surely will work until I'm nearly 70, due to various life factors. But I sit at my desk, crunch numbers, and write analyses. None of this is wearing my body out or shortening my lifespan.

The difference between me and guys like Sully and Robert J. Samuelson is that I know not everyone has it so easy. They seem to have completely forgotten this. And so I'd urge them to try Sir Charles' field trip.

Hell, it should be a required course before you're allowed to advocate raising the retirement age.

[Davis X. Machina]

'....and I don't want to see the retirement age raised by a single month. Work sucks."

These plans are being pushed by a bunch of ostensible biblical literalists who all seem to have forgotten that work came into the world as a punishment for sin. (Genesis 3:17)

It's worth noting that the oft-quoted line of Vergil, from Georgics 1, labor omnia vincit, 'work conquers all', is never quoted in its entirety: labor omnia vicit/improbus, et durīs urgēns in rēbus egestās, 'work prevailed in everything, and poverty, pressing in harsh circumstances', referring to time past.

[big bad wolf]

WORK is a four-letter. i'm with toast---don't raise the retirement age by a month. i think we should lower it for folks who do hard labor. right now, someone who has been worn down or beat up by hard work has to struggle on or try to convince an administrative judge that they are disabled.

[minstrel hussain boy]

all through jr. and sr. high school i spent my summers in the melon fields. it was necessary to raise the money for clothes and books, with any left over going to my parents to help do the same for my sisters.

often, we would start out in the wee hours of the morning under lights to avoid the murderous sun of the afternoon. the hoes had to be wielded and weeding was done ruthlessly by hand. the short handled hoe had not yet been banned, so it was moving, reaching and chopping while bent over dramtically.

then picking time we moved up and down the rows with hook knives. cut off the melon, trim the stem, raise up enough to pitch it to the guy behind you then bend back down to move on to the next one. hard. hot. nasty fucking work.

my last two years i worked in the packing shed for canteloupe. they were sorted and crated by size, with crates holding sixteen, twentyfour, and thirtysix, flying down a conveyor belt to the loading dock. my job was to grab off crates of my assigned numbers and stack them four high. since i'm 5'6" that meant the the third crate's top was about eye level and the fourth had to go on top of that one above my head. the belt provided some motion that could be converted into up, so it wasn't a dead lift but the motion of grab, turn (180 degrees) while lifting and place became something we could do in our sleep.

field fresh melons back then were called "hot loads" by the truckers and railroad guys. we worked around the clock to get them on their way to the stores as quickly as possible.

looking back on things, i can see the divisions by age that the work imposed. the young teens did most of the weeding and picking. our backs, knees, and shoulders hadn't given out yet. usually by high school folks had moved up the line by becoming pitchers or shed workers.

a few years in the fields was about the maximum the human body can take.

even though vietnam was at its height when i graduated high school when i thought about a life of "following the fruit" and working the harvests from the border to fresno it made joining up look pretty damned attractive.

that last summer on the dock slinging canteloupe crates left me pretty buffed up. boot camp was a cake walk and even BUDS came pretty easy physically.

the right has been trying to ruin social security since its inception. they will never quit trying. what they hate the most about it is that it works.

the fund would have been fine if congress could have quit looting the trust fund like crackheads with an atm dragging hehind their pickup. it galls me when they describe social security as a "ponzi scheme" because the difference, with mandated participation and good stewardship of surplus, means that the pool of new investors, which is always the downfall of a ponzi, will never disappear.

we are having a candlelight vigil for my young friend at the police station tonight. i haven't written anything about it yet, mainly because the facts of the case have been sparse.

friday morning and the police still haven't given the reason for the initial stop, much less why four officers found it necessary to stomp the kid to death.

it's a delicate and subtle dance we are trying to do. pressure. pressure. pressure.

of course, i'm like the last person i would call when i need delicate and subtle.

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

During the construction boom a few years back (and how we miss it) there were some major commercial jobs that started going with six twelve hour shifts a week in order to meet their deadlines. In some of those places, meth became a problem because workers turned to it to get them through the physical challenges associated with the work. The book "Methland" talks about this sort of thing in the meat packing plants in Iowa. It is very hard to spend forty or more hours a week out in withering heat doing manual labor.

I remember doing some work for HVAC guys in Arizona a number of years ago to help win them the right to retire earlier and they described what it's like to work in an attic space installing a system where the temperature is 150 degrees. One can literally die doing that kind of work.

Davis,

The irony is that many of these people -- I'm thinking of the WaPO types -- are people who would describe themselves as secular liberals. But they literally don't know anyone who works with his or her hands for a living. I am not exaggerating here. If you asked them to name friends who perform manual labor for a living they would not be able to name one and a fair number come from families where no one has done such work for a couple of generations.

[oddjob]

I did such work in my 20's. I worked at an azalea/rhododendron production nursery. I haven't since I was 29.

[big bad wolf]

the generational problem really aggravates the situation. so too does the sense of entitlement that "knowledge" workers seem to have. it's not just that they don't get the physical toll of labor, they also don't get that they discount the work of people who work "for" them."

i don't know what i am going to do with my kids when they get older. i suppose they should do some unpaid internship at some foundation to save the world or do justice, like nice upper-middle class kids are supposed to, but i don't know that they will learn anything important.
i hated pumping gas in the winter at the top of an unsheltered hill. i didn't really have fun cleaning meat cases (and getting shocked every time you plug the little fans back in), scrubbing floors, and cleaning bathrooms at the grocery store, but janitorial work paid better than most jobs a student can get. i liked moving furniture better, but even then i knew that was a job for the young; the guys i worked with looked a lot older than my (engineer) dad, who was younger than half of them. but i got from those jobs a sense of how hard people in all sorts of jobs work, how much restraint they exercise, and how much effort they put in to do things right, even though doing things right will never get them a vacation beyond their backyard in medford or everett. i'm not sure you learn that being a "knowledge" worker.

[big bad wolf]

OT, but the fifth circuit was what i feared it would be.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100708/bs_nm/us_oil_spill

[kathy a.]

oh, bbw -- fuck that. i bow to your superior and intimate knowlege of the 5th, but have to wonder if they felt the heat was off because a revised moratorium is in the works.

MHB, it seems astonishing that so little information has been released. thinking of the family and all affected by this monsterous tragedy.

what were we talking about? oh, retirement. it's just nuts to think that people can do heavy physical work or repetitive work forever -- our bodies aren't designed to do that. and i don't know if these geniuses have noticed, but it's not exactly a cakewalk for people to switch careers, say, in their 50's -- less so when there is such high unemployment and so much competition.

[JaB]

Say it- although my preferred test would be sprinklers. Keep those arms up! I asked the sprinkler guy why his people were the most expensive on the jobsite- he said it was because they had to retire the men at 20 years- their bodies were shot. 20 years! That leaves, what, 25 years or so with torn up shoulders?

The devaluation of work over the years- it's the worst thing that's happened to this country.

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

I'll take a slightly different tack WRT changing SS ages.

My work is nothing like repetitive labor in most respects with one exception, I do a lot of walking. In my line, if there are roads where you are going, you probably are wasting your time. That is not to say I have not revisited many places worked previously, but even then the only way you can really see the rocks is to walk. You have to collect them as well. So at the end of the day I am usually carrying around 30 kilos that I didn't start out with.

I have spent time in almost all environments from the tropics to the arctic, from deserts to high mountains.
It doesn't get any easier. But I don't want to stop doing it. I would just like to get paid for doing it a little more regularly.

Most of you may not remember that there used to be a US income tax alternative called income averaging, where if you made a bundle in one year, and then virtually nothing for a couple of years you could average the income over that term and pay a lower rate on a smaller portion of the total income spread over the total time. That was a good thing, and a life saver for me. Sometime during a stint in the 1980s when I was developing my first real discovery prospect I was making some steady money and didn't use the averaging, so I was shocked when that all went away and I found it was no longer an option.

So then I had to adjust and learn some new ropes. It still didn't work all that well. One year I might make $300k and for the next two nothing. I could only invest in things that were liquid enough that I could cash out when the drought was at its worst.

Six years ago I started on the project I am currently working on. Within less than a year the original backers had bailed out and I was short a fair chunk of back pay, but the interesting thing was some of the parties here in Brasil who actually owned the licenses and titles to the prospect offered me a deal to become an owner. I took it. So for the last five years I have been working away at this enigma on a penurious budget, and schilling to prospective buyers who roll in every two months or so. In the interim we go back out in the bush and sample more drainages, once in a while drill a few holes to collect cores, and wear out a focao a year. When I came back here in 2005 I never dreamed I would remain this long.

So the upshot of my slant on the age of qualification issue is just this, even for some people who have cushy jobs like mine, the thing that matters is having some income no matter what so that you don't have to spend your capital. I have already spent all of mine due to the past 5 years drought. I am hoping to somehow make it another year or so to collect early retirement benefits and at least keep my home in the US. I really can't stop working on this project, not yet at least.

One more point that might have bearing. As a sole proprietor I always paid the full amount of SS and Medicade taxes on my income, it was never shared with an employer because I always worked as a contractor. I don't mention this to demean those lucky enough to have an employer and work for a company (some snark there), but just to say it is not like I am not looking for a return on my investment of the past 35 years in those programs.

Take $400 billion out of defense spending and plunk it into jobs, repair the roads and bridges, upgrade the power grid, build affordable simple homes instead of McMansions, stop fighting useless wars off the books.

I have to get back to work...

[Sir Charles]

JaB,

I do a ton of work for the sprinkler fitters. And you're right -- it is very hard on the shoulders. And the sheet metal guys have problems with their wrists and forearms. Ditto the rodbusters. Backs as well.

KN,

You seem like you clearly have the most unusual job of our little community.

I, too, have paid both halves of Medicare and Social Security for the last seventeen years, so I do know the bite that can take. Like you, however, I remain totally devoted to both programs.

[beckya57]

I've spent most of my career in desk jobs as a mental health professional. Hands down, the hardest work I've ever done was a mercifully brief stint as a chambermaid while in high school and a couple of years as a floor nurse. I'm really glad to have had those experiences, since they give me perspective on what really hard physical labor is like. Nursing is a special case; I can't think of any other job that is physically, emotionally and mentally demanding the way that nursing is. I'm amazed anyone can do it long term. My husband worked in rehab for many years and saw how beat up people who do physical labor get. Our elites need to get a fucking clue. I am really sick of all of them.

[big bad wolf]

i bet that's not true, mhb. i bet that just as you are called upon to be subtle yet strong in your playing, you can be that in keeping the pressure on. too much pressure blows out; continuous proper pressure sustains and draws out. the hard part is to keep it up after the silence has ended, after the stories are harmonized. good luck

[Sir Charles]

Becky,

My mom was a nurse of several decades and I know it can be physically grueling. She worked for a time on the neurological ward, which was both physically and mentally exhausting.

And yes, our elites are clueless.

[beckya57]

Neuro is indeed very tough; head-injured pts can be aggressive and otherwise difficult to work with. I was mostly in cardiac, which isn't a bed of roses either: pts can go downhill fast. Also med-surg, which is just endless backbreaking work.

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

SC- I like to think I am socially responsible. When all is said and done I might get my whole investment back including a half way decent interest rate factored in, if I live that long. I figure I will have to live to be 72 to break even on a 3.5% ROI. I have become increasingly wary and circumspect since my last close brush with death so I think my odds are pretty good but to get a break from the bush I do have to ride in a vehicle for ~8 hours and that is the biggest single risk I take, I guess.

Yes my job is pretty unusual, not only here (this blog) but everywhere. It probably would not be very interesting to expound upon it. I am fortunate though (I prefer that word to luck though there is little difference) in that I don't think I could have found a more perfect fit for my disposition if I could have sat down and designed it.

Not every day or even every week but on a fairly regular basis I learn something completely new to me, and it may even new to everyone. I have no way of knowing really because I am isolated from the literature of my field but I don't find that very important. In a sense I am an anachronism because I am using outdated methods in an age of whiz bang technology, but they still work and are all I can afford on the budget I have.

I have an interesting surround as well. Everyone I work with is 30 or more years younger than me. I don't know them very well because of the language barrier but in some ways that doesn't matter at all. I think they mostly regard me with a kind of respectful pity. The feeling is actually almost mutual.

I think after 5 years most of my associates have gotten over the idea that I might go away forever next week, but that is the reality. Sooner or later it will happen. I am sure it will happen, what I don't know is whether when I leave for the last time I will go away with a sense of satisfaction, a sense of frustration, or a sense of desolation knowing I wasted all this time and effort on an idea that ultimately turned out to be wrong.

One would think I must be a very competitive person but I am not. I have no interest per se in games, be it chess, go, or trivial pursuits. Trying to peel back a layer of skin on the unknown is not really a probabalistic thing, it is preordained. Something is or isn't what you think it is. The joy, the motivation, is in finding out.

My empathy for those whose labors are disfiguring and demoralizing comes not so much from being able to identify with them, but to recognize that suffering is not alone, a quality unto itself. Some characters evolve from it that are indescribable by even the most inspired descriptions.

[janinsanfran]

I worked construction from about 25 to my mid 40s. Now I've sat at a computer most days for 20 years. I still don't really consider this present life "working" and I am immensely grateful that organizing skills enabled me to leave heavy lifting!

[mrgumby2u]

I carried mail for four years when I was in my twenties. By the time I was done I had plantar fascitis in both feet (from the walking) and an inflamed neck (from constantly looking to and reaching to my right while doing mounted deliveries. With a college education I had options most letter carriers and clerks don't have, otherwise I never would have lasted to retirement age, whether it's 55, 62, or 65.

Aside from that, what are people who lose their jobs in their late 50s or early 60s and will never be hired again supposed to do?

[Sir Charles]

To quote the inestimable James McMurtry:

Let 'em jelly beans, let 'em eat cake,
let 'em eat shit, whatever it takes,
They can join the Army or join the Corps
if they can't make it here anymore.