The Wall Street Journal and the Rosy "End of Retirement" Article. A repeating theme.

On one hand, you can read in the New York Times about how there's a growing number of while collar men in their 50s who have permanently dropped out of the work place.

And you can also read about how suicide in the US is growing, in part because of a sense of alienation with our cubicle society.  The BBC has published a recent article about how the youngest generation of the Japanese is building a "solo" culture in which people simply live alone.

Presidential candidate Andrew Yang warns that we're about to displace so many workers do to automation that we'll have to go to a Universal Basic Income because we're about to forcibly retire a bunch of the work force.

Well, the rosy Wall Street Journal, in contrast, comes out with this:

THE END OF RETIREMENTThe conventional wisdom—save enough to retire at age 65—won’t work for the generation starting their careers today, writes columnist John D. Stoll.t took about six years of annual asset reviews with my financial planner, Joe Mackey, to confront a big question. After I spent my entire adult life trying to save enough to quit working by 65, Mr. Mackey wanted to know what my rush was. 

“Do you even think you’ll want to retire?” I’m a 42-year-old writer with a job offering travel, intellectual grist and social connection. With few hobbies and an allergy for sitting still, it’s fair to assume my view of a comfortable retirement includes more work than quit. Maybe I’ll deliver the mail, write books or teach. 

People spend a lot of time wondering if they’ll have the means to retire, often ignoring the equally important calculation: Do they have the will to retire? A job, historically seen as simply a way to make money, is increasingly the source of the types of friendship and stimulation that are hard to find in bingo halls, on beaches or riding a golf cart. 

“When my friends and I talk about our futures none of us says, ‘When I’m 65 I’m going to retire and live on a farm and do nothing,’ ” says Kevin Frazier, a former legal assistant at Google who is now pursuing joint law and public-policy degrees at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Frazier, age 26, watched his dad work a 30-year career at AT&T, but the one-employer tenure is no longer status quo.

There's more of of this blather on the linked in WST article.

Let's start with the comment of Kevin Frazier, now studying law at age 26.  That means he'll graduate at age 29, probably, more or less and enter a career that is now deeply imperiled and which, at least by the time he's in his 50s, will have seen a massive erosion of work to overseas sources (an Indian lawyer working out of his apartment in Delhi can review a contract just as well as an American one in the high rent office district of Denver) and for which Google analytics will be able to answer lots of legal questions.  It'll only take a competent person, a paralegal likely, to run the search and a produce an answer that would have taken two or three lawyers a couple of days of research and thousands of dollars to produce.

Of course, Frazier is an ignoramus, as in ignorant.  He doesn't know what practicing law is like and he doesn't realize that the profession as a massive substance abuse and personal problem rate for a reason.  And that's not going away.  In twenty years he'll have worked in three different firms and be hoping for enough income to buy a latte before starting work at 4:00 a.m.

I've essentially read the same analysis on this since I was a teenager.  Soon (probably twenty years out), they say we'll be living to 200 years old (an item in the article) and we won't want to be retire.

Well, being old is no treat.  The article notes the author is 42.  Within a decade he'll know that his clock is winding down.  No matter how healthy you are in your 40s, you won't be that way in your 50s or 60s.  And the ravages of age don't fall on only your ability to play whatever urban sport is in vogue in a gym, it falls on the minds of many as well.

Currently, the real trend is that white collar workers are just dropping out of the workplace as they age. There's no UBI, but they're not working.  Forced retirement due to one thing or another is common after 55, which doesn't mean its a comfortable retirement.  Only those in occupations that pay well and have really dedicated support staff can actually tolerate people working until they die.

Retirement ending?  It may be, but not in a nice way.  And that's not a good things.  Dignified work is ending too.

So, Frazier, at 65 will you be living on a farm "and doing nothing". Well, being on a farm is actually doing a lot.  But you won't be doing that at 65.  You'll be working part time in the local library for minimum wage wishing you had a farm to go to.