America Needs to Radically Rethink What It Means to Be Old — The Atlantic

I am now 55 years old. Like a lot of people in middle age my late-night thoughts bend to contemplations about how short my remaining time is. Even with increasing longevity there is not enough time to do all that I want. Nowhere close. My friend Stewart Brand, who is now 69, has been arranging his life in blocks of 5 years. Five years is what he sa... See more

Like death and taxes, aging has long been seen as an inevitable part of the human condition. But during the last 30 years, our scientific understanding of what aging is has improved, and with that, what once seemed impossible is now getting closer to being true: today, only a lucky few make it past 80 in good health, but what if most people did so?... See more

Morgan Housel notes, “We constantly worry about the looming ‘retirement funding crisis’ in America without realizing that the entire concept of retirement is unique to the last five decades. It wasn’t long ago that the average American man had two stages of life: work and death. . . . Think of it this way: The average American now retires at age 62

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