The Over-65 Two Cultures, Retired and Not (Maybe Never) Retired - OMG, Such EscalatiingTensions

"You can go to work. Home Depot and lots of other places have special progams for hiring seniors." 

That's what I certainly wanted to say but I bit my tongue. That over-65 neighbor was balking about inflation and how she could no longer afford to buy eggs. She was retired. I was over-65 and not retired and right now I have no plan to retire. 

Our near-explosive encounter has become more and more typical in this era: It is a time when the over-65 have hardened into two cultures. There are the retired and there are those working into 80s and 90s and beyond. About the latter, The Wall Street Journal documents that the number of those earning income from work who are 80 or older has grown 18% during the past decade. They total 650,000. In several years I will be part of that club. Currently I am only 70-something. A kid in this new kind of club.

The tension started out mild years ago. It kicked off with annonyances that we the non-retired couldn't join the retired for those church-sponsered trips to observe the fall leaves in New England or volunteer to oversee bingo. Over and over I patiently explained that my main enterprise - I now have 3 micro ones - was based on jumping on assignments as they came in on an emergency basis. If I had not been there locked and loaded the "they" would go to another vendor.

It was with inflation things got nasty. Of course, we non-retired also got hit hard in the pocketbook. But we could absorb the price increases. In contrast, the retired had and have all the time in the world to whine. Yet, there were and are signs everywhere of all kinds of businesses needing part-time, gig and full-time workers. Few of us non-retired could stand their inability to connect the dots in a commonsense business way: Need money, go to work. 

That's exactly the conclusion we counterculture boomers came to as the darkness of the 1970s recession deepened and free services dried up. Since we could suck up reality that way we have gone through our lives expecting others to also do that. 

In addition, the retired live in angst that their offspring aren't getting a good crack at professional opportunities because, you got it, we boomers (along with those in the Silent Generation) are clogging the pipelines. Their children are frustrated. On professional anonymous networks they castigate us. Here is a blurb from Fishbowl Consulting:

"WHY ARE YOU WORKING. STILL. BOOMER TAKE YOUR PENSION, GO GOLF OR BE ON A YACHT AND LET YOUNG PEOPLE MOVE UP IN THIS WORLD SO WE CAN PAY OFF OUR COLLEGE DEBTS" - Fishbowl Consulting, June 24, 2023

So, we non-retired have had to develop a tough skin. Because of that we have no campassion for our age peers who are struggling financially and can work but don't. It isn't like we who remain in the labor force start out day chanting "Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Off to Work We Go." "Work" is called "work" because it requires, you bet, work. Usually that mandates tradeoffs. 

Speculation: Will there evolve housing segregation between the retired and non-retired? We won't have to encounter each other on a daily basis.

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