According to Mary-Lou Weisman, My (Middle Aged) Baby Book, writing in a New York Time article, March 21, 1999, it was a physician named William Osler, who, at John Hopkins Hospital where he had been physician-in-chief, said, in 1906, that workers between 25 and 40 were in the ’15 golden years of plenty’ and, that from ages 40 to 50 workers were merely uncreative and tolerable. But after age 60, the average worker was useless. Ha! I’d really like to meet ol’ Will today.
Then, there was a Californian physician named Francis Everett Townsend who started a popular movement that mandatory retirement would be at age 60. Egotistically called, wait for it, the ‘Townsend Plan.’ And, that the government would pay pensions of $200.00 per month. Lest you think this is a horrifically low dollar amount, we’re talking 1935 dollars. In 2010 dollars that would be about $3100.00. Not bad. Where did he come up with the $200? That was the equivalent at the time of full salary for a middle-income worker. Francis was quite the progressive.
Apparently, even Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought this too far out and so he proposed the Social Security Act of 1935, making workers pay into their own old-age insurance. There were a number of amendments, permutations, arrangements, sortings, etc. up to 1950and beyond, but, ah, what did Frank start just to stop the charming Francis, who, according to Wikipedia, had a vendetta against Roosevelt. Nope, don’t know why. But we should not tarry here. They both are dead, after all. And stopping work at age 65 is now a given. Just ask any kid age 25 and younger.
Essentially then, the idea of being paid to stop working began in the 1880’s to stop a political threat. It then became a medical certainty because after a certain age, well, if we weren’t dead, then maybe that wasn’t such a good thing, because we were unemployable, incapable, and hopeless. And, became a political idea again with the government paying. Wow. Getting to understand this retirement stuff is such an uplifting thing.
