Retirement age

“ Our retirement, even if gradual and not dated, calls attention to our age, and to our little world we grow old a decade the day it learns that we have stepped aside while to ourselves we may and ought to feel that we grow young that day by yet more. The springtide of a new stage of life stirs our pulses and we feel something of the care-free happiness of another childhood. Our intimates often remark signs of a new vitality, physical and mental. ”

“ Review of Massachusetts' maximum-age limitations by state legislative commissions has proceeded on the principle that "maximum retirement age for any group of employees should be that age at which the efficiency of a large majority of the employees in the group is such that it is in the public interest that they retire." Id., at 7.↑ . Indeed, were it not for the existing annual individual examinations through age 50, appellee would concede the rationality of mandatory retirement at 50. ”

“ An attempted distinction as to pension measures for employees retired by reason of age, because old age is not in itself a consequency of employment, is but superficial. The common judgment takes note of the fact that the retirement of workers by reason of incapacity due to advancing years is an incident of employment and that a fair consideration of their plight justifies retirement allowances as a feature of the service to which they have long been devoted. ”

“ Some minds are young and growing at seventy while others seem to cross some invisible deadline at forty. But of all this we have no settled criteria and the age of customary or enforced retirement is arbitrary, though very diversely fixed by various industrial concerns, pension systems, etc., without regard to mental age or youth. In fact, the world has so far attempted almost nothing that could be called a curriculum for the later years of life—physical, intellectual, moral, social, or even hygienic or religious, after the very variable period when the prime of life is reached and passed. ”

“ Stick with a job long enough, and you'll automatically rise to the top. That way, everyone had as good a chance as everyone else.
Promotion tables for individual jobs were worked out on the basis of longevity tables, so that by the time a man reached the automatic retirement age he was automatically at the highest position he could hold. ”

“ Not that every alteration that age brings along with it, ought to inspire us with the resolution of retiring. I own, we lose a great deal by growing old; but amongst the losses we sustain, some of them are recompens’d by considerable advantages. ”

“ Since my return I have said, when sometimes I was proposed to resume my public life, that at my age, after my past services, after long and painful agitations and thirty years of work and anxieties, I believed I had a right to my retirement; that it was the turn of a younger generation to continue the endeavour that we had started; that the homeland has at all times the right to the services of her children, but that she should be equalizing the burden ”

“ In 1935, Congress passed Social Security after much of the same debate we read about today in the press, people saying that it would wreck the economy, that it would be terrible, that it was not the right thing to do. But from that day forward, older Americans knew they could face retirement in old age with dignity. ”

“ Such is not the case, however, as the men, unfortunately not being entitled to pensions, have been allowed to continue to perform their duties long after pensionable [Pg 245] established men would have been retired, either willingly or compulsorily, under the regulations which now call for a Civil servant's retirement to be considered his reaching the age of sixty years. ”

“ In the Retirement Board case, the pooling principle was involved but was found to be invalid because the burdens on the roads were not equalized with the benefits. Entry on service was made at different age levels for different roads. Employees seventy or older were required to retire. ”

“ Ample clinical evidence supports the conclusion that mandatory retirement poses a direct threat to the health and life expectancy of the retired person, [4] and these consequences of termination for age are not disputed by appellants. 324*324 Thus, an older person deprived of his job by the government loses not only his right to earn a living, but, too often, his health as well, in sad contradiction of Browning's promise: "The best is yet to be,/The last of life, for which the first was made." ”

“ My time for retirement from work has come. You will understand this, knowing my age, and that I am acting under medical advice. Owing to the liberality of both the Diocese and my parishioners, I am able to retire with a good annuity, besides what is due to me from our Pension Fund. So I am not under the necessity, so hard on many, of remaining at work, to its detriment, when no longer able to do full justice to it. ”

“ Employees who take disability retirement are treated as if they are on leave of absence for the first five years of their retirement. Should their medical conditions improve during that time, they are entitled to be rehired. § 145.39. Employees receiving age-and-service retirement, on the other hand, are not placed on leave of absence, but they are permitted to apply for full-time employment with any public employer covered by PERS after 18 months of retirement. ”

“ Notwithstanding this general prohibition, however, § 4 (f) (2) of the ADEA provides that it is not unlawful for an employer
"to observe the terms of . . . any bona fide employee benefit plan such as a retirement, pension, or insurance plan, which is not a subterfuge to evade the purposes of this chapter, except that no such employee benefit plan shall excuse the failure to hire any individual, and no such . . . employee benefit plan shall require or permit the involuntary retirement of any individual . . . because of the age of such individual." ”

“ With the excision of those whose employment was terminated before the act was passed, the plan would cover those in carrier service at that time and those subsequently employed. Retirement is compulsory at the age of 65, but the service may be extended by agreement for successive periods of one year each until the age of 70. An employee may retire upon completing 30 years of service, but in such case provision is made for reducing the annuity by one-fifteenth for each year below the age of 65. ”

“ But it was finally agreed by all concerned that it would be best to favor the uniform application of the rule of retirement for age, so that all might be assured, as far as possible, of a time, to which they might look forward with certainty, when they would be relieved from further apprehension of treatment which no soldier can justly characterize without apparent disrespect to his official superior. ”

“ The first is that old people’s hold on life is so precarious that medical care is less likely to be rewarded with success than at earlier stages of life. The fact is that normal and healthy age is not only immune to many diseases common to middle life but often has exceptional recuperative powers, while even under present conditions the percentage of deaths is not so very much increased at seventy. Physicians who specialize in gerontology could do very much here. The other vicious tradition is that retirement or marked abatement of activity should occur at a certain age. ”

“ It is true that the age-60 rule was adopted before 1974, and is thus insulated under McMann from challenge as a subterfuge. The plan provision attacked by appellee, however, is the rule that disability retirees automatically receive a minimum of 30 percent of their final average salary upon retirement, while disabled employees who retire after age 60 do not. ”

“ Turning, then, to appellants' arguments, I agree that the purpose of the mandatory retirement law is legitimate, and indeed compelling. The Commonwealth has every reason to assure that its state police officers are of sufficient physical strength and health to perform their jobs. In my view, however, the means chosen, the forced retirement of officers at age 50, is so overinclusive that it must fall. ”

“ Fantasy, Inc., 953 F.2d 469, 476 (9th Cir. 1991) (author must survive until start of the renewal term) , but the 1976 Act did not contain the “at the time the application is made” language. ↑ The scenario of a party's gaining an indefeasible right to something prior to actually being eligible to receive it is hardly unusual, and is often presented, for example, in pension law. In ERISA plans, “an employee's right to his normal retirement benefit is nonforfeitable upon the attainment of normal retirement age,” even though the benefits are not paid until he actually retires. ”

“ There are also retirement pensions for officers and enlisted men in the regular Army. Officers at the age of 64 must be retired, with no option, on three-fourths pay.
No American state has established any system of old age pensions, although many Southern states provide for Confederate veterans; but many states or cities have provided for firemen, policemen, teachers, and certain other public employees. ”

“ The statute requires that all employees of age 70 must retire immediately. It is found that 56 of the respondents have no employees in that class. Nevertheless they must contribute toward the pensions of such employees of other respondents nearly $4,000,000 the first year and nearly $33,000,000 in the total. ”

“ It is contributory and compulsory, requiring each to contribute 21⁄2 per cent of their salaries. The minimum age of retirement is 65; all must retire at 70; and 15 years of service are required for eligibility to an allowance, the annuity running from a minimum of $180 after 15 years of service to a maximum of $720 after 30 years. The scheme takes no account of the amount of salary at the time of retirement and certainly $720 is no inducement to a man receiving $2000 to resign. ”

“ Advances were very properly conceded to them to meet the ever-increasing cost of living, and in 1918 there was instituted a superannuation scheme on a joint contributory basis, to make provision for old age retirement of each member of the staff. ”

“ Men wear out fast. To carry the incapacitated on their payroll is not only182 not economic but discouraging to the working force and it is not humane to turn them adrift. The general scheme adopted in view of these facts is either voluntary or compulsory retirement at a certain age, with weekly or monthly allowances, the amount of which depends upon the length of service and the wage, the expense of the system being borne by the employer with help from the employee. ”

“ It has long been my fixed opinion, that in the latter part of life, when the duties owing to a family no longer call upon us to act on the public stage of life, it is not only more decent, but infinitely more eligible to live in an absolute retirement. ”

“ For the fact is that, since the nation has placed me on its Pension List, I have nowhere to sleep and nothing to live on. I assuredly do not ask for riches, but only for enough to enable me to finish my life and to avoid an unhappy old age. ”

“ In this new century, Americans need to know that if they work hard their whole lives, they will retire with dignity, so we're working to save Social Security to ensure that the next generation of retirees will be as secure in their retirement as today's generation. ”

“ The United States is the only nation that has no retiring system or provision for old age, even for its employees, save for soldiers and for judges of the Supreme Court, who may retire after ten years of service or on having attained the age of 75 on full salaries. Military pensions go back nearly to the Revolutionary War. There has been much legislation since. In 1908 there were no less than 951,687 pensioners who received more than $153,000,000, the survivors of the Civil War constituting 65 per cent of all. ”

“ It’s a dangerous thing to retire, Captain Welfare. I’ve seen a lot of men in the Services retired under the sixty-three years rule. They’ve been active, useful, young-seeming men, keenly looking forward to enjoying their pensions. But, when it’s come, they’ve grown old and boring all at once, simply tumbled headlong into old age, and very often they’ve died in a year or two. You won’t want to retire, will you, Davoren?”
“Oh, I should simply knock about in some other part of the sea,” said Edmund. ”

“ Writing, on June 8, to the Governors of the several States, he said--"The great object for which I had the honour to hold an appointment in the service of my country being accomplished, I am now preparing to return to that domestic retirement which, it is well known, I left with the greatest reluctance; a retirement for which I have never ceased to sigh, through a long and painful absence, and in which, remote from the noise and trouble of the world, I meditate to pass the remainder of life in a state of undisturbed repose." ”

“ When President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, the average life expectancy was about 60 years, which meant that most Americans would not live to become eligible for benefits, then set at age 65. ”

“ They said it was my duty to myself to go back.
"You're too young a man to retire, Harry," they said. "What would you do? How could you pass away your time if you had no work to do? Men who retire at your age are always sorry: They wither away and die of dry rot." ”

“ I’ve heard from so many who’ve had to put off retirement, or come out of retirement, to make ends meet. I’ve heard from seniors who worked hard their whole lives but now, in their golden years, are unsure of where to turn to pay the bills, afford the prescriptions, or keep the home in which they raised a family. And having too little in savings not only leaves people financially ill-prepared for retirement, but also for whatever challenges life brings. ”

“ I have nothing further to ask of the world than to preserve in retirement so much of their esteem as I may have fairly earned, and to be permitted to pass in tranquillity, in the bosom of my family and friends, the days which yet remain to me. ”