The End of Retirement

Only 120 years old and widely available to the middle class for just the last 60 or so years, retirement is coming to an end. It is the unique product of several converging factors. The first was energy abundance in the form of fossil fuels, which allowed an ever-decreasing number of people to work the land to produce food for those that lived in the cities. Elevating great numbers of people above the daily grind of subsistence farming was necessary before the next factor could arise.

The second factor was the creation of a financial system that enabled us to