Bush: Retirement age should be phased in to ’68 or 70’

[Lurker Deluxe]

28. That so depends on luck

If you are lucky enough and your body holds out and you are framing out houses at 68 .... you'll live to 100.

Chances are your body will reject that demand long before that.

I am lucky that pushing 50 I still run a very labor intensive Horizontal Boring Mill (HBM) that certainly is not an easy task. Were I to take a year off from running a machine like this and attempt to come back to it, I would probably not be able to do it. My shoulder and elbow give me grief every now and again, the tools weigh around 25-30 pounds and changing them is a one armed operation and sometimes they get changed 25 times a day. I know my limits and try to keep myself from going over them ... however, here I am on a Sunday pulling a 12 after 3 days of it and I know tomorrow will be a 12 as well. Then I will get to roll down to nice 8's for a few days and recover.

I have had the opportunity to move into office positions on multiple occasions but I truly believe that the physical work is good for me, as long as my body holds out.

Desk job will kill you unless you do something else. Most people who work physical jobs, and stay in those jobs, are healthier than the alternative when it comes to pulmonary issues, it's the joints that wear out.