Judge Newman has threatened to have staff arrested, forcibly removed from the building, and fired. She accused staff of trickery, deceit, acting as her adversary, stealing her computer, stealing her files, and depriving her of secretarial support. Staff have described Judge Newman in their interactions with her as “aggressive, angry, combative, and intimidating”; “bizarre and unnecessarily hostile”; making “personal accusations”; “agitated, belligerent, and demonstratively angry”; and “ranting, rambling, and paranoid.” Indeed, interactions with Judge Newman have become so dysfunctional that the Clerk of the Court has advised staff to avoid interacting with her in person or, when they must, to bring a co-worker with them.
Part of it is because you still need a gig to keep the retirement funds rolling. You don’t want to live it out on pea soup and bread.
Part of it is because after a certain point every bit of your body, from your bones to your brains, is only available on a Use It or Lose It basis with no warranty for service blackouts.
And part of it is because, and l guess this is due to the collapse of the extended-family model, lots of people don’t have anyone or thing to go home to; they’re divorced or widowed, kids have moved out, and their social network has literally died out.
Yup. A lot of people here don’t get that when you retire the funds are finite. And you could still live another 20 yrs, even up to 35 more years but completely alone and with no income. If you have someone telling you to quit as you round up to 65 when you have another good 20 yrs of cognizance to pull income, you won’t go quietly.
And you shouldn’t.
Retirement right now is still expecting you’re going to pay your way or live worse than prison conditions. Even worse if you’re a person with disabilities or early onset issues, diabetes along with other things from a lifestyle habit of consumerism pushed on all of us by capitalists that don’t give a shit what happens to you down the line.
it’s not to say someone shouldn’t retire eventually when they can no longer work. It’s to say that assuming you’re as incompetent at 60 as if you’re 96 is just plain refusal to recognize the human condition and it’s ageism. The article is about a 96 yr old. That’s past 30 yrs retirement age. It’s only in her recent years this is happening so the fact she made it to 90 cognizant is actually very impressive either way. So just saying yeah, she should retire now. But blaming her for not retiring at 65 when she’s 30+ past that age is a misnomer argument at this stage. If anything we should all be so lucky to make it past 70 with our cognitive abilities with the current American diet slowly killing our organ function.