Many governments set an arbitrary retirement age (such as sixty-five), but some people are physically worn out or mentally exhausted well before they reach this age. While some people believe the set age is reasonable, others think it should be more flexible with exemptions for certain workers. In my opinion, a fixed retirement age is actually best for everybody because it is the easiest and fairest arrangement, but I think a tribunal could be established to decide whether individual workers deserve to receive a pension at an earlier age.
Before the new economy, when most people had a single occupation for life, it would have made a lot of sense to allow some manual laborers or people working in psychologically stressful roles to retire earlier. Today, however, so many people change jobs and shift between industries every few years that it is difficult to make these distinctions.
An ideal middle ground would be to have a set retirement age for everybody, but to create a tribunal that could hear individual cases. A sixty-year-old who had been a miner for forty years could get an early pension, for example, whereas someone of the same age who had only spent eight years mining in his twenties would not.
Two types of workers would benefit from early retirement. First are those who work in tough, physically demanding conditions such as construction workers, coal miners and welders. The others are workers in high stress positions where sound judgement is crucial for public safety. Emergency medical practitioners and air traffic control operators are two such examples.
With people’s working lives differing on an individual basis, it is difficult to classify them into large groups and distribute pensions accordingly. Nevertheless, many individuals still deserve an early pension and in some cases our well-being may depend on giving it to them.