Op-Ed: The American Dream and Retirement Are Dying

The classic script of the American Dream—steady job, modest house, and a dignified retirement around age 65—is quietly being erased, writes John Mac Ghlionn at the Hill. He points to data showing 42% of Americans over 60 expect to work until they die, with a record 11.6 million people 65 and older still on the job. In his view, stagnant wages, vanishing pensions, and decades of broken economic promises have turned "retirement" into something closer to "a fairy tale parents tell their kids to help them sleep at night" than a realistic life stage, even as politicians and corporations urge people to "reframe" old age as "purposeful" work.

Mac Ghlionn's sharper warning is about what happens next. This cohort of older workers, he writes, may be the last able to keep working at this scale, because artificial intelligence is coming not for their backs but for their brains—automating white-collar tasks once sold as safe. With underemployment among recent graduates above 42%, he argues that endless work may soon collide with disappearing work, and that retirement itself could become a privilege of the rich. As for the rest, "Americans are no longer imagining freedom, only endless work interrupted by their own funerals." For his complete argument, read the full piece at the Hill.