And why not?

If everybody’s paying you to leave the work force, what’s the down side? From the Boston Globe: “Retirement draws them in – Many are leaving work a bit earlier, US survey reports”:

The findings have added importance as the first baby boomers approach retirement age. The oldest baby boomers are turning 60 this year, and the new report suggests that many of them already have left the labor force.

There are about 35 million Americans age 65 and older, a number that is projected to more than double by 2030, according to the report. About 59 percent of seniors are women.

The report attributed the declining work rate among older Americans to the growth in private pensions, Social Security, and Medicare benefits. As benefits for older Americans increased in the last half of the 20th century, fewer saw the need to work beyond age 65, said Mitra Toossi, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Improved benefits, Toossi said, played a bigger role in retirement plans than the fact that workers were living longer.

But the biggest benefit programs face problems. Private pension systems have been defaulting at an alarming rate. Many companies are abandoning pension plans that guarantee benefits based on years of service and age at retirement.

Medicare, which has added a prescription drug benefit, faces insolvency in 2020, according to the trust fund that runs it, and Social Security, if left alone, is projected to go broke in 2041.

That means I’ll be able to collect Medicare benefits for zero years and Social Security benefits for six years before the whole house of cards comes down. But, hey, the Baby Boomers got theirs so who cares?