<< That said, we did not skimp; we didn't pull our washing machine out of the dump, nor look in rainbarrels for our washwater.>>

Heh, heh! I'm amazed that you are snobbish about your washing machine! Do you think it actually washes clothes better than mine, which did come off a scrap pile and which does use water from my rain barrels?

Apologies for the delay, I just saw this.

And I apologize if you took this as a personal snipe. I have things to be critical of you for, but this is not one of them; indeed, I find it admirable. I also think "savings rainwater in barrels" is an unlikely trait to be passed on to the rest of our consumer society. Perhaps I should have said "I don't need to pull my cars out of the junkyard" or something.

What particular advantages do you think this gives you?

The one thing which is clear is that the efficiency of those machines has improved dramatically, year over year, for the past 20 years, so I suspect my machine is more energy efficient than yours. (And yes, we do almost all our washing in cold, or at most "warm" water.)

Do you understand that you are being inconsiderate when you post questions here about the ethics of liberal early retirement that are designed to create the type of dialogue this board was specifically created to avoid?

I suspect that thought does not occur to him. The disingenuousness of "oh, I came over here to talk about Franklin Roosevelt and 'liberal' retirement plans" is so transparent as to be laughable.

Point taken. But should public policy encourage early retirement?

It doesn't. It never has. Retirement in the post-ancient world has traditionally been around age 60 to age 65, exactly the specifics of Social Security. Giving people a stipend (which they have earlier paid for) at the age when they are going to retire anyway hardly encourages early retirement. It does encourage "don't live in poverty" when you retire, but that is a different issue.

Of course for centuries, and up until the 1800's most people lived on the farm in multi-generational households, so there was a "support" system for elders, even if it wasn't perfect. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution people began moving to the cities, reaching the 50/50 tipping point in the 1920's, well before the advent of Social Security and the alternate safety net it provides.

But heck, if you want to discuss Social Security, one of the most successful programs in the history of the country, one which has done nearly everything it set out to do, and raised half the elder population from an end-life scenario of poverty, help yourself.

If you want to talk about MediCare, well, that's another story ;)