A Disturbing Look at the New Retirement

[Tom Joad]

And the Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Hell, a lot of them want to do away with them entirely.

http://news.yahoo.com/disturbing-loo...130400189.html

For an increasing number of American workers, traditional retirement no longer exists. They keep working, often in physically challenging jobs, for as long as they possibly can, simply because they have to. In the August issue of Harper's magazine, journalist Jessica Bruder delves into the hidden world of these older, struggling American workers, many of whom live in RVs, frequently moving to the location of their next job opportunity.

Bruder spent three weeks camping on federal land in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and interviewing members of this itinerant community. They told her what it was like to work at Home Depot for $10.50 an hour while struggling to pay for a $600-a-month trailer, and about traveling to find seasonal jobs shipping packages out of Amazon warehouses or picking fruit. "Aging isn't what it used to be," Bruder observes. U.S. News spoke to Bruder about these workers and what retirement means for them. Here is an edited version her responses:

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