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Well, yeah, it's tragic that humans age and die. Nonetheless, wrapping life up with margaritas and white teeth beats pretty much any historical alternative that I'm familiar with, particularly for someone that's already done an honorable amount of work and sent force productive children into the world.
To the extent that there's any better alternative, it might be having a bit more pacing to life, stopping work for awhile to enjoy things earlier in life if you have the surplus income and savings to do so. Realistically, this is only an option for a tiny minority of people and to suggest it for most people would put them in great financial peril. But sure, if someone is in a position to treat their work as a series of tours of duty, enjoying more of their accrued wealth while they still have their full youthful vigor, more power to them.
I suppose that's the inevitable response if you start from the individualist perspective. What I meant is the tragedy in comparison to leaving the money to your children, giving them a better life, rather than frittering it away. It's easy for me to say this, nowhere near retirement, and god knows I'd probably do something similar myself if I was in that position. But it's clearly a bit weird that you work all your life, and then towards the end you say "I've done enough now, for my progeny, so I'll just spend the money on eeking out an extra year or two and alcohol and other hedonist expenditure." And I know it's asking a lot and perhaps holding people up to too high standards, especially given they've put a good shift in already, but to me that feels like something which is tragic, over and above staring into the face of your own mortality in an existential way.
A massive chunk of it goes on the Villages corporation itself (I realised I forgot to mention that, but it's basically a semi-private township). And a larger chunk goes on Healthcare- but then that's an argument about accurate allocation of resources I suppose and value for money.
Counterpoint: if you raise your children right, then there should be little need to leave them much money, as they should be able to establish themselves well enough to not rely on mom and dad's eventual deaths to maintain their standard of living.
Raising kids involves making a huge up front investment in them, so it's not like they haven't received a lot of the benefits of your labors.
This is an extremely salient point.
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Also, the US is a society that took individualism and atomization to the extreme. We have the tradition that your children leave and go build a separate life on their own.
Under this model, when you’re old, your children usually don’t have the time or frankly desire to come spend tons of time with you and help you out. They’ve got their own life to worry about.
It’s not like Mediterranean countries where the multigenerational family lives together, the nuclear family is about parents and their kids and everything else is peripheral.
Thus, retirees in the US find a social support network elsewhere.
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