You're right about age indexation, and I don't find it morbid to use actuarial tables from date of death. I retired from the APS in 2008, I'm 64 now, living in the Philippines and am in good shape physically and emotionally (financially, it's a different story, but money means little to me as I get older: is that a sign of Alzheimer's?)

I don't much care how long I have left, just how much every day counts for me, and I can tell you, it's a lot better for me overall living with an extended family and really enjoying it.

Pensions are fine, but it's only a part of the answer. Salamat sa Diyos!

Indexation of money, cash, income, etc...

Simple, express it as a percentage of a back bencher's salary! Hence, when they give themselves their annual taxpayers largess, we all get a piece of the action. Then "they" will be well aware of the impact of their financial pork barrelling come any and every election!

"So in terms of life expectancy, 70 is the new 64. And in terms of health, 74 is the new 64."
This is a very naive use of demographic statistics. One would need a fairly sophisticated index of "health", especially in terms of ability to perform in a job: self–reporting is clearly not such an index. If such an index, validated, existed – and it may well do so– you would probably find that the arithmetic mean between the 2 age groups might well be not changed all that much. However common sense & observation tells us that the spread of the distribution would be much greater or, even more likely, the distribution itself would be greatly skewed by a relatively small number of very fit, mentally and physically, individuals. I also am quite certain that in depth psychological testing would show meaningful deterioration in cognitive skills with age and more serious deterioration in powers of concentration.

Before pushing up the age for pension, age discrimination needs to be addressed. The change in attitude toward you when you seek employment at an older age is dramatic.

Personally I never want to retire.

However after working 35 years we really needed a break so took a sabbatical. During this time we did some work on the road to subsidise our travel. Once done I felt more motivated, energised and ready for a whole new working chapter in my life. The workplace did not agree though so we have struggled through ever since.

I have not minded so much because it has been a huge learning curve. I have found out all those great ideas for self-employment are stymied by red tape and so forth. I have learned for every 3 week job you apply for need to first go and a ticket of one colour or another or a license..and pay for it. I have learned that the government and workplace seem to want to put barriers up to stop me from working.

So can we expect people to work until 70 without some sort of break? Already older people stay in work that is torture purely for job security. This does nothing to enhance the stereotype of older people in the workplace.

Working and being useful is very important for the individual but some flexible attitudes need to be adopted by society to allow older people to continue to contribute in a meaningful way.