Your main leader and special report on why the retirement age must go up are well taken (“Seventy or Bust!” and “Falling Short,” April 9, 2011). They are well timed, too, as the first among babyboomers are facing retirement right now. The boldest plans to extend the working age are inadequate even though it is perfectly obvious that babyboomers can start retiring not only at the peril of the so-called west, but at their own peril, as well. As you argue, working longer has three great advantages, too: the employee gets more years of wages; the government receives more in taxes and pays out less in benefits; and the economy grows faster as more people work for longer. Marvelous, this. Wait a minute, though. You do not mention any great advantage accruing to those who have already reached retirement age and can thus expect reasonable pensions. Some of them will surely prefer to be at work than bottled-up with their nagging spouses, and many of them will have nothing better to do, anyway, but a few of them will undoubtedly see the freedom of retirement as a gift that is hard to cast aside on account of a few more years of wretched wages. I am one such, for sure. Call us freeloaders, but there are millions of us. The advantages you mention will thus have to shift toward the babyboomers who face retirement this year. Or else.