Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Roesson. I'm the editor in Chief of Current Affairs

Magazine. I am joined today by Teresa Gilarducci. She is Professor of Economics and Policy

Analysis at the New School for Social Research. She's also the author of the new book,

Work, Retire, Repeat, the uncertainty of retirement in the new economy available from the

University of Chicago Press. Professor Giladucci. Welcome to current affairs.

Thanks a lot, Nathan.

Well, I want to begin with something that I saw in the news just a couple of days ago,

too late to appear in your book, but your book appears a similar anecdote that opens it.

I saw a story from my own state of Louisiana.

Donors raised $233,000 to give US cart pusher age 90 a chance at retirement.

Dylan McCormick, an Air Force veteran, had been supporting himself by pushing carts in Louisiana's triple-digit temperatures.

In 90 degree temperatures, it felt like 103,

a local news anchor. And I give these details on purpose. A former TV news anchor saw this man

who was 90 years old pushing carts. She asked him, she said, it's Memorial Day, you're out here

working, this man who was an Air Force veteran, as I said, and she said, may I ask why you're working

here at age 90 pushing cards in the Louisiana heat?

And he replied with two words, which were to eat.

And so she, being kind of horrified by this, managed to raise $233,000, which is great.

That's all good.

We like that.

You begin your book with a similar anecdote from 2022, about an 82-year-old Navy veteran

who was working at Walmart.

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