With people living longer and expecting to live better, the burden of retirees is becoming unmanageable throughout the developed world. The response has often been to preserve, or even enhance, benefits for older generations and those with power, while drastically increasing what must be paid in and reducing what will be available for younger generations. Few in my generation and those after have defined benefit pensions. Most do not even have 401K plans, or if they do have such plans, have been unable to save given their diminished circumstances. The retirement age for Social Security will be 67 for us, not 65, under a broken promise made 25 years ago; candidates are now proposing reduced benefits, or higher taxes, for us – but not for their generation. Yet in the face of this, there are those who feel entitled to work just 20 years, stop working at age 50, and live off the work of others for the rest of their lives. These people have a monopoly of an essential service — mass transit in a major, transit-dependent city — and are prepared to use blackmail to get what they want for themselves at the expense of others. Already entitled to a pension far more generous that others, they have already gone on strike recently and have indicated they will do so again, this time indefinitely.