A MANIFESTO

GET

UNRETIRED

We are not over the hill.

We are at the summit.

David Pollei

Founder, Get Unretired Movement

Secretary, G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20)

2026

A MANIFESTO

GET

UNRETIRED

We are not over the hill.

We are at the summit.

David Pollei

Founder, Get Unretired Movement

Secretary, G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20)

2026

I KNEW HIM WHEN HE WAS YOUNG

I knew Ken Dychtwald when he was young and cocky and telling everyone that aging was going to change the world.

He was right. He described the wave from the shore. The problem is — he couldn’t tell you what it felt like from the inside. Nobody who was young could.

He’s 75 now. Still running his company. Still keynoting conferences. Still right about everything he predicted — and, like me, now living proof of the thesis he built his career on.

I’m raising capital. I’m building companies. I hold an international policy role that puts me in G20 conversations about the future of humanity.

According to most of the world’s assumptions about people my age — I don’t exist.

That’s what Get Unretired is here to fix.

I KNEW HIM WHEN HE WAS YOUNG

I knew Ken Dychtwald when he was young and cocky and telling everyone that aging was going to change the world.

He was right. He described the wave from the shore. The problem is — he couldn’t tell you what it felt like from the inside. Nobody who was young could.

He’s 75 now. Still running his company. Still keynoting conferences. Still right about everything he predicted — and, like me, now living proof of the thesis he built his career on.

I’m raising capital. I’m building companies. I hold an international policy role that puts me in G20 conversations about the future of humanity.

According to most of the world’s assumptions about people my age — I don’t exist.

That’s what Get Unretired is here to fix.

The Retirement Myth

Retirement was invented in 1935. Not to honor anyone. To move older workers off factory floors and create jobs for younger ones. It was an industrial management tool dressed up, over the decades, as a reward.

The world has never stopped to ask: does this still make sense?

It doesn’t. It never really did.

A 65-year-old today has, on average, 20 more productive years ahead. Those years contain the most concentrated wisdom, pattern recognition, and institutional knowledge that person will ever hold. The retirement myth instructs them to bury it.

The Parable of the Talents is not just scripture. It is the most accurate diagnosis of what conventional retirement does to the people it claims to honor. The servant who buried his talent chose safety over deployment — and lost everything.

Here is what the data says, stripped of comfort:

• People who remain meaningfully engaged past 65 are 3× more likely to report good health than those who retire — McKinsey Health Institute, 2024

• Social isolation kills with the same efficiency as 15 cigarettes a day — U.S. Surgeon General, 2023

• $850 billion is lost every year in the US alone from ageist policies that force or pressure experienced people out of contribution — AARP / Economic Policy Institute

• 857 million people are 65 or older right now. By 2050, that number approaches 1.6 billion. This is not a future trend. It is the present reality.

The retirement myth is not merely unjust. It is medically dangerous, economically catastrophic, and philosophically indefensible. It is the most expensive collective error the modern world is making — quietly, politely, and at scale.

The Retirement Myth

Retirement was invented in 1935. Not to honor anyone. To move older workers off factory floors and create jobs for younger ones. It was an industrial management tool dressed up, over the decades, as a reward.

The world has never stopped to ask: does this still make sense?

It doesn’t. It never really did.

A 65-year-old today has, on average, 20 more productive years ahead. Those years contain the most concentrated wisdom, pattern recognition, and institutional knowledge that person will ever hold. The retirement myth instructs them to bury it.

The Parable of the Talents is not just scripture. It is the most accurate diagnosis of what conventional retirement does to the people it claims to honor. The servant who buried his talent chose safety over deployment — and lost everything.

Here is what the data says, stripped of comfort:

• People who remain meaningfully engaged past 65 are 3× more likely to report good health than those who retire — McKinsey Health Institute, 2024

• Social isolation kills with the same efficiency as 15 cigarettes a day — U.S. Surgeon General, 2023

• $850 billion is lost every year in the US alone from ageist policies that force or pressure experienced people out of contribution — AARP / Economic Policy Institute

• 857 million people are 65 or older right now. By 2050, that number approaches 1.6 billion. This is not a future trend. It is the present reality.

The retirement myth is not merely unjust. It is medically dangerous, economically catastrophic, and philosophically indefensible. It is the most expensive collective error the modern world is making — quietly, politely, and at scale.

The Wave That Arrived

In 1989, Dychtwald published Age Wave. His central argument was prophetic: the aging of the population wasn’t a demographic footnote, it was a civilizational force that would remake every institution humanity had built.

He was right. The wave arrived exactly as he described. What he couldn’t fully anticipate was that the institutions would still be waiting for permission to change thirty-five years later.

The wave arrived. The world mostly built more golf courses.

Dychtwald predicted the Age Wave. Yo-Yo Ma is proving it has a soul. Get Unretired is the response it was always waiting for.

In October 2025, Yo-Yo Ma turned 70. He has said his musical understanding is deeper now than it has ever been. He does not plan to retire. He believes his best contribution is still ahead.

He is not exceptional. He is exemplary. Living proof of what the data already shows: that mastery does not expire — it compounds. That the wisdom earned through decades of navigating complexity, failure, and hard-won success is a form of intelligence that no algorithm can replicate, no prompt can generate, and no younger mind can yet access.

You cannot download wisdom. You cannot prompt-engineer experience. And you absolutely cannot retire it and expect civilization to be okay.

The Wave That Arrived

In 1989, Dychtwald published Age Wave. His central argument was prophetic: the aging of the population wasn’t a demographic footnote, it was a civilizational force that would remake every institution humanity had built.

He was right. The wave arrived exactly as he described. What he couldn’t fully anticipate was that the institutions would still be waiting for permission to change thirty-five years later.

The wave arrived. The world mostly built more golf courses.

Dychtwald predicted the Age Wave. Yo-Yo Ma is proving it has a soul. Get Unretired is the response it was always waiting for.

In October 2025, Yo-Yo Ma turned 70. He has said his musical understanding is deeper now than it has ever been. He does not plan to retire. He believes his best contribution is still ahead.

He is not exceptional. He is exemplary. Living proof of what the data already shows: that mastery does not expire — it compounds. That the wisdom earned through decades of navigating complexity, failure, and hard-won success is a form of intelligence that no algorithm can replicate, no prompt can generate, and no younger mind can yet access.

You cannot download wisdom. You cannot prompt-engineer experience. And you absolutely cannot retire it and expect civilization to be okay.

The Summit

The metaphor matters. ‘Over the hill’ assumes the summit is behind you — that you have passed the peak and are now descending. Get Unretired rejects that metaphor entirely.

You are not over the hill. You are at the summit. And the view from there — the long view, earned by the climb — is something no one younger can yet see.

The ancient Hebrew of Proverbs 29:18 says: ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ The word translated as ‘perish’ is para — to unravel, to become ungoverned. The research confirms what scripture knew 3,000 years ago: purposelessness is not merely uncomfortable. It is lethal. When you remove vision from a person, they begin to unravel.

The retirement narrative removes vision from 857 million people. And they begin to unravel.

Get Unretired gives it back.

The Summit

The metaphor matters. ‘Over the hill’ assumes the summit is behind you — that you have passed the peak and are now descending. Get Unretired rejects that metaphor entirely.

You are not over the hill. You are at the summit. And the view from there — the long view, earned by the climb — is something no one younger can yet see.

The ancient Hebrew of Proverbs 29:18 says: ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ The word translated as ‘perish’ is para — to unravel, to become ungoverned. The research confirms what scripture knew 3,000 years ago: purposelessness is not merely uncomfortable. It is lethal. When you remove vision from a person, they begin to unravel.

The retirement narrative removes vision from 857 million people. And they begin to unravel.

Get Unretired gives it back.

THE FIVE DECLARATIONS

These are not productivity tips. Not habits for success. They are declarations of who we are and what we refuse to accept.

I

Contribution is the birthright of every human being, regardless of age.

We reject any system that defines human value by birth year rather than by capacity, wisdom, and will to contribute.

II

Experience is a form of intelligence that cannot be compressed.

Pattern recognition across decades is a form of strategic intelligence structurally unavailable to anyone who has not lived it.

III

Purpose is medicine.

Continued meaningful engagement after 65 is medically protective. The retirement myth causes measurable, preventable decline in the people it affects.

IV

The narrative must change before the policy can change.

Ageism persists because the cultural narrative makes it invisible. Changing what the world believes about aging is the precondition for changing what the world does about it.

VI

Proof is more powerful than argument.

We do not persuade. We demonstrate. Every person who builds, leads, and creates after 65 is the movement's most effective argument.

THE FIVE DECLARATIONS

These are not productivity tips. Not habits for success. They are declarations of who we are and what we refuse to accept.

I

Contribution is the birthright of every human being, regardless of age.

We reject any system that defines human value by birth year rather than by capacity, wisdom, and will to contribute.

II

Experience is a form of intelligence that cannot be compressed.

Pattern recognition across decades is a form of strategic intelligence structurally unavailable to anyone who has not lived it.

III

Purpose is medicine.

Continued meaningful engagement after 65 is medically protective. The retirement myth causes measurable, preventable decline in the people it affects.

IV

The narrative must change before the policy can change.

Ageism persists because the cultural narrative makes it invisible. Changing what the world believes about aging is the precondition for changing what the world does about it.

V

Proof is more powerful than argument.

We do not persuade. We demonstrate. Every person who builds, leads, and creates after 65 is the movement's most effective argument.

THE CALL

Get Unretired is not a program. It is not a club for the nostalgic or a support group for the aggrieved.

It is a movement for 857 million people the world has misread.

It is for the person who has spent four decades building expertise and is being told, politely, that the world no longer needs it.

It is for the 70-year-old musician who plays better now than he did at 40.

It is for anyone who knows — in their bones, in the evidence, in the ancient wisdom of Proverbs — that the greatest years of contribution are not behind them. They are exactly here.

The Age Wave arrived. The question was never whether it would reshape everything. The question is whether we surf it — or let it break over us.

If you are still building

if you have more to give than the world is willing to ask for

if you refuse to accept that your most important work is behind you

You are Get Unretired.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

— Proverbs 29:18

We have the vision.

And 857 million people will not perish.

— David Pollei

Founder, Get Unretired Movement

Secretary, G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20)

THE CALL

Get Unretired is not a program. It is not a club for the nostalgic or a support group for the aggrieved.

It is a movement for 857 million people the world has misread.

It is for the person who has spent four decades building expertise and is being told, politely, that the world no longer needs it.

It is for the 70-year-old musician who plays better now than he did at 40.

It is for anyone who knows — in their bones, in the evidence, in the ancient wisdom of Proverbs — that the greatest years of contribution are not behind them. They are exactly here.

The Age Wave arrived. The question was never whether it would reshape everything. The question is whether we surf it — or let it break over us.