Right. If we're living longer, why do we need to leave the workforce so early? I'd argue that with the rise of technology, there is less and less of a need to retire even if your body isn't doing as well. Unless my hands and eyes give up, why would I need to stop programming?
Extra benefit to indexing government pensions/retirement to age as well (both requiring longer time in service to be eligible, and to start collecting at a later age). Right now military and law enforcement are largely 20 years and out, and it's easy to do 20 years in the military and then 20 years in law enforcement and double dip.
The dis-incentive to retire earlier will leave that person in the job market, and younger people will find it harder to get into the market. I have no proof, but I think this will lead to lower quality of goods in the long run, since the younger people will not have had the as much time to hone their craft as the previous generation of young people did. We'll see soon enough in real life:
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/11/labor-force-partic...
I concede that staying relevant is difficult, even for younger people, and that people employing others may have age discrimination- yet people who are doing awesome programming don't have to worry about those things. People like Notch or John Resig will always have work available to them. For all I know, Notch is 80 years old. Doesn't matter though, as he still got my money for Minecraft.
(They should probably index the retirement age to life expectancy. That way you wouldn't need to fight huge political battles every decade.)