That was the biggest shock to me when visiting the US. Not seeeing tip choices 15,20,25 or bars with parking lots, it was seeing people clearly over 70 working jobs you rarely see anyone over 25 doing elsewhere. Even physical and/or poorly paying jobs (mailmen, cleaning, fast food).
You should have talked to them instead of assuming it was out of necessity. My parents retired in n social security ten years ago. Most of their friends are doing fine with savings and retirement, but they get bored and take a job at Walmart or Applebees. For the most part they enjoy it.
What's most interesting here is that the promoted solutions are untested. We won't know how well IRA/401k etc works until we get a couple of generations under our belt who use that system instead of pensions. So, unfortunately, I'm thinking the GenX'ers and the Millennials will be the involuntary guinea pigs as they age into retirement. If it doesn't work, there will be little we can do for those generations of retirees.
I can't say whether or not individual funded retirement will work? But just back of the napkin sort of guesstimate at whether a lifetime of saving plus interest can net you 30 years of livable yearly interest or drawdowns (assuming social security) + the necessary medicare supplements/or health insurance? I don't know? It seems unlikely. And again, all that is under the rosy scenario where social security still exists. If social security is changed, the picture is even more bleak.
I could be wrong, but I think people are going to need to acclimate themselves to working through much of retirement. How much will likely depend on how well you did saving. But I suspect a sizable majority of GenX and Millennials will have no choice in the matter.
Watching the current retirees may make us sad, but these scenarios may be nothing compared to what's coming.
They are tested and the results have already been a disaster.
People don't save for 401ks. And why would they? The fact is, when you are living paycheck to paycheck, retirement takes a backseat to rent.
And even when they do save, we are currently looking at a market downturn. The last 5 years have been pretty rough in terms of the stock market with returns being much lower than you might count on.
There is an option, it's fully funding social security by lifting the income cap. It's silly that you get a tax break on SS simply by making too much money.
The biggest threats to the average person being able to retire is the government gutting, dismantling, and/or privatizing Medicaid, Medicare, and social security. With those gone, yeah grandma is going to have to work in the Foxconn factory to avoid eating catfood.
It's not completely hopeless, but people really need to be informed on this. We are running headlong into this problem because neither party wants to raise taxes to fund these essential programs.
This is a government problem to solve which is best solved by a government agency. It will be a disaster if private corporate leaches get involved, matching the current state of healthcare for anyone not disabled or younger than 65.
For anyone that advocates UBI. That's what social security is, UBI (with an age restriction).
A) Retirement creates a better equilibrium, for the economy as a whole. Not just because you flush all the people who have lost a step and yet have enough social/economic power to hide it out of making decisions, but because it clears the way for ambitious younger people who are getting blocked out of advancement opportunities because the generation ahead of them just isn't #%@#$ leaving. Not that I have any experience with that, obviously. You can have a equilibrium where everyone works until they physically can't any more, but that's simply a worse one, for almost everyone.
B) If we're going to have retirement, it is a better equilibrium for our economy as a whole to do it through some sort of enforced group savings plans rather than individuals. The big risk with retirement is outliving your money. If you have a group of a hundred thousand people, you can statistically infer that X% of them will be dead at age 75, and X+Y% of them will be dead at age 76, etc. (1) So you don't need to save as if everyone is going to live to be 90, only some percentage of them. But if retirement is entirely individual responsibility, then everyone needs to save as if they are going to be 90, which leads to an unnaturally high savings rate and that leads to weaker current economies (2) and giant pools of money seeking high returns(3).
1: Yes, improved medicine might change the exact distribution here, but that is projectable, with a small fudge factor you can basically ignore it.
2: That money is saved, not getting spent and turning into your neighbors income!
3: This is what caused all of those boom/bust cycles in our economy over the past 20 years.
Good comment. I would suggest if you get to the point where you want to really analyze your probability of success, you try one of the retirement modeling apps (I use and really like Boldin).
It was VERY eye opening for me in a good way. I have verified my results with several other sources. Its no guarantee of course, but I got some peace-of-mind from doing this.
I was quite surprised on a Florida trip that there were a lot of old (clearly past retirement age) people doing service work in e.g. fast food restaurants and grocery stores. It's rare to see even middle aged people in those where I'm from. Probably largely due to differences in the pension systems.
This happened to several senior colleagues of mine circa 2008. They were overinvested in stocks (for their age and retirement timeline) and when the market took a nosedive several made rash decisions to sell rather than wait. While they may not have recovered within their desired timeframe, they would have been better off waiting and getting something back instead of selling near the bottom.
20 an hour USD is what a dev makes in Canada. Crazy he couldn't save up enough in America to retire. Also crazy to read a sob story about the working poor in America and think... "must be nice"
I don't think that's quite true. When I was working for a large/stable/boring company in Calgary, the lowest paid green devs made more than C$56k/year.
Wow, at that rate I'm surprised we don't see more Canadian startups. Solo SaaS could make 10x that, maybe they don't have many devs that actually ship value?
# Why No One Touched This Post on Economic Insecurity in Aging America
I just read a sobering TIME article about America's aging workers who can't afford to retire. It profiles 69-year-old Walter Carpenter, working physical jobs despite peripheral neuropathy, bad knees and hips - one of the growing percentage of Americans 65+ still in the workforce (19% today vs 10% forty years ago).
Here's what's interesting: This shouldn't be partisan. The systematic dismantling of retirement security (shifting from pensions to 401(k)s, stagnant wages, rising costs) has created a reality where people work 55 years and still can't stop. As someone who's 59 and facing this reality myself, it's deeply personal.
The most telling quote: "What will happen when, as a friend so aptly put it, I become 'too frail to work and too poor to live?'"
I suspect this post got no traction because:
1. It's uncomfortable - forces us to confront the human cost of our economic system
2. Doesn't fit neatly into tech-optimism or "just learn to code" narratives
3. Reveals the failure of the meritocracy myth many in tech believe in
4. Lacks an easy solution (auto-IRAs are mentioned but too late for current older workers)
5. Hits too close to home for many in their 40s/50s who fear the same fate
The discussion we're avoiding is: what happens when a lifetime of work doesn't guarantee basic security in old age? And what does that say about the system we've built?
[+] [-] alkonaut|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] brg|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bilbo0s|1 year ago|reply
I can't say whether or not individual funded retirement will work? But just back of the napkin sort of guesstimate at whether a lifetime of saving plus interest can net you 30 years of livable yearly interest or drawdowns (assuming social security) + the necessary medicare supplements/or health insurance? I don't know? It seems unlikely. And again, all that is under the rosy scenario where social security still exists. If social security is changed, the picture is even more bleak.
I could be wrong, but I think people are going to need to acclimate themselves to working through much of retirement. How much will likely depend on how well you did saving. But I suspect a sizable majority of GenX and Millennials will have no choice in the matter.
Watching the current retirees may make us sad, but these scenarios may be nothing compared to what's coming.
[+] [-] cogman10|1 year ago|reply
People don't save for 401ks. And why would they? The fact is, when you are living paycheck to paycheck, retirement takes a backseat to rent.
And even when they do save, we are currently looking at a market downturn. The last 5 years have been pretty rough in terms of the stock market with returns being much lower than you might count on.
There is an option, it's fully funding social security by lifting the income cap. It's silly that you get a tax break on SS simply by making too much money.
The biggest threats to the average person being able to retire is the government gutting, dismantling, and/or privatizing Medicaid, Medicare, and social security. With those gone, yeah grandma is going to have to work in the Foxconn factory to avoid eating catfood.
It's not completely hopeless, but people really need to be informed on this. We are running headlong into this problem because neither party wants to raise taxes to fund these essential programs.
This is a government problem to solve which is best solved by a government agency. It will be a disaster if private corporate leaches get involved, matching the current state of healthcare for anyone not disabled or younger than 65.
For anyone that advocates UBI. That's what social security is, UBI (with an age restriction).
[+] [-] mandevil|1 year ago|reply
A) Retirement creates a better equilibrium, for the economy as a whole. Not just because you flush all the people who have lost a step and yet have enough social/economic power to hide it out of making decisions, but because it clears the way for ambitious younger people who are getting blocked out of advancement opportunities because the generation ahead of them just isn't #%@#$ leaving. Not that I have any experience with that, obviously. You can have a equilibrium where everyone works until they physically can't any more, but that's simply a worse one, for almost everyone.
B) If we're going to have retirement, it is a better equilibrium for our economy as a whole to do it through some sort of enforced group savings plans rather than individuals. The big risk with retirement is outliving your money. If you have a group of a hundred thousand people, you can statistically infer that X% of them will be dead at age 75, and X+Y% of them will be dead at age 76, etc. (1) So you don't need to save as if everyone is going to live to be 90, only some percentage of them. But if retirement is entirely individual responsibility, then everyone needs to save as if they are going to be 90, which leads to an unnaturally high savings rate and that leads to weaker current economies (2) and giant pools of money seeking high returns(3).
1: Yes, improved medicine might change the exact distribution here, but that is projectable, with a small fudge factor you can basically ignore it.
2: That money is saved, not getting spent and turning into your neighbors income!
3: This is what caused all of those boom/bust cycles in our economy over the past 20 years.
[+] [-] srdesigner|1 year ago|reply
It was VERY eye opening for me in a good way. I have verified my results with several other sources. Its no guarantee of course, but I got some peace-of-mind from doing this.
[+] [-] jampekka|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] josefritzishere|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Yeul|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|1 year ago|reply
[and they liquidated all their assets at the bottom of a market against all mainstream advice]
[+] [-] Jtsummers|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Gothmog69|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] badc0ffee|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] intelVISA|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tennisflyi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] black_13|1 year ago|reply
I just read a sobering TIME article about America's aging workers who can't afford to retire. It profiles 69-year-old Walter Carpenter, working physical jobs despite peripheral neuropathy, bad knees and hips - one of the growing percentage of Americans 65+ still in the workforce (19% today vs 10% forty years ago).
Here's what's interesting: This shouldn't be partisan. The systematic dismantling of retirement security (shifting from pensions to 401(k)s, stagnant wages, rising costs) has created a reality where people work 55 years and still can't stop. As someone who's 59 and facing this reality myself, it's deeply personal.
The most telling quote: "What will happen when, as a friend so aptly put it, I become 'too frail to work and too poor to live?'"
I suspect this post got no traction because:
1. It's uncomfortable - forces us to confront the human cost of our economic system 2. Doesn't fit neatly into tech-optimism or "just learn to code" narratives 3. Reveals the failure of the meritocracy myth many in tech believe in 4. Lacks an easy solution (auto-IRAs are mentioned but too late for current older workers) 5. Hits too close to home for many in their 40s/50s who fear the same fate
The discussion we're avoiding is: what happens when a lifetime of work doesn't guarantee basic security in old age? And what does that say about the system we've built?
[+] [-] Jtsummers|1 year ago|reply
It's been up for an hour and is still on the front page. Seems a bit early to declare "no traction".
[+] [-] cytocync|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]