Heh. You think death will free you from exploitation? We’ll never be allowed to retire. Not even after we die.
And that’s how you get sabotage, work place accidents, broken equipment, data breaches, intellectual theft, and well theft in general. Social Security is a double entendre; you know to keep grampa at home from fucking shit up.
Not new. I’m GenX and accepted that fate when I was in my late 30s/early 40s as it dawned on me we had more kids than we could afford.
I’m also Gen X albeit an older Gen X, i went part time at 35, retired at 40, now 59
I’m 45 and I’m already measuring my retirement in millimeters. 9 of them, specifically.
We all are. There’s no hope. I talked to a guy today that retired 15 years ago and travels 6 months out of the year. The generational disparities are staggering.
IDK. Really depends on your precise path. My spouse and I are about 40 and, barring some truly collapse-type scenarios, our retirement is pretty much assured. We could make no other contribution and just let what we already have grow, and it would easily cover a very comfortable retirement at age 65. At this point further contributions are about moving that date forward.
We did it through being DINKS, both with engineering careers, general frugality, and getting on the property ladder pretty early. But it was a combination of luck, skill, hard work, good decision making, and luck.
Ah the Smith & Wesson retirement plan
The idea is to shut down Social Security. A huge influx of desperate seniors increases competition for increasingly shitty jobs, enabling employers to grind their workers even more.
I want:
- universal basic income for everyone
- food security for everyone
- housing security for everyone that wants it
- Medicare for all
- 3 day work week
To pay for this:
- make it a crime to have wealth over $500M. Anything over that and the government gets to seize assets until total wealth is $50M.
- tax corporation earnings, not profits, at progressive rates.
I wouldn’t set it at $500M. I would set it at 1000x the median household income. Once you’ve hoarded enough wealth to last ten long lifetimes, we’re cutting you off. This would be about $80M in today’s money.
This is also roughly my best estimate for the largest possible “honest fortune,” one that can be obtained through wage labor and investment. This is the kind of money a married pair of neurosurgeons could amass if they both worked long careers, never had kids, lived like monks, and invested everything. To get more money than this, you have to own a company, be an executive, or otherwise exploit the labor of others.
make it a crime to have wealth over ＄500M. Anything over that and the government gets to seize assets until total wealth is ＄50M.
I say we just give them a medal and say “you won capitalism!”, give them a fancy card with a $5m a year stipend, and forbid them from ever touching money again
Let’s make it a status symbol, the interest on the money we take from them will pay for the program and more. Hell, we can give them a point system for whatever they don’t spend for cool prizes to compete with each other for
We need to change the incentives… Instead of letting their net worth act like a point total among their peers, we need to give them pro-social activities to compete through to keep them occupied
A pipe dream that will never happen 😮💨
Not with that attitude
Maybe not for us, but what about a future generation?
Let a man dream!!
I also like the tax wealth not work approach, but taxing earnings would be like taxing work, wouldn’t it? With the wealth tax, if profit is re-invested, wouldn’t the stock price go up, hence getting the owners closer to the wealth gap? (Asking from a place of ignorance)
They’d have to relinquish stocks or other assets if it put them over the limit.
Although in my opinion it would be better to tax loans using investments as collateral (that cross a cumulative yearly threshold) as realized gains and income.
The threshold could be a variable like 50x the annual take home pay of the bottom 20% of earners. That way for cheaper loans, people need to be paid more.
Edit: my variable would be about $1.6m right now.
New? Litrrally had this fear since I was a child and I’m 33 now. Almost everyone I’ve met feels the same.
Welcome to being in touch with reality
Yeah, I think my greatest fear in life is (and has been since a very young age) falling out of society due to some unforseeable life event and getting trapped in homelessness.
That is basically the story of “I am legend” everyone has fallen out of society, effecively forming a new society. Only the protagonist is still living the old ways and can’t fathom what is happening.
Oh trust me I know. I have fibromyalgia and its only gotten worse over time. I got into programming because it was low on physical labor and let me work remote, which gave me the room I needed to try to get better, at least until this year now that AI is probably taking my job soon, and the whole industry has decided that writing code, my favorite part of my job, is obsolete. Everyone is moving to the trades that need physical labor, and I’m just assuming my job options over time are gonna be replaced entirely by AI. My company doesn’t match anything for 401k, so I have very little retirement built up at all.
My future right now looks like either living with friends/family, or homelessness unless we figure out some solution. We at least have some money saved to pad out the time between, but god damn has this country consistently made it clear its fine with throwing me to the wayside. I at least have a wide range of tech knowledge so I can maybe find something else in a different field, but I already have chronic fatigue and tech job interviews suck ass, I’m so tired of having to restart my career because of some overpaid fuck.
Indeed, new? I went to the US 15 years ago and it was normal to have this walking fossil greet you at walmart.
Yeah, but those fossils would die on the hill of cutting social programs when they were younger, because one day, if they worked hard day and night, they too will be billionaires and able to fuck children at will.
Every single time I see generic people voting (economic) right wing this Futurama scene comes to mind:
Nixon: Alright, listen up, nitwits. Who here is tired of illegal space aliens taking our good Earth jobs? [The crowd cheers.] Me too! So if I’m re-elected, I promise to big a really big Dyson fence across the Southern border of our solar system. [The crowd cheers.] And furthermore, by golly, I promise to cut taxes for the rich and use the poor as a cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel!
Fry: Yeah, that’ll show those poor!
Leela: Why are you cheering, Fry? You’re not rich!
Fry: True. But someday I might be rich, and people like me better watch their step!
My 65 year old dad worked till he died 15 years ago. This is nothing new for the lower middle class. Social security imhasnt been enough in many parts of the country for decades. Especially if you lose a job and are forced to take it early, which loweres your payments.
Same and I’m not even in the US.
I have always assumed i will never be able to retire. The American dream was never real and i worked retail with so many people in their 60’s and 70’s.
I am no better than anyone, i have no connections, so i will not be able to retire and will work until i die or just end up homeless. That’s the American reality.
This is a reality for a lot of seniors already and will be for most millennials I feel. They’re pulling the ladder up just enough to be out of reach.
No shit. You have to be 72 to retire and get SS. 70% or more of the population will never even live to retirement age
Current life expectancy in the US is 79 years, so probably even more than 70% Americans won’t make it to that age.
Keep in mind it’s 79 years for the total population, not for the regular person. The 79 is inflated by the top 10% who are able to spend more money on healthcare than you’ll ever see in your life.
You can start collecting SS at 62, although I expect they will keep raising that.
I will probably die at work.
Pffft, lucky. I expect I’ll die in extreme poverty some time after I age out of work and can’t find another job.
Weird, with all those technical advancements retirement age gets pushed back round the globe. This isnt just medical advancements. I’d argue medical care was better 20 years ago. Nowadays i pay hundreds a month for insurance just to get no doc available. Chatgpt does better care than a doc who isnt listening and just trying to sell me overpriced placebo.
Tipping point is now.
The problem is obviously struggling social security systems. In US it’s worse because the corporations are taking bigger and bigger part of the profits while wages stagnated decades ago so people are not able to save for retirement and social security is not enough. In Europe retirement gets delayed but couple of years because people live longer and there are EU wide rules as to how much countries can spend on it. They could be rising taxes on the wealthiest people instead but those are the people that actually have power so… Still, in most of the EU you will still be able to retire. Social security is mostly well funded and stable. Here’s some data:
source: https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/retraite
So for example in Spain current estimates are that I will get 77% of my last salary when I retire. In most countries it’s closer to 50%. So assuming you will own your home/apartment and you don’t have to pay rent you should be fine but in some countries people may need some extra savings.
The problem is that capitalism has been funneling all productivity gains since the 1970’s into the hands of the richest ~1%.
Social services are not struggling for any other reason than a parasite class of sociopathic and psychopathic criminals stealing from the majority.
Still, in most of the EU you will still be able to retire. Social security is mostly well funded and stable.
who will pay my pension 30+ years later? doesn’t the system require more working people then than now?
No, most systems are designed in a way that everyone is taking out more or less what they paid in or at least are moving in that direction. Governments have to add some money but the amount they are adding should be stable over the next couple of decades. That’s why some countries are raising the retirement age, it’s so that the system doesn’t collapse in the future.
New? I used a tool offered by my government to estimate my retirement age and it came out as 69. I’m 36 so I’m pretty sure that’s a lower bound and it’ll only go up as time goes by
If you can live off what you get. Granted I think they are a bit off not only because its not a new fear but anyone who knows older folks knows people go down at various ages and 50’s is uncommon but not unheard of. So to me its the fear of working till you have no capcity to work and then living in poverty in a society thats only concerned with making sure you don’t die.
I’m a rare example of this being a strange concept.
AMA
long sleeves or short sleeves?
Did you make a shit tone of money by working for top evil corporation so you can retire early on your savings with no connection to financial markets?
Probably not. I should be able to retire at 50 or 55… But I spent my 20’s putting 15-18% of my pay check in my 401k, and I’ve never dropped below 7% contribution. 43, just started making 100k a year and I should be a millionaire next year, should have about 2 million by 50, 3-4 million by 55, and that’s not including the family trust fund(which most people won’t have)
Contribute as much as you can to your 401k when you are going and you’ll be doing it right.
You don’t even have to save that much. I spent my 20’s putting away 7-10% and was on track to retire early. Then life happened: I had to do an emergency withdrawal and could not contribute anymore. Then I lost half the remainder in a divorce. Now I’m approaching retirement age wondering how long they’ll let me work
Anyway, not trying to one-up anyone’s misery, but wanted to make it clear that even starting off right with retirement savings isn’t always enough.
I’m in the US so of course it was a medical emergency. Even with “good” insurance, it was a financial disaster
So you did make enough to be able to save as much. And the 401k value is linked to financial market health, isn’t it?
No, I limited my take home pay and did the best I could with I had to work with. I didn’t miss the 18% because I never even really saw it. Even then at the time, the amount wasn’t huge, it took many a decade to get over the first 150k. I didn’t go in vacations, I didn’t go to bars, or buy a motorcycle, or start hobbies that cost more than they brought in. I stayed at home a lot with my cats and smoked weed.
And yes, it’s all linked to the markets, so it doesn’t really mean shit. My net worth could drop 80% in a day, and all I’ll get is a pat on the back and a canned statement about market volatility. People with stupid amounts of money will get bailed out.
And judging by the number of down votes my initial comment got I feel like a lot of you don’t realize that the people who play the game well and still fucking hate it are the best allies you’re going to get.
LOL. Everyone said that just before 2008. Talk to us about your 401k when AI investments suck $12T out of the markets.
Why would anyone want to retire at 55.
I made tens of fucking millions for multiple businesses and non profits so far in my career. The question should be, Why the fuck do I have to continue making money for other people for more than 40 years, when I barely get a cut? I don’t fucking owe anyone, or anything more of my time, and that’s what retirement means.
Honestly I’ll probably get bored, and I can volunteer, or teach, or a number of other things that society needs, but doesn’t have, because we’re all wage slaves who are forced to work to death.
No, I am borderline poor.
You plan on discovering a pirate treasure chest?
No, my life hack is I never needed very much food & I’m happy with living in squalor. I’ve been secretly practicing my taxidermy skills in preparation for the uprising. With a dash of salt, some needle & thread, styrofoam & trading skills; my goal is to build a monument to the greed of humanity & trade tickets for more taxidermy materials.
Sounds like some kind of plan, I guess!
My real plan is to provide an escape, be it from reality or the mundane ferocity of Internet.
I’ll share some grilled crickets with you if we meet after the apocalypse.
