The Retirement of Retirement
Except that's not quite right -- this is more like the indentured servitude of retirement. Maybe the galley slavery. Megan McArdle explains:
Mathematically, society simply cannot have a high and growing dependency ratio--at least, not if the retirees expect to be supported in the style to which they have become accustomed. (I take it that this is what is meant by "a decent living and a stable retirement"). We can warehouse people in spartan old folks homes (or treat them like kids and move them into the spare bedroom), in which case they can enjoy a lengthy retirement. Or they can retire for less time, and live more lavishly. But there is no conceivable system that is going to allow the vast majority of the population to spend a full third of their adult life in retirement, at anything like the same standard of living they had when they were working. Jon Cohn's wish to spread the bounty of pub[l]ic sector pensions more broadly seems like, well, wishful thinking.
Beyond that grim assessment, consider this. With retirement, as elsewhere, a polite fiction is crumbling. There's not as much a difference as perhaps it once seemed between lifestyle and life substance.
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Jun '10
Re: The Retirement of Retirement
I guess I will be living in Worker's Collective #25652 after all. Obama wins. Maybe I can peel the potatoes.
Jun '10
Re: The Retirement of Retirement
James: You raise an issue that I've pondered a bit of late, given that I'm nearly 59 and that my retirement savings accounts have not been doing too well of late (thank you, President Obama).
Looking at the issue from a longer perspective, it's rather odd that we should think that at a certain point (say 62 or 65) we somehow have a "right" to exit the work force and live the remainder of our lives in some form of leisure. In ages past, this certainly was not the expectation: either you didn't live that long or your retirement was completely a function of your own efforts to save.
The more I've thought about it, the more I've come to realize that an expectation on my part that the younger generation owes me a retirement is anti-historical and counter-intuitive. Sure, we need to care for the aged who are infirm (assuming they are impecunious and their family lacks the means), but that doesn't mean a healthy 68-year-old has a constitutional right to play golf five days a week on someone else's dime.
May '10
Re: The Retirement of Retirement
Inasmuch as having 5 children turned out to be God's way of making sure I never had (or have even now they're launched) any money, I expect to work until I fall over dead. Which us OK by me (the working part, the falling over dead part, not so much).
Then there were all those d*mn taxes I had to pay year after year which prevented me from savings (yes, I'm talking about that 15.3% drag self-employed people have to pay, among others)
Problem is, all you retirement age raisers out there take note, after you turn 40 it becomes more and more difficult with each passing year to keep a job (because those 1.5% annual raises add up after a while, and the law of averages catches up with you, you can't dodge the bullet forever), and then find one after you get kicked to the curb.
PLEASE don't tell me age discrimination is illegal. Makes no difference. One look at you and the interview is concluded (even if it drags on for another hour or so).