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Laboring Longer a Growing Trend For Americans
AxSpark writes "More and more Americans have the tendency to work after retirement and this number is growing day by day. Last year this number was 6 million people of 65 and over working. The reason for that is quite evident: pensions are not enough for sufficient living."
Does average age have to do anything with it?
I can imagine that many pension plans are about letting people live for 10 years. From 65 to 75. Now people get older and suddenly need to have money for 20 years.
That together with the fact that health wise, those are the most expensive years. People paying a LOT of money for 1 or 2 more years. My great-aunt always though it was stupid to spend so much money on the elderly and that money should be given to healthy people.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The last 60 years have been an anomaly in that large swaths of the population have been even able to take retirement. A favorable social condition brought about by ever expanding resources and population that allowed for a large worker to retiree ratio. Unfortunately, the graying populations of Western economies and stagnant resource production is going to see the return of many conditions now thought extinct.
As people stay healthier longer, people SHOULD continue to work. We shouldn't conceptualize the stages of human life in terms of years; Instead, we should conceptualize it in terms of percentages of expected life. Granted, the first 18 or so years are pretty much set in stone, but after that, we have a certain percentage of life available for each occupied stage. Looking only at labor, first there is education. Then, there is the career ramp-up. Then we have career maintenance -- perhaps a career switch (using skills from career #1 in career #2 . . . or not). Finally, we wind our careers down. A percentage of our healthy adult lives should be dedicated to each of these, with a percentage left for active retirement. There's nothing wrong with the actual number of years within each stage to increase in proportion to the amount of time we have to live well. This is the biggest benefit of progress in health and life expectancy.
I know whan my dad retired he was bored out of his mind since he loved the job he did. If he could have stayed on working I know he would have done. Plus just because you hit 65 doesn't mean you suddenly arn't interested in earning money. I don't see working beyond 65 as a problem personally unless the person is unwell or unfit to continue in the job.
And of course , if you're a COBOL coder you'll probably still be in demand until the day you go face down in your keyboard (or should that be punched card stack?)
My mother is 84 and still works. She owns her home and does not need the money. She started her present job when she was 63. She is in much better mental and physical health then any of her non-working peers.
It was born in the depression, as the government's way to push older workers out of the job market, to make room for younger (and more taxable) ones. Prior to Social Security, you worked until you died, pretty much.
For many, it's still that way - when you stop working, you start dying. I have no plans of letting that happen to me!
Fortunately for us, we're still in a position to attract skilled immigrants to make up the labor shortfall...That gives us the benefit of their labor, without having to have paid their costs as they were growing up.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Well said. At 44 years old, I expect to work until 70, and I expect to pay higher Social Security taxes along the way. It's not good or bad policy, just reality.
There is only one thing that could help make a difference for most Americans - owning lot's of foreign investments that we could sell off for a while during crunch time. Unfortunately, we've become a debter nation, so that plain went to Hell in a hand basket.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Fortunately for us, we're still in a position to attract skilled immigrants to make up the labor shortfall...That gives us the benefit of their labor, without having to have paid their costs as they were growing up. No, you're not. You make immigrants feel like criminals and second class citizens, people are afraid to come to your country on business these days.
If only they came to this country to do things the right way instead of avoiding taxes and stealing peoples identities, then I would have no issues with immigration. As it stands the illegals need to either do it the right way or take the high way home. They are un-needed in our society as illegals. Illegal immigrants take jobs where they are paid under the table in with cash, so they are not taxed. My brother has his identity stolen by an illegal immigrant and fucked up his credit, and made him owe over 19K in back taxes to the IRS. He is lucky he wasn't arrested for tax evasion.
"Fix health care, and all you do is make old people live longer, thus further burdening the pension system."
I totally agree. Before health care can get one more cent of tax payer money, the 'name of whatever state run retirement plan' needs to be corrected to plan for such longevity for the masses. And when the Governments plan on raising the retirement age further, there comes the real problem: Age discrimination. At some point it is always cost effective enough to get rid of the gray hairs for younger folks. Yes, less experience, blah, blah, blah, but much less pay/benefits paid to new hires. And on that note, if you raise the retirement age and companies actually keep folks into their 70's, there is little room for promotions within a company who's management staff is around for 40 years after taking the position. Perhaps if companies stopped living quarter to quarter based upon the status of their stocks and looked long term they would look to keep employees longer. It's a definite rabbit hole.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
You're not seriously confusing SS with federal taxes? Because that's exactly what it looks like you're doing.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This got modded insightful? How does the the fact that the US is a debtor nation prevent you as an individual from investing in overseas investments? Anyone on the US who wants to is free to invest however much they want in overseas companies. This can be done cheaply and easily by investing is index funds for developed and developing nations. Personally, I keep about 35% of my investments in overseas companies, about 80% of that in developed countries and 20% in developing. BTW, higher SS tax is bad policy, and I can demonstrate why. If limits are removed from FICA, my marginal rates will be 33% for federal taxes, and 15% for self-employment taxes. That is 48%. Add in sales taxes (8% in Texas) and the rate is 56% of anything I spend. Why in the hell would I work to give more than half my earnings to someone else? I have not problem paying taxes, and have no problem with progressive tax rates, but this is silly. I do not have to work, and at some point I won't. 33% of X is much more than 50% of zero. I believe that marginal tax rates should be capped at somewhere in the range of 33-40% (including all taxes of all types). I think two for me and one for you is more than enough.
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
My grandfather is almost 82, and still works and travels for his business. He had a 40 year career with a major food company and retired, but started a small business to have something to do. He also farmed on the side. He doesn't work because he needs the money (he was wise and invested, saved, and has social security and a company pension as well as his own investments and hundreds of acres of land) but he works to stay active. He's in better health than many people half his age. My grandmother is 78 and also still active. They just returned from a 10 day trip to Ireland, and travel every year to somewhere nice.
My dad is 51 and retired from his own business and now on his second career as a minister. He's not sitting around waiting on social security or a pension, and he's not working because he has to.
The moral: take care of yourself and don't expect the government to fund your retirement vacations to Europe. I'm in my mid-20s and I've been pumping into a 401(k) since the day I started working. I never expect to see a dime from Social Security, and I wish I could opt out of the broken system so I could put that tax money in my own retirement investments where it would do me some good. I have no interest in funding the retirement of those who were too lazy or unwise to save for themselves.
There is a massive gap among the middle-class populations that pay the taxes. Middle class folks have smaller families in order to afford their standards of living, and poorer families tend to have more, but live in cheaper conditions or are subsidized.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
"It was originally conceived as a fund where you'd pay in to as you worked, and your funds would be used to pay for your retirement."
No, it was never conceived that your money would pay for your retirement. Really how could it, unless you started the program collecting money and didn't pay out benefits until the people paying in retired. The Act was put together so that elderly people at the time wouldn't live in poverty. Remeber, this was after the depression, and what we call poverty now would probably make those people laugh at us.
Also, You are not "paying into" SS, you are paying the benefits for the current benefactors. Someday, if you collect, the current people paying SS taxes will be paying your benefits. SS is not an investment, it's a program.
Here's a quote from FDR:
"We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which gives some measure of protection to the average citizen and his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age."
IMHO the only problem with SS today is the retirement age. When the Act was originally passed, the average time people collected SS payments was something like 3 years. Now it's like 15 years. The Act was not originally meant to support people for such a long time, and I don't believe it should.
Jackbird just has this defeatist attitude that I find a lot of people (who want to justify not planning for themselves) have.
If people were allowed to invest that 12% the government takes, they'd find it a lot easier to save enough for retirement, and unlike SS, you get to leave it to your kids when you die, which helps them reach their retirement goals (unless they're stupid morons and blow it on gold plated furniture or something).
This is one of my complaints with SS: if the goal of the welfare system (including SS) is to lift families out of poverty, SS it completely detrimental to the cause, as it denies families the generational accumulation of wealth.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Planning.. 401k.. yeah yeah, get it.. but why is it so many other European countries actually have health care for everyone, and take care of their elderly ? .. but to do it in the US (which is supposed to be the greatest country) means your a communist and want to destroy America ? .. why do I have to set aside money because I can't trust the government not to squander my retirement money ?
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As someone who crosses the US - Canada land border regularly, I have to say that you don't know how frustrating USCBP border officers can be. They have way too much power to individually decide your fate. I know this because even as a visitor, there seems to be one officer at this specific crossing that puts me through more scrutiny than other officers, and has twice rejected me as a visa-waiver visitor for "not having enough ties to Canada" and, well, money on me, even though I was taking a flight from Detroit airport with a return ticket.
I now have to make sure to take at least $200 per week of visiting in cash and a few bills with me showing that I live here in Ontario because there seems to be a flag on my passport.
Yes, people might still come to the US in droves, but don't underestimate the effort that the US government, actively or passively, is putting into making it the most annoying process anyone's ever had to go through. As (I assume) a citizen, you wouldn't really experience what it's like to try to enter as an alien. It's a whole new ballgame.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Would you want to pay $10 for a gallon of milk?
Interesting that you should mention that. In Hawaii, where almost everything is "off-shore", a gallon of milk costs about $10.
Off-shoring only works as long as you have goods to trade back. If a cargo ship can't haul goods both ways on the route, then the route isn't worth as much of their time, and shipping costs go up. WAY up.
You know, 50 years ago the rest of the civilized world was in ruins after the WW2. Russia and most of it's sattelites had walled off their sandbox and wouldn't play with the Europeans. As to the "developing" world 50 years ago, close to 100% of their population was unskilled, and many illiterate.
Today Europe has superior infrastructure and access to cheap Russian energy and minerals, which is not good for America.
What's even worse for America is that China and India have invested a lot in education and now possess a highly skilled workforce, willing to work for cheap.
Now compare that to the decay we see in our schools and our infrastructure, and draw your own conclusions.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Actually this has not always been a case. At one time (eg. early 1900s) you could just come to US. There were no specific paper requirements, and there were no limits on immigration.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
No matter how you play with the numbers, it's simply not possible for everybody - or even a large portion - of society to become wealthy simply by investing. Somebody has to actually do the work and produce the value that nonworkers (investors) consume. If you want to spend $1, somebody has to make good on that by working to make what you want.
My grandfather worked for an oil company for 25 years, then drew an inflation-adjusted pension from them for 25 years. Those days are over! It's not about responsibility, it's about demographics. American was in the growth stage of mushrooming population since its inception, but now those days are ending, if not by choice, then by rising prices for everything as land, water, and energy become ever more expensive. That changes things in a major way. Just ask Europe.
Do people realize that SS has, since the first year, taken in more money each year than it's paid out? Where did all this money go?
As you probably know, it's not exactly "gone", it's owed to the social security fund by the Federal Government, which borrowed from it to pay for programs that apparently weren't funded fully enough by tax revenues and fees.
The thing is, when you think about it, this means that FICA has essentially become another tax, used to keep *other* taxes lower. And a rather regressive one at that, when you consider that it only applies to individual middle and lower class earnings.
I still think that a social insurance program is a fairly essential part of any really stable retirement system, and there seem to be other countries we might even call "socialist" here in the states that apparently manage to implement them effectively while still having higher average savings rates per household than we do in the U.S.
But you don't make it a winner by slowly transmuting it into a regressive tax. If taxes need to be higher, make 'em higher, so that people can enjoy well-funded effective programs. Or squeal if the tax rates are too high and the funding for programs needs to be cut.
Tweet, tweet.
When you bought a widget for $1 made within your country...When you buy the same widget for $0.10, you're injecting capital into the offshore trading partner's economy and gaining nothing in return.
Actually when you buy something that previously cost $1 for $0.10, so you are getting an extra $0.90 in wealth while transferring $0.10 in wealth to the other country. I could use that $0.90 to invest anywhere I want, perhaps in my own county, my own state, my own country, or in another country.
That said, the US exported $65 billion to China in 2007 (http://www.uschina.org/public/exports/us_exports_to_china_2007.pdf) and US exports to China have risen 300% from 2000-2007. The market is growing, and I know I have had conversations in my company about how we can sell into the expanding Chinese market as they become richer.
From 2003-2006, US exports overall grew 8.3% average annually, more than twice as fast as the US economy in general (http://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/2008_erp_ch3.pdf). The US is the world's largest exporter, doing with $1.5 trillion in goods and services exports in 2006. The United States is the top exporter of services and second-largest exporter of goods, behind only Germany.
Even if we want to just look at manufacturing, US manufacturing output is at an all-time high. Real value-added manufacturing output has risen every year since 1987, except for brief declines during the 1990-91 and 2000-01 recessions. The United States is still the world's largest manufacturer. (http://www.uschina.org/public/documents/2007/05/uscbc-7-myths-about-us-china-Trade.pdf)
government policy has made it increasingly difficult for low-skill Americans to get appropriate jobs.
The US minimum wage means there is no market for low-wage, low-skill jobs here. However the truth is that many of these jobs have been eliminated with automation rather than being exported. Robots will eventually take all of these jobs globally (assuming the continuation of the current long-term pattern of world wide economic growth).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care
The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system.
Except for the one we pay for, for the Iraqis.
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