Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
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.
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.
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).