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When No One Retires (hbr.org)
More and more Americans want to work longer -- or have to, given that many aren't saving adequately for retirement. From a report: Before our eyes, the world is undergoing a massive demographic transformation. In many countries, the population is getting old. Very old. Globally, the number of people age 60 and over is projected to double to more than 2 billion by 2050 and those 60 and over will outnumber children under the age of 5. In the United States, about 10,000 people turn 65 each day, and one in five Americans will be 65 or older by 2030. By 2035, Americans of retirement age will eclipse the number of people aged 18 and under for the first time in U.S. history.
[...] Soon, the workforce will include people from as many as five generations ranging in age from teenagers to 80-somethings. Are companies prepared? The short answer is "no." Aging will affect every aspect of business operations -- whether it's talent recruitment, the structure of compensation and benefits, the development of products and services, how innovation is unlocked, how offices and factories are designed, and even how work is structured -- but for some reason, the message just hasn't gotten through. In general, corporate leaders have yet to invest the time and resources necessary to fully grasp the unprecedented ways that aging will change the rules of the game.
What's more, those who do think about the impacts of an aging population typically see a looming crisis -- not an opportunity. They fail to appreciate the potential that older adults present as workers and consumers. The reality, however, is that increasing longevity contributes to global economic growth. Today's older adults are generally healthier and more active than those of generations past, and they are changing the nature of retirement as they continue to learn, work, and contribute. In the workplace, they provide emotional stability, complex problem-solving skills, nuanced thinking, and institutional know-how. Their talents complement those of younger workers, and their guidance and support enhance performance and intergenerational collaboration. In encore careers, volunteering, and civic and social settings, their experience and problem-solving abilities contribute to society's well-being.
[...] Soon, the workforce will include people from as many as five generations ranging in age from teenagers to 80-somethings. Are companies prepared? The short answer is "no." Aging will affect every aspect of business operations -- whether it's talent recruitment, the structure of compensation and benefits, the development of products and services, how innovation is unlocked, how offices and factories are designed, and even how work is structured -- but for some reason, the message just hasn't gotten through. In general, corporate leaders have yet to invest the time and resources necessary to fully grasp the unprecedented ways that aging will change the rules of the game.
What's more, those who do think about the impacts of an aging population typically see a looming crisis -- not an opportunity. They fail to appreciate the potential that older adults present as workers and consumers. The reality, however, is that increasing longevity contributes to global economic growth. Today's older adults are generally healthier and more active than those of generations past, and they are changing the nature of retirement as they continue to learn, work, and contribute. In the workplace, they provide emotional stability, complex problem-solving skills, nuanced thinking, and institutional know-how. Their talents complement those of younger workers, and their guidance and support enhance performance and intergenerational collaboration. In encore careers, volunteering, and civic and social settings, their experience and problem-solving abilities contribute to society's well-being.
I am retiring the instant I meet my relevant financial goals for doing so.
it's time to medicare lower age!
I've invested as much as I possibly can in my 401k for decades. I don't eat out, I have a small home, and don't carry debt. Two stock market crashes have robbed over 2/3rds of my balances in retirement over time. Regardless of picking an exclusively index-fund, the losses have not been proportionally made up with gains. The short of it is - this is by design. The powers that be LOVE their "public good" slush funds. You're not actually supposed to collect from them, just pay in forever and then die for the good of the collective.
Really the biggest problem I see, is how Gen X and Millennials are getting blocked out of their advancement tracks. When people in their 60+ are not retiring, that is creating a workforce where it is difficult to for the younger folks to advance in, because these promotion jobs are already covered by people with more experience.
Plus the next set of problem, is these older people are not planning on retiring, so this means, they are not taking promising young people under their wing, mentoring them the tricks of the trade, to be ready to step up and continue on the work. Now these people are working to their death, without a transition plan in effect.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
While the Racist Right just blames the fact that others are taking their jobs, while they are just unqualified and not skilled enough to do the work. Also it seems these work shy Left areas, seem to have a much higher level of productivity, then the areas predominately right.
I have seen people who are Left leaning, who are very hard workers, and often work harder then their jobs needs, I have seen Right leaning people who are also just as hard workers. I have seen Left leaning people who are lazy and just wants to get paid for minimum work, I have seen Right leaning people who are also just as lazy.
You seem to be confusing political leaning, with other traits which are not correlated.
Labor has been devalued as long as it is allowed.
The 1800's labors for a company were in essence slaves. Living in Company Housing, having to pay their rent back to the company, buying food and everything from the company stores. If a worker get injured or fired, it was nearly a death sentence, because it wasn't a case of getting an other job, but spending the rest of your life homeless, barring extensive effort in finding new work.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This also will impact Medicare / Medicade, and health insurance rates in general in the USA. With the number of people over 65 quickly outstripping the people under 65, it is in no way sustainable past 2035. Per the US Census statistics, by 2030 all the "baby boomers" will be over 65, and by 2035 we will be at 165.6 million "working age" vs "retirement age" of 76.7 million...which puts the ratio at 2.15. SSA.gov says the ratio needs to be at least 3 to keep the system going; it dropped below 3 in 2010.
There are only a few fixes for this: 1) forced births combined with forced adoptions; to increase the population AND place the kids into families capable of supporting them or 2) increased immigration; bringing in more immigrants and quickly incorporating them into the legal workforce. 3) restructuring medicare taxes by increasing the income cap, increasing the retirement age, etc.
Your balanced mutual funds didn't recover since the last two market crashes? The market as a whole rebounded in an average 1.5 years after the last few crashes. What kind of dog shit mutual funds do you own?
I don't respond to AC's.
I worked for a company where a maintenance guy who was closing in on 80 and could have retired at 60 refused to leave and refused to train a successor. "If I train a replacement, I'll get replaced." (False. That would be age discrimination.)
He ended up having a stroke and died soon after. He had never documented the hacks and workarounds that kept most of the long-since-discontinued machines running over the years and that knowledge died with him. The capital investment the company had to make after things started breaking immediately surpassed every dollar the guy made during his lifetime.
And he had been making some damn good money.
The machines were only part of the expense. Most of the tooling had to be remade and people had to be trained on the new stuff, plus the new stuff had to be re-qualified for some processes involving mil and medical products.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
There's an entire branch of applied mathematics, known as actuarial statistics, that literally does nothing but figure these things all day long. And since corporations pay them a ton of money to do these projections, they've gotten pretty good at them. As in, amazingly good.
You are welcome on my lawn.
My job doesn't pay as much as I would like. Waaaaaaaaaaa!
Dude, "some might call it slavery" is ridiculous. You are looking at it *all wrong*.
Slaves cannot refuse sex. You can. Slaves cannot quit and choose a different employer. You can. Slaves cannot refuse to be beaten. You can. Slaves cannot choose where they live. You can. Slaves cannot vote. You can. Your analogy is juvenile.
You like having things, like clothing, food, electricity? Well, somebody has got to produce all of that for you. You think THEY want to work for free? THAT would be slavery. No, you MUST give something back for all the effort they have put forth on your account. YOUR job is how YOU pay them back. The "tokens" are just a means of facilitating the exchange.
Yes, we have a problem wherein too much wealth and power are concentrated among too few people. But your analysis of the situation is idiot-level wrong.
Working at 80 something? I doubt I'll make it to 70.
People certainly are "retiring" in terms of collecting Social Security old age benefits.
There were about 2.8 workers for every Social Security Old Age old age, survivors, and disability insurance (OASDI) beneficiary in 2017. This is down from 3.7 in 1970, and 5.1 in 1960. Te ratio had been stable, remaining between 3.2 and 3.4 from 1974 through 2008, but now going down quickly.
The Social Security trustees forecast that the ratio of workers to beneficiaries reaches 2.2 by 2035 when the baby-boom generation will have largely retired.
Are you tracking it in ten-minute intervals and counting every little fluctuation as gain that you "lost" 10 minutes later when it went back to the price of 20 minutes before?
The Dow is up 200% over the last 10 years, 300% over the last 20, and over 1000% over the last 30 years. Anyone who invested in index funds funds "for decades" at least tripled their money (two decades), if not a ten-fold gain (3 decades).
If you were gambling picking individual companies, of course you could poorly. You claimed an index fund though, anyone can see what the indexes have done in 5 seconds on Google.
Ergo you're full of shit.
Furthermore, you claimed it was in 401K. Given a typical 50% employer match, which ALSO grew by 300%-1000%, the total return on 401k invested in index funds has been well into four digits.
We should get over the social stigma, already, and start processing the old and infirm as food for the next generation. This would solve the looming food crisis, and move older workers out of the system to create space for younger workers in the same fell swoop. /s
Only people who own things can retire in the US. You can't earn enough working for people to retire. You need to be collecting rent, either figuratively or literally. We're building our wealth by doing that literally... collecting rent from real estate.
I don't respond to AC's.
or the stock market crashes and takes out your investments. Or your company outsources your job in your 50s and nobody'll hire you. Or any one of a dozen things out of your control happen.
But it's a good thing we didn't gut the social safety net and that nobody is doing anything that could impact your plans to retire.
I'm sure knowing all that is a real load off the old minderooni.
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couple of family member illnesses hit in 2006. Then the 2008 crash wiped me out when I started getting back on my feet. By the time the Affordable Care Act's protections kicked in my career and finances were pretty well shot. Right around the time I recovered from that kid got to be college age. Of course nothing saved (even though I made 2x median income and lived like crap driving a 20 year old car). Suddenly had $20k+/year in school bills. I could borrow, but what's the point? They're gauranteed loans. I can never default. They'll just garnish my wages and toss me in jail if I can't/don't pay.
The American working class got shafted since Clinton. The double whammy of Clinton Democrats and the GOP both siding with mega corporations against me left me screwed. H1-Bs flooded the market and my wages plummeted. I think the Berniecrats will eventually fix it, but I'm pretty sure I'll be dead by then.
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I could literally retire right now and not run out of things to do for the rest of my life, no matter how old I may get.
If you define yourself only by your work, I have nothing but pity for you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Then become your own master, dipshit. It's really easy unless you are a total fucking moron.
[older workers] complement those of younger workers, and their guidance and support enhance performance and intergenerational collaboration.
That may happen, but one harsh condition is that younger workers accept the idea that their elders have something valuable to share. Too often in IT we see old known problems solved again from scratch.
Trump kicked out the illegals and there are tons of jobs available. You need to look to the future instead of living in the past gramps.
Tons of jobs, as long as you're looking for jobs picking fruit, mowing lawns, flipping burgers, or emptying waste baskets after hours in office buildings.
The high paying jobs you wanted to come back are still in China, because everyone still wants a $99 air conditioner from Walmart.
And the really good jobs required you to go beyond getting a high school diploma and expecting to get a job at the steel mill or the Ford plant.
But I'm sure Twitler will bring those jobs back Real Soon Now.
If you don't want to work, don't work.
or volunteer. Or get involved in politics. Or play video games. Or build model airplanes. Or teach a community college class. Or do any one of a million things folks can do when they're not working all the time. There's plenty of ways to be relevant w/o working full time.
Yes, there are some folks who don't know what to do with themselves if they're not working. But they myth that most folks are that way is, well, a myth. One I suspect the wealthy put in our heads like the old "Idle hands are the devil's plaything" bullshit.
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The option is to go back to existence before such tokens were invented.
It was utterly brutal. Most children didn't make it alive to reproductive age. If they did, females were stuck doing nothing but doing the procreating for as long as their bodies held together, because if you wanted any security should you survive, you needed to have enough children alive at the end of your procreative cycle that survivors would be able to take care of you in addition to their other responsibilities. Because when you lack such tokens, there's no handy way to monetize any skills not directly related to either surviving, or supporting the immediate surviving. "Ideas, inventions and contributions" that did not serve such people were simply ignored as useless.
Invention of money is one of the key breakthrough of human societies that allowed us to invent the "monetizing the future" aspect of work. Which meant that work that didn't have immediate impact on survival became doable without starving to death.
Whether that's true, in the tech halls they DON'T actually want us. They throw us out for the latest naive fad lickers they can find. IT is based more on fashion than science & logic*, and younger people are stupid enough to fall for and act sufficiently enthusiastic about every trend that comes under a PHB's nose.
Yes, there are exceptions, but I don't wanna hear them; and git off my lawn!
* I rarely see any solid studies that the newer shit is better, only babbling theory that sounds nice on paper. It's always keep up with Jones' first, science later.
Table-ized A.I.
How many of these self employed are actually employed by someone who makes them mark as self employed in order to evade some regulations?
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
I'll bite.
I'm what most people would refer to as a communist, I'm actually a pragmatist. I believe that everyone should do their part and the ecosystem of the economy should be built to facilitate that. This means that publicly funded medicine is required because people have to be healthy to work. This means publicly funded schooling because without an education, I might as well just replace a person with a machine. I also believe strongly that most jobs are simply not worth paying a proper salary for, so the government has to be in a position to subsidize those workers since in a free market, why would I waste my time and money to employ someone if there's no possibility of making a profit?
Also, I make a lot of money compared to most. I also pay 50% tax plus another 25% sales tax on most things I buy. I still have more disposable income that most.
I just came to work at 2am on a Monday morning. I worked Saturday, I worked Sunday, I work pretty much all the time. I'm certainly not work shy. I raise my children with three core beliefs.
- Treat other people the way you would want to be treated if you were them. (this is an enhanced version of do onto others since not everyone is the same)
- If there's work to be done, don't try to figure out who to put on the job. Do it. If that means standing in a pile of shit with a shovel to make fertilizer, start shoveling but make sure to have a few more shovels around. When people see you... a person they will hopefully see as being "above that station in life" with a shovel working, they'll ask "Why are YOU doing this, surely you can get someone else to" and they'll respond "The job needs to be done and I had a shovel." and some people will realize... if for no other reason than being embarrassed to do otherwise will grab a shovel and help.
- Nothing has ever been accomplished through competition that could not have been done better through cooperation. When we chose to go to the moon, it was a great achievement, but we would have done it faster and better if we combined the minds of the Americans and the Russians instead of having them work relentlessly in private from one another. If you absolutely must compete, try to outwork your competition and achieve more than they do. With competition as your motivation, we sent people to the moon... and we stopped because we won and said "screw it". With cooperation, we put a space station into orbit and it's been there A LONG TIME and keeps getting better. It has been a major contributor to further cooperation that will bring us back to the moon and further on to Mars because we've cooperated to find a common cause. Never use competition as a motivation. It's ok to measure your performance in comparison to someone else. It's also ok to be proud that you are doing well. But it is NEVER acceptable to compare yourself to someone else and consider yourself better than them because you have managed to achieve more. Instead, it makes it your duty to help them increase their capacity.
Economics are substantially more complex than "If this then that". Elderly can't retire because people don't die. That's a far accurate though grossly incorrect observation. We all need to work because we all need money. We all need money to become worth less to allow us to digest the high debt we incur to buy things which used to be much cheaper when people needed less money. Inflation is a necessity to allow people to prepare for retirement.
I bought a house 15 years ago for about $400K at today's exchange rate. My neighbor with precisely the same house (they're town houses) sold theirs for $900K this past week. The house hasn't doubled in size. The neighborhood didn't get an attraction to increase demand. The house simply increased in monetary value because the money has deflated in value by a considerable amount. In fact, the house is really worth less since we bought the houses brand new and now they're 15 years old with wear and tear on them. People paying $900K would have paid a million except they nee
Just who do you think is filling those wastebaskets? Robots?
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Of course they're just extrapolations. What else could they be? We're talking about the future. We don't have any "facts" about the future. The weather report for tomorrow says "sunny and pleasant", but there could be an earthquake that swallows up my whole town.
Actuaries take the history of a host of variables and try to make the best guess they can. They are right a lot more often than not. For someone to take a prediction and say, "Well, they don't know for sure" doesn't add anything to the discussion and can actually prevent people from making informed decisions based upon probabilities.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, the Dow is up a lot over time. But as a worker you don't invest the full amount of your retirement savings 20, 30 or 40 years ago. You put a little in each year. You put less in at the start of your career because, well, you probably earned less. Meanwhile inflation and fees eat away at that little. Matching funds compensate for some of it.
The real problem is the cyclic nature of our economy. We have a boom/bust about every 8-12 years. e.g. there's been a major crash every 8-12 years since I was born. My Dad's retirement happened to land during one of those crashes, and the way most retirement programs are structured if you retire during one of those busts you get screwed.
The inventor of the 401k is on record saying his program is being abused. That it was never meant to replace pensions. That it was a tool for high income earners to shore up their savings. This is because even he understood that the stock market is a gamble. You're not gambling on companies. You're gambing on when the next crash is gonna be.
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Slaves cannot quit and choose a different employer. You can.
Actually, there are plenty of people who cannot withstand a disruption in employment. This is a problem that UBI seeks to fix.
Slaves cannot choose where they live. You can.
Actually, some people do not have enough money to move. This is a problem that UBI seeks to fix.
You like having things, like clothing, food, electricity? Well, somebody has got to produce all of that for you.
Actually, automation has gotten to the point where the efforts of a dozen people can feed thousands of people. It won't be long until it's down to just one person. Clothing is almost entirely made by machines. Electricity? Well damn dude, that shit is provided by the Sun.
You think THEY want to work for free?
You do know that some people do things just for the betterment of the world right? I write code and give it away so that other people don't have to.
No, you MUST give something back for all the effort they have put forth on your account.
Who said people didn't want to give back? If you provide people with that which they need to survive then they can make better decisions about their future.
Yes, we have a problem wherein too much wealth and power are concentrated among too few people.
And what is your solution to this problem? Should we just hope the wealthy have a change of heart? We tried labor unions and look what happened to those. You are standing in the way of progress. Be careful because it may run you over and drag you with it.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
*You* choose when to sell stocks amd bond in your 401k. You do NOT need to sell all your investments the day you retire, and it would be stupid to do so.
You have to withdraw a little bit (of cash, not stocks) after you turn 71 1/2, but basically you decide when to sell.
As you stated, the economy and the market are cyclical, on a cycle of about ten years. If your dad decided to sell everything at the bottom of the market, I feel for him. That really sucks. He made a really bad decision, probably based on fear.
Well you asked for the advice, so I'll give you some.
The scenario you mentioned hits on two big things you should learn in your first few hours learning about investing.
First, balance your investments. The percent you have in bonds should be *very roughly* equal to your age, so he should have had over 70% in bonds, which don't lose value. In fact they can increase with the stock market goes down.
Second, don't panic and sell everything at once when there is a dip. If the market is headed down from a high and you're worried, sell 10% or even 15% Typical recovery time is about 18 months, so stay cool. After a year, if you feel you must, you can sell another 10% to protect some gains in case it stays down for a long time.
I am waiting for retirement to finally be able to do all my hobbies and project. Project : a few game idea I have (both as board game and as computer games). Hobbies : board games, rpg (pen and paper) , computer games, card games , cycling a lot, returning to my passion of QM calculations and following the newest advancement there, and I pass on minor stuff like from time to time I do my own furniture for fun and shit and giggle (I build a house for my cats, 3 floor, with little ramp to go , and an openning for me to retrieve cats for veterinary visit :-;), reading a lot of books. I haven't time nowadays due to needing to work to earn enough money to eat, rent, live. But if I am allowed to retire in a financially stable way.... Here we go my pretties. I doubt I will be bored any seconds. I think I would probably complain "I have not enough time".
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But, see, if you cherry-pick the cases of good behavior among people on your side, and equally cherry-pick the cases of bad behavior on the other side, you can turn it into "proof" of your side's moral superiority!
David Gould
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High taxes on cheap Chinese shit will level the playing field
And result in high taxes on cheap American shit being sold to China. Like soybeans. We used to make a lot of money selling those. We had a natural monopoly since it cost too much for other countries to catch up to us - gotta buy a lot of expensive equipment to match our productivity.
Then Trump decided Mercantilism was a good idea. (Hint: We figured out it was a terrible idea in the 1600s).
Now the US has given away it's soy monopoly. And it will still be gone even if Trump declares victory and cuts tariffs, because we created a window for other countries to catch up to us. So now we will make less money selling soybeans forever.
Trade is hard. If your solution to any trade problem is "so simple", you are wrong and going to make the situation worse.