5 ms·

They're defining retirement as "you don't have a job and aren't looking for one", which is an egregious stretch of a definition. They're not financially indepen

by krisdol 11y ago

They're defining retirement as "you don't have a job and aren't looking for one", which is an egregious stretch of a definition. They're not financially independent or retired, they've given up looking for work worth doing.

mrec 11y ago
If they're neither working nor financially independent, what are they living on? Not a rhetorical question; I don't live in the US, and am a bit vague about its welfare system. Is this essentially about people moving back in with family?
- fapjacks 11y ago
  We have nothing approaching basic income or housing that anybody could live off reasonably. Either these kids are living with parents, living off parent's money, or are living out of their cars. There is no in between here. I suspect that it's the former, which is really giving an awful impression about what is possible in the States. The vast majority of Americans need to work their asses off just to make rent. If you don't do that, you are either living off someone else's money, or don't have a house. End of story.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    >We have nothing approaching basic income or housing that anybody could live off reasonably. State welfare programs, section 8, food stamps, "earned income credit", medicaid, SSI, TANF, SNAP, etc. There's lots of aid in the US. Over 100m people nationally are on some level of means tested welfare. That's pushing one third of this nation. National spending accounts for $1T in welfare spending. That's slightly less than Mexico's entire GDP; a country of 122m. http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/PA694.pdf http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/PA694.p... The narrative of the US not having any welfare is asinine. In fact, the spending is staggering. When I lived in poorer neighborhoods in Chicago, most of my neighbors were on a fair amount of welfare to the point where they never had to bother getting a job. If you're willing to live in an urban area and live a modest lifestyle its largely trivial to game welfare benefits for a living.
    - jrjarrett 11y ago
      >>>We have nothing approaching basic income or housing that anybody could live off reasonably. >State welfare programs, section 8, food stamps, "earned income credit", medicaid, SSI, TANF, SNAP, etc. There's lots of aid in the US. I question this response with the qualifier of "living off reasonably." I'm certainly lucky enough not to need any of that, but from what I understand, it's barely subsistence existence.
    - krisdol 11y ago
      I really don't think that cato is in the ballpark of being an objective source on welfare, though I don't have a reason to disagree with the number you mentioned. I'm having trouble calculating a max SNAP/food stamps benefit that would exceed $194/month for an individual in urban NYC. Is that modest? Sure, I bet there are some people who are satisfied living off of public welfare alone. They exist in every country, and probably in greater numbers in more-socialized countries. I'm unconvinced that the problem is big enough to warrant cutting any public-welfare programs. Some level of "mooching" is expected. For me, when I was growing up on food stamps and welfare as a refugee, I know that it wasn't a level of living my family wanted to settle at. Evidently, neither does most of the country. The assistance helped us get settled and avoid a situation that surely would have resulted in us being thrown to the streets.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Can be anything. For one, they could actually be looking at jobs but passively. i.e. if you check the newspaper or websites for jobs, but didn't apply to any, you're not counted as 'looking for a job', so you're not unemployed either even though you obviously are. Passive job search is not included in the figures. Other than that, note that unemployment is measured in periods of 4 weeks. i.e. if you have a consulting gig for 8 months, and are then out of a freelance job for 5 weeks (after which you get another gig), and get interviewed during that time, you'd be unemployed, despite the fact you may have earned a normal annual income that year. Anyway, that's just to say that unemployment numbers may be off. It doesn't answer your question yet. But indeed there are also people who can't provide for themselves and are considered unemployed. A lot of them live at their parents, another significant chunk is simply living on debt. Creditcard debt is huge in the US.
- prostoalex 11y ago
  Most likely they live with other family members, either parents or elderly family who wouldn't mind a helping hand around the house in exchange for free rent. Previous generations had two reasons to move out and rent on their own - marriage and health insurance. Nowadays Americans are marrying at much lower rate, and parents can keep kids on their insurance until the age 26. So maybe this is the new normal, and the previous status quo of 20-something moving out and getting a job immediately was a distortion.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
loki540 11y ago
No, that's not it - of the people 20-24 who "don't have a job and aren't looking for them", the number of people who said it was because they were retired doubled. Other answers were "disabled" and "staying at home". That being said, I don't see how anyone can retire at 20-24 - if it was 30-34 it'd make a lot more sense. . .
- DannoHung 11y ago
  Were those the only buckets? It might simply be confusion if they wanted to answer: "Can't find a job worth a damn"
  - pjc50 11y ago
    I suspect it's more like "2% of people are cynical enough about the survey to tick 'retired' just to mess with the data".
- nostrademons 11y ago
  There's no category for "I believe that the notion of 'lifetime employment until age 65, upon which you get to enjoy the life you've saved up for if you still have the health for it' is outdated, and choose to take my retirement in chunks of a year or two interspersed by periods of productive, lucrative work." One of the side effects of moving to a fluid labor market is that you can basically get a job whenever you want. Moreover, you're forced to, and you're forced to stay up-to-date with market conditions so you can get a new job at any time. If you have to make this bargain anyway, who's to say that those jobs need to be contiguous? Why not take a job paying $90K for two years, live as if you had a job paying $60K, and then take a year off to travel? My wife and I both did variants of this (her: bond trader => Peace Corps, me: financial software => startup => Google => startup), but we took our downtime in socially sanctioned, labeled ways and so don't fit into the "retired" statistics. But what about, say, the friend of mine who interned on a salmon fishing boat, took a job in economic consulting, did a multi-year sex tour of Southeast Asia, and now runs a hedge fund there? Or the friend of mine who runs a profitable SaaS remotely and is now doing Hacker Paradise, traveling the world? Where do they fit into the employment statistics? "Retired" is a lot better descriptor than "disabled" or "staying at home". The numbers in the BLS report were on the order of 1-2%; I could easily believe that 1-2% of 20-24 year olds are doing gap years, or have software businesses that generate passive income, or have worked for a year or two at a lucrative profession and now saved up enough to travel the world.
sp332 11y ago
Nope, that's the definition for being out of the workforce. They asked those people why they weren't looking, and 2% of them said that they were retired.
noddingham 11y ago
Exactly. I don't care what they are saying, they are simply clever enough to say "retired" instead of admitting what their situation really is.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
That's the definition in the article for "out of the workforce".

by krisdol 11y ago

mrec 11y ago

If they're neither working nor financially independent, what are they living on? Not a rhetorical question; I don't live in the US, and am a bit vague about its welfare system. Is this essentially about people moving back in with family?

fapjacks 11y ago
We have nothing approaching basic income or housing that anybody could live off reasonably. Either these kids are living with parents, living off parent's money, or are living out of their cars. There is no in between here. I suspect that it's the former, which is really giving an awful impression about what is possible in the States. The vast majority of Americans need to work their asses off just to make rent. If you don't do that, you are either living off someone else's money, or don't have a house. End of story.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >We have nothing approaching basic income or housing that anybody could live off reasonably. State welfare programs, section 8, food stamps, "earned income credit", medicaid, SSI, TANF, SNAP, etc. There's lots of aid in the US. Over 100m people nationally are on some level of means tested welfare. That's pushing one third of this nation. National spending accounts for $1T in welfare spending. That's slightly less than Mexico's entire GDP; a country of 122m. http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/PA694.pdf http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/PA694.p... The narrative of the US not having any welfare is asinine. In fact, the spending is staggering. When I lived in poorer neighborhoods in Chicago, most of my neighbors were on a fair amount of welfare to the point where they never had to bother getting a job. If you're willing to live in an urban area and live a modest lifestyle its largely trivial to game welfare benefits for a living.
  - jrjarrett 11y ago
    >>>We have nothing approaching basic income or housing that anybody could live off reasonably. >State welfare programs, section 8, food stamps, "earned income credit", medicaid, SSI, TANF, SNAP, etc. There's lots of aid in the US. I question this response with the qualifier of "living off reasonably." I'm certainly lucky enough not to need any of that, but from what I understand, it's barely subsistence existence.
  - krisdol 11y ago
    I really don't think that cato is in the ballpark of being an objective source on welfare, though I don't have a reason to disagree with the number you mentioned. I'm having trouble calculating a max SNAP/food stamps benefit that would exceed $194/month for an individual in urban NYC. Is that modest? Sure, I bet there are some people who are satisfied living off of public welfare alone. They exist in every country, and probably in greater numbers in more-socialized countries. I'm unconvinced that the problem is big enough to warrant cutting any public-welfare programs. Some level of "mooching" is expected. For me, when I was growing up on food stamps and welfare as a refugee, I know that it wasn't a level of living my family wanted to settle at. Evidently, neither does most of the country. The assistance helped us get settled and avoid a situation that surely would have resulted in us being thrown to the streets.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Can be anything. For one, they could actually be looking at jobs but passively. i.e. if you check the newspaper or websites for jobs, but didn't apply to any, you're not counted as 'looking for a job', so you're not unemployed either even though you obviously are. Passive job search is not included in the figures. Other than that, note that unemployment is measured in periods of 4 weeks. i.e. if you have a consulting gig for 8 months, and are then out of a freelance job for 5 weeks (after which you get another gig), and get interviewed during that time, you'd be unemployed, despite the fact you may have earned a normal annual income that year. Anyway, that's just to say that unemployment numbers may be off. It doesn't answer your question yet. But indeed there are also people who can't provide for themselves and are considered unemployed. A lot of them live at their parents, another significant chunk is simply living on debt. Creditcard debt is huge in the US.
prostoalex 11y ago
Most likely they live with other family members, either parents or elderly family who wouldn't mind a helping hand around the house in exchange for free rent. Previous generations had two reasons to move out and rent on their own - marriage and health insurance. Nowadays Americans are marrying at much lower rate, and parents can keep kids on their insurance until the age 26. So maybe this is the new normal, and the previous status quo of 20-something moving out and getting a job immediately was a distortion.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

loki540 11y ago

No, that's not it - of the people 20-24 who "don't have a job and aren't looking for them", the number of people who said it was because they were retired doubled. Other answers were "disabled" and "staying at home". That being said, I don't see how anyone can retire at 20-24 - if it was 30-34 it'd make a lot more sense. . .

DannoHung 11y ago
Were those the only buckets? It might simply be confusion if they wanted to answer: "Can't find a job worth a damn"
- pjc50 11y ago
  I suspect it's more like "2% of people are cynical enough about the survey to tick 'retired' just to mess with the data".
nostrademons 11y ago
There's no category for "I believe that the notion of 'lifetime employment until age 65, upon which you get to enjoy the life you've saved up for if you still have the health for it' is outdated, and choose to take my retirement in chunks of a year or two interspersed by periods of productive, lucrative work." One of the side effects of moving to a fluid labor market is that you can basically get a job whenever you want. Moreover, you're forced to, and you're forced to stay up-to-date with market conditions so you can get a new job at any time. If you have to make this bargain anyway, who's to say that those jobs need to be contiguous? Why not take a job paying $90K for two years, live as if you had a job paying $60K, and then take a year off to travel? My wife and I both did variants of this (her: bond trader => Peace Corps, me: financial software => startup => Google => startup), but we took our downtime in socially sanctioned, labeled ways and so don't fit into the "retired" statistics. But what about, say, the friend of mine who interned on a salmon fishing boat, took a job in economic consulting, did a multi-year sex tour of Southeast Asia, and now runs a hedge fund there? Or the friend of mine who runs a profitable SaaS remotely and is now doing Hacker Paradise, traveling the world? Where do they fit into the employment statistics? "Retired" is a lot better descriptor than "disabled" or "staying at home". The numbers in the BLS report were on the order of 1-2%; I could easily believe that 1-2% of 20-24 year olds are doing gap years, or have software businesses that generate passive income, or have worked for a year or two at a lucrative profession and now saved up enough to travel the world.

sp332 11y ago

Nope, that's the definition for being out of the workforce. They asked those people why they weren't looking, and 2% of them said that they were retired.

noddingham 11y ago

Exactly. I don't care what they are saying, they are simply clever enough to say "retired" instead of admitting what their situation really is.

bryanlarsen 11y ago

That's the definition in the article for "out of the workforce".