17 ms·

A world without retirement?

131 points by DiabloD3 10y ago

tradersam 10y ago
> Bismarck did, however, have a further vision that was genuinely too radical for his era: he proposed a pension that could be drawn at any age, if the contributor was judged unfit for work. Those drawing it earlier would receive a lower amount. I wonder how well this would work in today's society. Pretending disability doesn't exist, and just making it a simple rate decrease for the earlier you withdraw.
- tyingq 10y ago
  That sort of exists in the US system for Social Security. You can retire as early as age 62, but at a reduced (80%) benefit. If you wait until you're 67, you get the full 100%. Of course, the payment is a pittance compared to most actual pensions.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  This is similar to how my pension will work here in Norway. I will be 62 at the end of the year and I will be able to start taking my pension (regardless of whether I work) but I could also delay taking it indefinitely. The total amount is fixed and predicated on the average age at death. So if I take it early I spread it more thinly. If I take it later I get more per year while taking it but risk missing out altogether by dying early; and it is not inheritable so if I want to give some away it's best to start early.
  - orangecat 10y ago
    if I want to give some away it's best to start early Right, if it's the same net present value why would anyone ever start later? If you're still working just take the money and save or invest it.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Investing it (or even storing it in a bank, if above the insurance limit) comes with an extra risk.
- shorttime 10y ago
  Isn't this essentially social security disability?
  - tradersam 10y ago
    No. Even though I said let's pretend disability doesn't exist, this is from the SS website: > Social Security pays benefits to people who can’t work because they have a medical condition that’s expected to last at least one year or result in death.[0] The program I was talking about would be more something like retirement+disability, proved by the government with a set retire date (say, 65) and any withdrawals before hand would be at a lesser rate (if proven unfit to work, but not only of a medical condition). Specifically in the U.S. [0]:https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10029.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10029.pdf
- metasean 10y ago
  >Pretending disability And what happens to those that are 'genuinely handicap' and have medical costs that unavoidably exceed the 'lower amount'?
5706906c06c 10y ago
I've come to terms with the fact that I'll work until I can't, possibly because of an illness or just sheer exhaustion.
- zobzu 10y ago
  the older you get the less realistic it feels, unless you're ok with being homeless or suicide. you just dont have the same health and energy at 60. or 40. if you make it that far that is.
simonsarris 10y ago
I'm currently writing a list of things to consider when creating a UBI scheme (concerns that I often don't see addressed), and this is an easy way to illustrate one of them. One simple way to implement "single payer" healthcare in the US would be to slowly expand the medicare (US program for people 65 and older) coverage by moving the age lower every year. Very similarly, a simple way to incrementally implement UBI would be to lower the "retirement age" every year. But precisely the opposite is happening. Per the article: > In 2010, British women got their state pension at 60 and men got theirs at 65. By October 2020, both sexes will have to wait until they are 66. By 2028, the age will rise again, to 67. How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this?
- rileymat2 10y ago
  "Very similarly, a simple way to incrementally implement UBI would be to lower the "retirement age" every year." I suspect when many (not all) of the supporters of UBI consider it to be the most basic of subsistence payments, not something we would want seniors to retire with. Think of the difference in amounts between SS and unemployment insurance currently.
  - pharrlax 10y ago
    Then couple the lowering of the retirement age with a lowering of the amount paid out in the early years of retirement, gradually plateauing down to a base UBI level for 40-somethings and increasing to plateau out to a social-security level for 60-somethings.
  - peteretep 10y ago
    > the most basic of subsistence > payments, not something we would > want seniors to retire with The full UK pension is £119.30 per week, unemployment benefit (JSA) is: £73.10.
    - exclusiv 10y ago
      Wow that's nothing. We have state government workers in California getting 90% of their highest salary as long as they live. And some even double dip.
groestl 10y ago
Where do the jobs for the elderly come from, if even young, healthy people are gradually priced out of their jobs by technology and automation? Right now, good jobs are replaced by bad, underpaid ones. Desperate people are serving burritos to a smaller group of people who are lucky to have the skills necessary in this time of transition. All of them work to aggregate productive capital in the hands of the very few. If there's only a handful of people left who own everything, supermarkets, datacenters, robots, software, machines, farmland.. to whom will these people sell all the stuff they produce? How do those who have no jobs pay for this stuff? I think whoever projects 40 years into the future, and sees no need to mention the words "UBI" or "property tax", is in for a surprise. Will it be a nice surprise? That depends on how fast our society realizes what is currently heading our way.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  Your question is based on a false premise. There is plenty of work, we just haven't figured out how to monetize most of it yet. Mental health, filmmaking, video games, quality food, cultural maintenance events, general caretaking, career development... we're not producing anywhere near the quantity of those things that we actually need. There are lots of reasons why the markets are currently failing to monetize the demand in those areas (there are incentives for corporations to leave demand on the table), but there's no reason why those incentives should be seen as permanent. If you think the selection of products and services we buy should be locked in the 1950s then it will look like there's not enough work, and automation will eat what work there is. But the catalog of services that people are purchasing is growing rapidly as we learn how to hack the market blockages, and it will grow exponentially as we approach the complete information liquidity event which is coming in the next decades. We're just starting to achieve widespread realization that you can offer a service and pay your bills using only Instagram. We're coming from a world where there were only mass-market channels for advertising (newspapapers, broadcast TV, etc), so there was only a limited information space for a small number of brands. That's why we think there are only a handful of job categories, the number of brands was tiny and a brand can only support a finite number of job categories. A decentralized system like Instagram can support infinite job categories.
Neliquat 10y ago
If your retirement is not self-funded, you likey don't have one. Your future is your responsibility, if you are able. Do it while you can, or grow old without.
- bartvk 10y ago
  I hate to see so bleak a future, however two years ago I quit my job and started freelancing at 38. That has made me much, much more aware of the need to save money. It's not hard to make a simple spreadsheet and see when you're able to retire. I suggest everyone does so. It's very interesting to see your retirement date move up when you change your savings rate.
- gkya 10y ago
  Oh yes and everybody should set up their sewage systems and raise their own crops in their own backyards. Society doesn't function like that.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    That is a good illistration of specialization of labor, but I'm not sure how that related to the OP.
    - omginternets 10y ago
      I think his point is that civilization is based on the principle of not letting people fend for themselves (e.g.: through public works like sewage systems), and that this naturally extends to retirement pensions.
      - gkya 10y ago
        The point is that civilisation is nothing else than working together as a society. The retirement system is not philantrophy, it's retributions for those who spent a good part of their life as a cog in the machine. And it's not like the retired receive their pensions ex nihilo, they pay in advance through the social security cuts (1). We teach our children to become a part of the civilisation and take care of them until they actually do so. And we should equally take care of the elderly because they've already took their part in the civilised society, and now they have the right to enjoy their last hours in peace. But we always like receiving, and giving always torments us. That's no civilisation, though, but just a bad likeness thereof. (1) That's, at least, how it functions here in Turkey: every month, a certain amount of your wage goes to your retirement fund, and when you retire, you receive your pension, an amount that depends on your past contributions to your fund and on the height of your position.
loup-vaillant 10y ago
Step 1: Oh my god we can't pay for retirement! Step 2: Raise the age of retirement. (Phew!) Step 3: Oh my god unemployment is raising! (Those no-longer- retirees must find a job, right?) Step 4: Get rid of unemployment insurance (in part or in whole). Step 5: things get real ugly real quick. --- Seriously, raising the age of retirement in the face of raising technological unemployment is nuts. Those who push for this are either stupid or evil. Given the army of counsellors they have at their disposal, I'm not sure stupidity is a valid explanation. Some of them must have some nefarious purpose in mind.
- VLM 10y ago
  Step 4 was implemented in the USA with SSDI. There's heavy emotional baggage to tag people as permanently totally disabled merely because the economy is too small to let them participate. Also its kinda a mess mixing essentially fake claims (from a medical disease perspective) vs real claims. So the same program takes care of a guy with 100% disability back pain who sells his pain pills (a whole nother problem) and plays video games all day but is actually physically healthy while merely economically dead, with another dude missing some limbs or brain damaged. Its weird but mostly seems to be working rather than your step #5. Around 1 in 20 people in the USA are on SSDI. The exact ratio of who's economically damaged vs physically damaged is unclear but you can guess by looking at rate graphs over the last couple decades, since the 80s perhaps.
  - loup-vaillant 10y ago
    > Step 4 was implemented in the USA with SSDI. That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about "no job, no pay" policies. Like, "work or starve". England kinda went down that route, doing their very best to throw people out of their meagre unemployment benefits. SSDI as you describe it is actually a form of (covert) unemployment insurance: a way to have money even if you can't get a job. While the stigmatization sucks, the money is better than nothing.
edward 10y ago
Opposite viewpoint: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
- t0mislav 10y ago
  I stil don't understand how this guy did it. Can someone explain in a few words?
  - dan1234 10y ago
    Young couple both earning a lot, and saving/investing most of it - a turbocharged retirement plan.
  - ahelwer 10y ago
    If you can live on $1500/month, you only need to save up $450K-$600K and live off the 3-4% real returns in perpetuity. This quantity of savings is easily reachable within a decade by tech workers paid $100K+/yr. In general, just take (monthly spending) * 12 * [25 or 33] to get bounds on required savings. The only other useful observation is that reducing spending is much more effective for reaching financial independence than increasing earnings, and that most spending is staggeringly wasteful and easy to forgo. Oh, and if you manage to find a life partner with the same values and earnings - congrats, you can easily retire within five years.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      Make sure you take into account taxes. Retirement investment plans such as 401ks and IRAs have significant tax benefits. The catch is that they can't be withdrawn from before age 59 without huge penalties. So if the goal is to retire early, one needs to use regular investment vehicles, which are subject to capital gains (15%),
      - ahelwer 10y ago
        You can transfer the money from 401k to IRA to Roth IRA then withdraw it after five years. You have to pay income tax during the IRA to Roth IRA conversion, but if you're retiring early your tax bracket is likely very low. Similarly, you'll be in the 0% bracket for long term capital gains.
Gatsky 10y ago
When visiting the US, I was struck by how many elderly workers there were in restaurants, subways etc. Japan was similar. In Australia, I never see this. The reasons are presumably: 1. Australia has ok free healthcare 2. The baby boomers have generated massive wealth over the last 50 years because of the property market. Point 2 certainly won't be repeated for the next generation.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Could Australians continue to work into old age if they chose to? Your post implies they're being forced to work in the US and Japan, but it may be the opposite: that they have less options in Australia to keep working despite wishing to do so.
  - Gatsky 10y ago
    I don't think that is very plausible, nothing to stop Australians working as long as they like. The retirees in Australia seem to be playing a lot of golf, travelling and looking after their grand children, to make a gross generalisation.
- peteretep 10y ago
  In the UK, I never see this, but I saw it and found it a little shocking in Amsterdam.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  Australia has high immigration levels, and so a larger pool of younger workers to do menial jobs. Japan does not - quite deliberately.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
Good writeup but it talks about a symptom, not the cause. Governments and people have been living on credit for decades. Governments borrow from retirement funds to meet current obligations. Many people have failed to save enough, or even worse have large debt.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
contingencies 10y ago
For those who perceive such issues as likely in their future, for whatever reason, I would recommend an alternate strategy of becoming familiar with the social, cultural and legal ramifications of living in or retiring to a developing country. This can be a very effective means to mitigate costs and is widely used by the French (eg. large numbers move to Tunisia for months of the year), and in South and Southeast Asia everyone from old hippies and alcoholics to bitter divorcees and religious retirees. The point is, think outside the national box. This is easier to do if you properly comprehend the challenges and limitations while younger. For US citizens, just leaving the country pretty much guarantees cheaper access to medical care.
- michaelchisari 10y ago
  That seems extraordinarily unfair to the developing countries, especially if it becomes something that people do en masse.
  - contingencies 10y ago
    Unfair in which way? Generally these people bring cash and education and support the development of local infrastructure. Many such countries actually offer specific retirement or resettlement visas to attract such migration.
    - michaelchisari 10y ago
      We're talking about an aging population. There are a lot of costs associated with that.
      - civility 10y ago
        "Generally these people bring cash"
      - trprog 10y ago
        In developing countries you are generally dealing with a user pays medical system. So they don't care if you require extensive medical care as you pay for it.
pedalpete 10y ago
We have an interesting dichotomy today which was very apparent in a discussion last night. A friend goes to an annual management seminar where last year's focus was on this topic of expecting employees to work until later in life. This year's topic was the end of work as many positions will be replaced or augmented by machines. Which is it? There won't be jobs, so we have to figure out Guaranteed Income or other alternatives, or there will be jobs and we'll continue working later. I'm tempted to suggest the first is more likely, but be prepared for the 2nd.
- trprog 10y ago
  Why not both? A possible timeline... Machines replace lots of humans meaning the permanent disappearance of a large number of jobs. Wages fall as competition for the available jobs increases. Social services are slashed to reduce government expenditure. Those still able to find work cling to their job despite falling salaries virtually until death for fear of having to join the vast sea of unemployed people struggling to survive. ---------- I am not necessarily suggesting that this is probable however mass unemployment due to automation and people working well into old age are in no way mutually exclusive.
costcopizza 10y ago
Gah. This stuff makes me pessimistic, along with UBI, because it essentially requires the middle class to be hollowed out even more.
lacampbell 10y ago
I'm projected to be able to retire in about 40 years, according to the NZ government, but I'm well aware of the fact that pension will never come. Still I'm forced to support baby boomers retiring in their 60s - people who were able to attend university for free and afford houses even on low-skilled jobs. We should end the madness now.
- scarmig 10y ago
  Or, alternatively, build the power to try to prevent special interests from raiding the public treasury, be they pampered millionaires or public sector unions. Equal prosperity, instead of equal misery.
- a_imho 10y ago
  And it is entirely your fault - or so victims will be blamed. On the bright side, 40 years is plenty to solve, or at least workaround the problem.
known 10y ago
And http://www.whywork.org/action/lifestyle/money.html http://www.whywork.org/action/lifestyle/money.html
thatfrenchguy 10y ago
> but according to research, we will all need to keep working into our 80s if we want to enjoy the same standard of retirement as our parents. No stable job, no retirement, the future looks great. Or very prone to a revolution.
- cassowary 10y ago
  I look forward to the grey haired revolution.
arisAlexis 10y ago
all these articles completely disregard technological progress and assume we are in a 60s film. In my view people in their 30s now will be "modified" in many ways and will be capable of work always, if work is needed in the first place.
candiodari 10y ago
Unfortunately this is economic bullshit. They are taking a description of an economy that requires a constantly increasing workforce and increasing productivity and then apply the most obvious, ill-thought out short-term fix, and actually expect it to work despite violating the basic assumptions. Population growth stopped 15 years ago. Normally those people that weren't born would be entering the workforce in about 5 years. So with quite a bit of variability, the new people coming into the workforce will drop of a cliff. Extending the age of retirement has already (if "temporarily") stopped the outflows out of the workforce that are going to stop. This means that the total workforce will drop anyway. Even if people don't retire. Second they assume productivity will keep rising. But productivity (amount of $ per hour of work) has been dropping for 30 years, initially still compensated by rapid workforce increase, but not anymore since 1995 or so. The government has spent a ridiculous amount of money (~100% of GDP) to increase the money supply to make it seem like this hasn't happened, but of course the change has in fact happened. The question is how long can we keep spending like this. 100% GDP is a worldwide stat and roughly means that for every dollar anyone, anywhere spends, the government lent and spends 0.08 dollar yearly to, firstly, pretend the economy is not shrinking, secondly, keep the local social welfare going (for the US that partially includes the military, which is in some ways a social welfare program). Every year. Since about 2000. And of course, this has been on an exponentially rising trajectory, with 2 huge growing peaks. One right after 2000. One right after 2008.
- nandemo 10y ago
  > But productivity (amount of $ per hour of work) has been dropping for 30 years, What, what? Except for some years during the 2008~ financial crisis, productivity has been rising steadily all over the developed world. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDYGTH https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDYGTH In fact it would be very odd if it wasn't rising; it would mean all of the aggregate investment in machinery and office automation during the last 30 years was useless. Of course, productivity's rate of growth itself isn't always rising, but that's a different story.
  - candiodari 10y ago
    If you take a 1980s inflation measure, or the big mac index, and extend it out, it turns negative in 1984 (87 for big mac) and stays negative. If you take government figures for inflation, yes it stays positive. But unless you agree that since 1990 people "deserve" less housing (and therefore don't see the less square footage for their rental/mortgage dollar as any kind of loss), less fuel, a lot less education. Then in 2000 it gets lowered again. We've gotten to the point that they call the current measure "PCE deflator". So unless you agree people now deserve less of essentially any and all capital goods, ... This is the issue with government measures. Their claim is that they're just adjusting to what they're seeing, and the "underlying value" is the same. Yet when I offer an economist to provide him with a 10 year supply of tobacco if he pays for my PhD ... no takers (and that's generous, in 1980 it was just 6.8 years of tobacco for a PhD, and I think that included housing for 5 years). That's an investment yielding over 5% ! No takers. But ... I thought the underlying value was the same ? So I'm offering you something of what you claim is greater value for something of less value, and yet you don't take the deal ? Obviously something is wrong here. They have an excuse, obviously. The reasoning goes like this: more inflation, without higher wages - people spend less measured in goods (in a few years even in dollars) - therefore the inflation measure must be broken (doesn't represent a realistic basket of goods anymore type argument) - inflation measure gets replaced with something with less of whatever got expensive, and less in general - goto 1. Result: inflation measure gets deflated by ~5% every 5 years. Substract that and productivity growth has been negative for decades. This matches people's experiences much better than the figures, so I'm not really willing to accept the PCE deflator. So these official figures neglect to state that "real" is calculated using about a different inflation measurement every 2 columns. Not totally non-overlapping, perhaps, but different. And despite the repeated claims that they're just changing it to reflect what people buy it always changes in the same way ... Needless to say, for specific inflation measures, productivity is disastrous. For instance, take square footage real estate per hour worked. Gold in kg per hour worked. Those sorts of measures. They look really, really, really bad. And for what should be the real inflation measure, the total amount of money, which is total credit + M1 supply, and calculate what portion of "the world economy" you get for an hour of work and see it evolve over time ... blimey.
xs83 10y ago
If anyone has ever read the Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton (for those of you who haven't I highly recommend it), in this world there is no such thing as Retirement, your "pension" is actually just a savings bond to pay for your next rejuvenation, rinse and repeat as many times as you like and then when you are bored of it all you can either just die or download your brain into ANA (a post physical "afterlife"). Lets aim for this ;)
- voycey 10y ago
  Not sure what I did to deserve a downvote on this - relevant sci-fi trivia #asshat
nippples 10y ago
> If we can no longer rely on immigration to fill the gaps, employers will have to shed their prejudices, workplaces will have to be adapted, and social services will have to step in to provide the care that ageing people can no longer give their grandchildren, ageing spouses or parents if they remain in the workforce. But you can still rely on immigration, just not out of control immigration.

131 points by DiabloD3 10y ago

> Bismarck did, however, have a further vision that was genuinely too radical for his era: he proposed a pension that could be drawn at any age, if the contributor was judged unfit for work. Those drawing it earlier would receive a lower amount. I wonder how well this would work in today's society. Pretending disability doesn't exist, and just making it a simple rate decrease for the earlier you withdraw.

tyingq 10y ago
That sort of exists in the US system for Social Security. You can retire as early as age 62, but at a reduced (80%) benefit. If you wait until you're 67, you get the full 100%. Of course, the payment is a pittance compared to most actual pensions.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kwhitefoot 10y ago
This is similar to how my pension will work here in Norway. I will be 62 at the end of the year and I will be able to start taking my pension (regardless of whether I work) but I could also delay taking it indefinitely. The total amount is fixed and predicated on the average age at death. So if I take it early I spread it more thinly. If I take it later I get more per year while taking it but risk missing out altogether by dying early; and it is not inheritable so if I want to give some away it's best to start early.
- orangecat 10y ago
  if I want to give some away it's best to start early Right, if it's the same net present value why would anyone ever start later? If you're still working just take the money and save or invest it.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Investing it (or even storing it in a bank, if above the insurance limit) comes with an extra risk.
shorttime 10y ago
Isn't this essentially social security disability?
- tradersam 10y ago
  No. Even though I said let's pretend disability doesn't exist, this is from the SS website: > Social Security pays benefits to people who can’t work because they have a medical condition that’s expected to last at least one year or result in death.[0] The program I was talking about would be more something like retirement+disability, proved by the government with a set retire date (say, 65) and any withdrawals before hand would be at a lesser rate (if proven unfit to work, but not only of a medical condition). Specifically in the U.S. [0]:https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10029.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10029.pdf
metasean 10y ago
>Pretending disability And what happens to those that are 'genuinely handicap' and have medical costs that unavoidably exceed the 'lower amount'?

5706906c06c 10y ago

I've come to terms with the fact that I'll work until I can't, possibly because of an illness or just sheer exhaustion.

zobzu 10y ago
the older you get the less realistic it feels, unless you're ok with being homeless or suicide. you just dont have the same health and energy at 60. or 40. if you make it that far that is.

simonsarris 10y ago

I'm currently writing a list of things to consider when creating a UBI scheme (concerns that I often don't see addressed), and this is an easy way to illustrate one of them. One simple way to implement "single payer" healthcare in the US would be to slowly expand the medicare (US program for people 65 and older) coverage by moving the age lower every year. Very similarly, a simple way to incrementally implement UBI would be to lower the "retirement age" every year. But precisely the opposite is happening. Per the article: > In 2010, British women got their state pension at 60 and men got theirs at 65. By October 2020, both sexes will have to wait until they are 66. By 2028, the age will rise again, to 67. How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this?

rileymat2 10y ago
"Very similarly, a simple way to incrementally implement UBI would be to lower the "retirement age" every year." I suspect when many (not all) of the supporters of UBI consider it to be the most basic of subsistence payments, not something we would want seniors to retire with. Think of the difference in amounts between SS and unemployment insurance currently.
- pharrlax 10y ago
  Then couple the lowering of the retirement age with a lowering of the amount paid out in the early years of retirement, gradually plateauing down to a base UBI level for 40-somethings and increasing to plateau out to a social-security level for 60-somethings.
- peteretep 10y ago
  > the most basic of subsistence > payments, not something we would > want seniors to retire with The full UK pension is £119.30 per week, unemployment benefit (JSA) is: £73.10.
  - exclusiv 10y ago
    Wow that's nothing. We have state government workers in California getting 90% of their highest salary as long as they live. And some even double dip.

groestl 10y ago

Where do the jobs for the elderly come from, if even young, healthy people are gradually priced out of their jobs by technology and automation? Right now, good jobs are replaced by bad, underpaid ones. Desperate people are serving burritos to a smaller group of people who are lucky to have the skills necessary in this time of transition. All of them work to aggregate productive capital in the hands of the very few. If there's only a handful of people left who own everything, supermarkets, datacenters, robots, software, machines, farmland.. to whom will these people sell all the stuff they produce? How do those who have no jobs pay for this stuff? I think whoever projects 40 years into the future, and sees no need to mention the words "UBI" or "property tax", is in for a surprise. Will it be a nice surprise? That depends on how fast our society realizes what is currently heading our way.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
Your question is based on a false premise. There is plenty of work, we just haven't figured out how to monetize most of it yet. Mental health, filmmaking, video games, quality food, cultural maintenance events, general caretaking, career development... we're not producing anywhere near the quantity of those things that we actually need. There are lots of reasons why the markets are currently failing to monetize the demand in those areas (there are incentives for corporations to leave demand on the table), but there's no reason why those incentives should be seen as permanent. If you think the selection of products and services we buy should be locked in the 1950s then it will look like there's not enough work, and automation will eat what work there is. But the catalog of services that people are purchasing is growing rapidly as we learn how to hack the market blockages, and it will grow exponentially as we approach the complete information liquidity event which is coming in the next decades. We're just starting to achieve widespread realization that you can offer a service and pay your bills using only Instagram. We're coming from a world where there were only mass-market channels for advertising (newspapapers, broadcast TV, etc), so there was only a limited information space for a small number of brands. That's why we think there are only a handful of job categories, the number of brands was tiny and a brand can only support a finite number of job categories. A decentralized system like Instagram can support infinite job categories.

Neliquat 10y ago

If your retirement is not self-funded, you likey don't have one. Your future is your responsibility, if you are able. Do it while you can, or grow old without.

bartvk 10y ago
I hate to see so bleak a future, however two years ago I quit my job and started freelancing at 38. That has made me much, much more aware of the need to save money. It's not hard to make a simple spreadsheet and see when you're able to retire. I suggest everyone does so. It's very interesting to see your retirement date move up when you change your savings rate.
gkya 10y ago
Oh yes and everybody should set up their sewage systems and raise their own crops in their own backyards. Society doesn't function like that.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  That is a good illistration of specialization of labor, but I'm not sure how that related to the OP.
  - omginternets 10y ago
    I think his point is that civilization is based on the principle of not letting people fend for themselves (e.g.: through public works like sewage systems), and that this naturally extends to retirement pensions.
    - gkya 10y ago
      The point is that civilisation is nothing else than working together as a society. The retirement system is not philantrophy, it's retributions for those who spent a good part of their life as a cog in the machine. And it's not like the retired receive their pensions ex nihilo, they pay in advance through the social security cuts (1). We teach our children to become a part of the civilisation and take care of them until they actually do so. And we should equally take care of the elderly because they've already took their part in the civilised society, and now they have the right to enjoy their last hours in peace. But we always like receiving, and giving always torments us. That's no civilisation, though, but just a bad likeness thereof. (1) That's, at least, how it functions here in Turkey: every month, a certain amount of your wage goes to your retirement fund, and when you retire, you receive your pension, an amount that depends on your past contributions to your fund and on the height of your position.

loup-vaillant 10y ago

Step 1: Oh my god we can't pay for retirement! Step 2: Raise the age of retirement. (Phew!) Step 3: Oh my god unemployment is raising! (Those no-longer- retirees must find a job, right?) Step 4: Get rid of unemployment insurance (in part or in whole). Step 5: things get real ugly real quick. --- Seriously, raising the age of retirement in the face of raising technological unemployment is nuts. Those who push for this are either stupid or evil. Given the army of counsellors they have at their disposal, I'm not sure stupidity is a valid explanation. Some of them must have some nefarious purpose in mind.

VLM 10y ago
Step 4 was implemented in the USA with SSDI. There's heavy emotional baggage to tag people as permanently totally disabled merely because the economy is too small to let them participate. Also its kinda a mess mixing essentially fake claims (from a medical disease perspective) vs real claims. So the same program takes care of a guy with 100% disability back pain who sells his pain pills (a whole nother problem) and plays video games all day but is actually physically healthy while merely economically dead, with another dude missing some limbs or brain damaged. Its weird but mostly seems to be working rather than your step #5. Around 1 in 20 people in the USA are on SSDI. The exact ratio of who's economically damaged vs physically damaged is unclear but you can guess by looking at rate graphs over the last couple decades, since the 80s perhaps.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  > Step 4 was implemented in the USA with SSDI. That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about "no job, no pay" policies. Like, "work or starve". England kinda went down that route, doing their very best to throw people out of their meagre unemployment benefits. SSDI as you describe it is actually a form of (covert) unemployment insurance: a way to have money even if you can't get a job. While the stigmatization sucks, the money is better than nothing.

edward 10y ago

Opposite viewpoint: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

t0mislav 10y ago
I stil don't understand how this guy did it. Can someone explain in a few words?
- dan1234 10y ago
  Young couple both earning a lot, and saving/investing most of it - a turbocharged retirement plan.
- ahelwer 10y ago
  If you can live on $1500/month, you only need to save up $450K-$600K and live off the 3-4% real returns in perpetuity. This quantity of savings is easily reachable within a decade by tech workers paid $100K+/yr. In general, just take (monthly spending) * 12 * [25 or 33] to get bounds on required savings. The only other useful observation is that reducing spending is much more effective for reaching financial independence than increasing earnings, and that most spending is staggeringly wasteful and easy to forgo. Oh, and if you manage to find a life partner with the same values and earnings - congrats, you can easily retire within five years.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    Make sure you take into account taxes. Retirement investment plans such as 401ks and IRAs have significant tax benefits. The catch is that they can't be withdrawn from before age 59 without huge penalties. So if the goal is to retire early, one needs to use regular investment vehicles, which are subject to capital gains (15%),
    - ahelwer 10y ago
      You can transfer the money from 401k to IRA to Roth IRA then withdraw it after five years. You have to pay income tax during the IRA to Roth IRA conversion, but if you're retiring early your tax bracket is likely very low. Similarly, you'll be in the 0% bracket for long term capital gains.

Gatsky 10y ago

When visiting the US, I was struck by how many elderly workers there were in restaurants, subways etc. Japan was similar. In Australia, I never see this. The reasons are presumably: 1. Australia has ok free healthcare 2. The baby boomers have generated massive wealth over the last 50 years because of the property market. Point 2 certainly won't be repeated for the next generation.

icebraining 10y ago
Could Australians continue to work into old age if they chose to? Your post implies they're being forced to work in the US and Japan, but it may be the opposite: that they have less options in Australia to keep working despite wishing to do so.
- Gatsky 10y ago
  I don't think that is very plausible, nothing to stop Australians working as long as they like. The retirees in Australia seem to be playing a lot of golf, travelling and looking after their grand children, to make a gross generalisation.
peteretep 10y ago
In the UK, I never see this, but I saw it and found it a little shocking in Amsterdam.
lacampbell 10y ago
Australia has high immigration levels, and so a larger pool of younger workers to do menial jobs. Japan does not - quite deliberately.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

Good writeup but it talks about a symptom, not the cause. Governments and people have been living on credit for decades. Governments borrow from retirement funds to meet current obligations. Many people have failed to save enough, or even worse have large debt.

deleted 10y ago
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contingencies 10y ago

For those who perceive such issues as likely in their future, for whatever reason, I would recommend an alternate strategy of becoming familiar with the social, cultural and legal ramifications of living in or retiring to a developing country. This can be a very effective means to mitigate costs and is widely used by the French (eg. large numbers move to Tunisia for months of the year), and in South and Southeast Asia everyone from old hippies and alcoholics to bitter divorcees and religious retirees. The point is, think outside the national box. This is easier to do if you properly comprehend the challenges and limitations while younger. For US citizens, just leaving the country pretty much guarantees cheaper access to medical care.

michaelchisari 10y ago
That seems extraordinarily unfair to the developing countries, especially if it becomes something that people do en masse.
- contingencies 10y ago
  Unfair in which way? Generally these people bring cash and education and support the development of local infrastructure. Many such countries actually offer specific retirement or resettlement visas to attract such migration.
  - michaelchisari 10y ago
    We're talking about an aging population. There are a lot of costs associated with that.
    - civility 10y ago
      "Generally these people bring cash"
    - trprog 10y ago
      In developing countries you are generally dealing with a user pays medical system. So they don't care if you require extensive medical care as you pay for it.

pedalpete 10y ago

We have an interesting dichotomy today which was very apparent in a discussion last night. A friend goes to an annual management seminar where last year's focus was on this topic of expecting employees to work until later in life. This year's topic was the end of work as many positions will be replaced or augmented by machines. Which is it? There won't be jobs, so we have to figure out Guaranteed Income or other alternatives, or there will be jobs and we'll continue working later. I'm tempted to suggest the first is more likely, but be prepared for the 2nd.

trprog 10y ago
Why not both? A possible timeline... Machines replace lots of humans meaning the permanent disappearance of a large number of jobs. Wages fall as competition for the available jobs increases. Social services are slashed to reduce government expenditure. Those still able to find work cling to their job despite falling salaries virtually until death for fear of having to join the vast sea of unemployed people struggling to survive. ---------- I am not necessarily suggesting that this is probable however mass unemployment due to automation and people working well into old age are in no way mutually exclusive.

costcopizza 10y ago

Gah. This stuff makes me pessimistic, along with UBI, because it essentially requires the middle class to be hollowed out even more.

lacampbell 10y ago

I'm projected to be able to retire in about 40 years, according to the NZ government, but I'm well aware of the fact that pension will never come. Still I'm forced to support baby boomers retiring in their 60s - people who were able to attend university for free and afford houses even on low-skilled jobs. We should end the madness now.

scarmig 10y ago
Or, alternatively, build the power to try to prevent special interests from raiding the public treasury, be they pampered millionaires or public sector unions. Equal prosperity, instead of equal misery.
a_imho 10y ago
And it is entirely your fault - or so victims will be blamed. On the bright side, 40 years is plenty to solve, or at least workaround the problem.

known 10y ago

And http://www.whywork.org/action/lifestyle/money.html http://www.whywork.org/action/lifestyle/money.html

thatfrenchguy 10y ago

> but according to research, we will all need to keep working into our 80s if we want to enjoy the same standard of retirement as our parents. No stable job, no retirement, the future looks great. Or very prone to a revolution.

cassowary 10y ago
I look forward to the grey haired revolution.

arisAlexis 10y ago

all these articles completely disregard technological progress and assume we are in a 60s film. In my view people in their 30s now will be "modified" in many ways and will be capable of work always, if work is needed in the first place.

candiodari 10y ago

Unfortunately this is economic bullshit. They are taking a description of an economy that requires a constantly increasing workforce and increasing productivity and then apply the most obvious, ill-thought out short-term fix, and actually expect it to work despite violating the basic assumptions. Population growth stopped 15 years ago. Normally those people that weren't born would be entering the workforce in about 5 years. So with quite a bit of variability, the new people coming into the workforce will drop of a cliff. Extending the age of retirement has already (if "temporarily") stopped the outflows out of the workforce that are going to stop. This means that the total workforce will drop anyway. Even if people don't retire. Second they assume productivity will keep rising. But productivity (amount of $ per hour of work) has been dropping for 30 years, initially still compensated by rapid workforce increase, but not anymore since 1995 or so. The government has spent a ridiculous amount of money (~100% of GDP) to increase the money supply to make it seem like this hasn't happened, but of course the change has in fact happened. The question is how long can we keep spending like this. 100% GDP is a worldwide stat and roughly means that for every dollar anyone, anywhere spends, the government lent and spends 0.08 dollar yearly to, firstly, pretend the economy is not shrinking, secondly, keep the local social welfare going (for the US that partially includes the military, which is in some ways a social welfare program). Every year. Since about 2000. And of course, this has been on an exponentially rising trajectory, with 2 huge growing peaks. One right after 2000. One right after 2008.

nandemo 10y ago
> But productivity (amount of $ per hour of work) has been dropping for 30 years, What, what? Except for some years during the 2008~ financial crisis, productivity has been rising steadily all over the developed world. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDYGTH https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDYGTH In fact it would be very odd if it wasn't rising; it would mean all of the aggregate investment in machinery and office automation during the last 30 years was useless. Of course, productivity's rate of growth itself isn't always rising, but that's a different story.
- candiodari 10y ago
  If you take a 1980s inflation measure, or the big mac index, and extend it out, it turns negative in 1984 (87 for big mac) and stays negative. If you take government figures for inflation, yes it stays positive. But unless you agree that since 1990 people "deserve" less housing (and therefore don't see the less square footage for their rental/mortgage dollar as any kind of loss), less fuel, a lot less education. Then in 2000 it gets lowered again. We've gotten to the point that they call the current measure "PCE deflator". So unless you agree people now deserve less of essentially any and all capital goods, ... This is the issue with government measures. Their claim is that they're just adjusting to what they're seeing, and the "underlying value" is the same. Yet when I offer an economist to provide him with a 10 year supply of tobacco if he pays for my PhD ... no takers (and that's generous, in 1980 it was just 6.8 years of tobacco for a PhD, and I think that included housing for 5 years). That's an investment yielding over 5% ! No takers. But ... I thought the underlying value was the same ? So I'm offering you something of what you claim is greater value for something of less value, and yet you don't take the deal ? Obviously something is wrong here. They have an excuse, obviously. The reasoning goes like this: more inflation, without higher wages - people spend less measured in goods (in a few years even in dollars) - therefore the inflation measure must be broken (doesn't represent a realistic basket of goods anymore type argument) - inflation measure gets replaced with something with less of whatever got expensive, and less in general - goto 1. Result: inflation measure gets deflated by ~5% every 5 years. Substract that and productivity growth has been negative for decades. This matches people's experiences much better than the figures, so I'm not really willing to accept the PCE deflator. So these official figures neglect to state that "real" is calculated using about a different inflation measurement every 2 columns. Not totally non-overlapping, perhaps, but different. And despite the repeated claims that they're just changing it to reflect what people buy it always changes in the same way ... Needless to say, for specific inflation measures, productivity is disastrous. For instance, take square footage real estate per hour worked. Gold in kg per hour worked. Those sorts of measures. They look really, really, really bad. And for what should be the real inflation measure, the total amount of money, which is total credit + M1 supply, and calculate what portion of "the world economy" you get for an hour of work and see it evolve over time ... blimey.

xs83 10y ago

If anyone has ever read the Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton (for those of you who haven't I highly recommend it), in this world there is no such thing as Retirement, your "pension" is actually just a savings bond to pay for your next rejuvenation, rinse and repeat as many times as you like and then when you are bored of it all you can either just die or download your brain into ANA (a post physical "afterlife"). Lets aim for this ;)

voycey 10y ago
Not sure what I did to deserve a downvote on this - relevant sci-fi trivia #asshat

nippples 10y ago

> If we can no longer rely on immigration to fill the gaps, employers will have to shed their prejudices, workplaces will have to be adapted, and social services will have to step in to provide the care that ageing people can no longer give their grandchildren, ageing spouses or parents if they remain in the workforce. But you can still rely on immigration, just not out of control immigration.