4 ms·

With EU’s declining population growth, UBI may very well be the way out of impossible retirement plans in the future. Something that IMO millennials in the EU w

With EU’s declining population growth, UBI may very well be the way out of impossible retirement plans in the future. Something that IMO millennials in the EU will face sooner or later. I don’t claim to know all the economic implications of UBI, but I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least.

leto_ii 7y ago
> I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least. Hear, hear! :D I share your condition and concerns.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  US citizen here. Can y'all go into detail? If you have universal healthcare, and you've paid off a residence, what shortfall and outsized expenses do you project in retirement?
  - mercer 7y ago
    I'm also interested to hear more, but FWIW as an EU-resident and millennial with a bunch of millennial and lots of 'zoomer' friends: 1) out of everyone I know, working- to middle-class, only three people 'own' a house. One of them inherited it from their father, and the other recently bought one with a mortgage and has an unusually stable job. Of the rest of us/them, I'd say a good 70% live in a flatshare (regardless of whether they're in their twenties of thirties), 20% live in a small apartment with their partner, and the remaining 10% or so have some kind of studio apartment because they make decent money or because their student organization provided them with cheap housing. 2) with the exception of those who have jobs where a pension is built up automatically, none have bothered. Which is probably about 80% of them (100+ people). And in conversation the general assumption is that any kind of pension will probably not exist by the time we need them, so why bother (not saying I agree, btw). That said, I'd say my social network skews toward working class and educated-but-not-STEM. And urban, which favors the precariat.
  - leto_ii 7y ago
    I'm also aiming for a fully-owned house + enough incoming money to afford a decent life, probably back in my native country (one of the former communist ones). However I currently live in Amsterdam, where the 47 m2 apartment I inhabit costs around 350k euros to buy, which is quite a bit for a matchbox in a 120 yr old house. On top of that, I suspect that in NL the age of retirement for me will be around 72, which is ridiculously late; plus, whatever pension I get will almost certainly not be enough for me to have a decent life on. The state pension here is minuscule and the private ones are a racket, like everywhere else. My point is that you can't really rely on a pension and you should act as if you won't get one (even though that's what's owed to you).
  - machiaweliczny 7y ago
    There is severe population decline and retirement payment is based on taxing working population. This issue will affect Spain and Poland the most AFAIK.
- mszcz 7y ago
  I'm from Poland and I'm not concerned at all. I _know_ that the goverment will not be able to provide my retirement. I think that it's better to think about goverment-provided retirement as something that _might_ happend, and would be nice, but not as something that you can relay on in your golden years. Unfortunately, that will leave some underpriviledged people screwed. I also understand that I'm very lucky, with my skillset and bringing up, to be able to plan for it myself.
  - mercer 7y ago
    I'm from The Netherlands, and while I'd expect people here to expect or hope for more, millennials and under are generally pessimistic too. As a self-employed programmer with a decent breadth of experience and as an autodidact with low needs, I consider myself very lucky too, but I worry for a lot of my friends.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least If you know it's questionable why aren't you paying more in now so that it isn't as questionable? Rather than hoping for potential UBI?
- leto_ii 7y ago
  The point is, I think, that the very concept of a pension will become meaningless by the time millennials retire. Why would you pay more into something that you don't expect will give anything in return? Not to mention that for a lot of people paying more is not an option since they simply wouldn't be able to afford it.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    I'm not very confident in my state pension as they can take that away any time they want, but my private pension is just a pot of money invested for me with tax benefits. Not sure what better you can do than that? Buy gold and store it under your bed?
    - leto_ii 7y ago
      What would that pot of money look like if you had to retire in 2020? Do you trust the pension fund people to make the right decisions? What happens if the pension fund collapses because it's run by crooks and morons? I'm not saying that you shouldn't invest in that, but treat it like what it is - a relatively risky investment, not like what it's marketed as, namely a sure thing.

leto_ii 7y ago

> I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least. Hear, hear! :D I share your condition and concerns.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
US citizen here. Can y'all go into detail? If you have universal healthcare, and you've paid off a residence, what shortfall and outsized expenses do you project in retirement?
- mercer 7y ago
  I'm also interested to hear more, but FWIW as an EU-resident and millennial with a bunch of millennial and lots of 'zoomer' friends: 1) out of everyone I know, working- to middle-class, only three people 'own' a house. One of them inherited it from their father, and the other recently bought one with a mortgage and has an unusually stable job. Of the rest of us/them, I'd say a good 70% live in a flatshare (regardless of whether they're in their twenties of thirties), 20% live in a small apartment with their partner, and the remaining 10% or so have some kind of studio apartment because they make decent money or because their student organization provided them with cheap housing. 2) with the exception of those who have jobs where a pension is built up automatically, none have bothered. Which is probably about 80% of them (100+ people). And in conversation the general assumption is that any kind of pension will probably not exist by the time we need them, so why bother (not saying I agree, btw). That said, I'd say my social network skews toward working class and educated-but-not-STEM. And urban, which favors the precariat.
- leto_ii 7y ago
  I'm also aiming for a fully-owned house + enough incoming money to afford a decent life, probably back in my native country (one of the former communist ones). However I currently live in Amsterdam, where the 47 m2 apartment I inhabit costs around 350k euros to buy, which is quite a bit for a matchbox in a 120 yr old house. On top of that, I suspect that in NL the age of retirement for me will be around 72, which is ridiculously late; plus, whatever pension I get will almost certainly not be enough for me to have a decent life on. The state pension here is minuscule and the private ones are a racket, like everywhere else. My point is that you can't really rely on a pension and you should act as if you won't get one (even though that's what's owed to you).
- machiaweliczny 7y ago
  There is severe population decline and retirement payment is based on taxing working population. This issue will affect Spain and Poland the most AFAIK.
mszcz 7y ago
I'm from Poland and I'm not concerned at all. I _know_ that the goverment will not be able to provide my retirement. I think that it's better to think about goverment-provided retirement as something that _might_ happend, and would be nice, but not as something that you can relay on in your golden years. Unfortunately, that will leave some underpriviledged people screwed. I also understand that I'm very lucky, with my skillset and bringing up, to be able to plan for it myself.
- mercer 7y ago
  I'm from The Netherlands, and while I'd expect people here to expect or hope for more, millennials and under are generally pessimistic too. As a self-employed programmer with a decent breadth of experience and as an autodidact with low needs, I consider myself very lucky too, but I worry for a lot of my friends.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least If you know it's questionable why aren't you paying more in now so that it isn't as questionable? Rather than hoping for potential UBI?

leto_ii 7y ago
The point is, I think, that the very concept of a pension will become meaningless by the time millennials retire. Why would you pay more into something that you don't expect will give anything in return? Not to mention that for a lot of people paying more is not an option since they simply wouldn't be able to afford it.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  I'm not very confident in my state pension as they can take that away any time they want, but my private pension is just a pot of money invested for me with tax benefits. Not sure what better you can do than that? Buy gold and store it under your bed?
  - leto_ii 7y ago
    What would that pot of money look like if you had to retire in 2020? Do you trust the pension fund people to make the right decisions? What happens if the pension fund collapses because it's run by crooks and morons? I'm not saying that you shouldn't invest in that, but treat it like what it is - a relatively risky investment, not like what it's marketed as, namely a sure thing.