4 ms·

People are desperate about the future. Gone are the times when having a good job, paying a reasonable mortgage for a reasonably paid house, saving a reasonable

People are desperate about the future. Gone are the times when having a good job, paying a reasonable mortgage for a reasonably paid house, saving a reasonable amount for retirement, while keeping a reasonable amount for emergencies (rare, before lay-offs become the knee jerk reaction of MBAs to fatten their bonuses). Due to the increasing financialization of the economy, more and more people feel like they need to become wannabe speculators to protect their situations. Thanks, Wall Street and Harvard Business School for fucking us all. And fuck the Uniparty for squashing any real option to them.

Handytinge 5y ago
Sorry, I'm not trying to be picky, but I cannot grok this sentence: > Gone are the times when having a good job, paying a reasonable mortgage for a reasonably paid house, saving a reasonable amount for retirement, while keeping a reasonable amount for emergencies (rare, before lay-offs become the knee jerk reaction of MBAs fatten their bonuses). Is there a word or half the sentence missing there? I cannot follow your meaning.
scarface74 5y ago
Isn’t buying a US backed bond the opposite of “speculation”?. The rate of return for a US bond has been called the “risk free rate of return” since I was in grad school over two decades ago.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- everfree 5y ago
  In general, yes. However, unlike other bonds I-bonds have no secondary market, so there's no way to liquidate them in an emergency if you need them before their maturity date (1 year). With I-bonds you don't need to speculate on whether the bond will default, but it does force you to speculate on what your financial situation will be over the next year.
ChrisLomont 5y ago
>Gone are the times Those times never existed for the vast majority of people. Minorities, single women, most men...... None of them had this rose colored past. Statistically, more people now have more income in the US than ever before. Each income level is higher, some more than others (and this is a static snapshot, most people move around income quintiles throughout a career), options for goods are higher, items are safer (cars especially), and on and on. The "life used to be so easy to make a good pay and have a great life" views are not backed by the evidence.
- discardedrefuse 5y ago
  > Those times never existed for the vast majority of people. Minorities, single women, most men...... None of them had this rose colored past. I don't know about that. My minority, immigrant, non-English speaking grandparents and their siblings (several are still alive and in their 90's) all own their homes and are still collecting pensions from their blue-collar private sector jobs. Some of them worked in factories sewing ladies undergarments, purses, and shoes. Some of them worked on road construction crews. And one was a janitor in an office building.
  - ChrisLomont 5y ago
    >I don't know about that The majority of people never were in a pension plan, and even now a lot of people in pension plans don't work for that employer a full career, only getting partial payouts. Currently the main source of retirement funds for most retirees is Social Security. So all those supposed people in wonderful pensions from the 1970s and so on either don't exist or make so little from those pensions that SS still pays more. Don't assume your local situation is what the majority sees.
    - discardedrefuse 5y ago
      "By yearend 1960, pension plans covered 23 million persons, about one-half of all private sector workers." "By yearend 1977, total employer contributions to defined benefit pension plans had risen [...] covering nearly 35 million active employees." [More than half.] https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1991/12/art3full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1991/12/art3full.pdf https://www.thebalance.com/the-history-of-the-pension-plan-2894374 https://www.thebalance.com/the-history-of-the-pension-plan-2... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV Add to that, the public sector workers that were (mostly) all pension and you have more than a majority of workers on pension plan during that time period. No one is wearing rose tinted glasses. Yes, obviously today, pensions have been removed from (almost) all private sector work places and are rapidly disappearing from the public sector too. Everything has been converted to some kind of investment plan; to pump money into to Wall Street. And we saw how great these investment plans worked out for the poor folks that had planned to retire around 2008.

Handytinge 5y ago

Sorry, I'm not trying to be picky, but I cannot grok this sentence: > Gone are the times when having a good job, paying a reasonable mortgage for a reasonably paid house, saving a reasonable amount for retirement, while keeping a reasonable amount for emergencies (rare, before lay-offs become the knee jerk reaction of MBAs fatten their bonuses). Is there a word or half the sentence missing there? I cannot follow your meaning.

scarface74 5y ago

Isn’t buying a US backed bond the opposite of “speculation”?. The rate of return for a US bond has been called the “risk free rate of return” since I was in grad school over two decades ago.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
everfree 5y ago
In general, yes. However, unlike other bonds I-bonds have no secondary market, so there's no way to liquidate them in an emergency if you need them before their maturity date (1 year). With I-bonds you don't need to speculate on whether the bond will default, but it does force you to speculate on what your financial situation will be over the next year.

ChrisLomont 5y ago

>Gone are the times Those times never existed for the vast majority of people. Minorities, single women, most men...... None of them had this rose colored past. Statistically, more people now have more income in the US than ever before. Each income level is higher, some more than others (and this is a static snapshot, most people move around income quintiles throughout a career), options for goods are higher, items are safer (cars especially), and on and on. The "life used to be so easy to make a good pay and have a great life" views are not backed by the evidence.

discardedrefuse 5y ago
> Those times never existed for the vast majority of people. Minorities, single women, most men...... None of them had this rose colored past. I don't know about that. My minority, immigrant, non-English speaking grandparents and their siblings (several are still alive and in their 90's) all own their homes and are still collecting pensions from their blue-collar private sector jobs. Some of them worked in factories sewing ladies undergarments, purses, and shoes. Some of them worked on road construction crews. And one was a janitor in an office building.
- ChrisLomont 5y ago
  >I don't know about that The majority of people never were in a pension plan, and even now a lot of people in pension plans don't work for that employer a full career, only getting partial payouts. Currently the main source of retirement funds for most retirees is Social Security. So all those supposed people in wonderful pensions from the 1970s and so on either don't exist or make so little from those pensions that SS still pays more. Don't assume your local situation is what the majority sees.
  - discardedrefuse 5y ago
    "By yearend 1960, pension plans covered 23 million persons, about one-half of all private sector workers." "By yearend 1977, total employer contributions to defined benefit pension plans had risen [...] covering nearly 35 million active employees." [More than half.] https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1991/12/art3full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1991/12/art3full.pdf https://www.thebalance.com/the-history-of-the-pension-plan-2894374 https://www.thebalance.com/the-history-of-the-pension-plan-2... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV Add to that, the public sector workers that were (mostly) all pension and you have more than a majority of workers on pension plan during that time period. No one is wearing rose tinted glasses. Yes, obviously today, pensions have been removed from (almost) all private sector work places and are rapidly disappearing from the public sector too. Everything has been converted to some kind of investment plan; to pump money into to Wall Street. And we saw how great these investment plans worked out for the poor folks that had planned to retire around 2008.