"I will work until I drop!"
Well lets think about this for a minute. Think about where you work, or if you work on you own, some organization that you are familiar with. Think about all the people that work there. Not the one or two of them that you always go to to get things done, but ALL OF THEM.
Think about the typical energy level and initiative level of them at their current age. Now add twenty, or thirty, or forty-years (as needed) of aches and pains and sitting on the couch watching Jersey Shore, or some other such similar entertainment.
Now also consider that technology is starting to starting even the young and vibrant (if we can stretch the terms to include our current youth) workers into the 21st century version of the plow horse.
Who exactly do they think will hire them?
Elizabeth Ody, Bloomberg, 16 November 2011 (Hat tip: Big Picture)
“Eighty is the new 65,” Joseph Ready, executive vice president of Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement & Trust, said in an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York before the survey was released today. “It’s a real sea change.”
About 74 percent expect to work in retirement, according to the survey, with about 39 percent working because they’ll need to and 35 percent because they want to. And 25 percent of those surveyed said they expect they’ll need to work until at least age 80 because they don’t have sufficient savings.
“People are starting to move toward understanding the different levers of what they’re going to have to do to make it in retirement,” Ready said.
Maybe Congress will pass a law forcing all retail store to hire all available candidates over 65 year of age as greeters. So as you go into your Wal-Mart to pick up your $30 tube of toothpaste, you will get requiste 44 greetings.My struggles with Blogger pretty much tell me I a turning into a fossil, and I am not even close to 65. Who in their right mind think that TYPICAL people are going to be useful for anything when they are 70. By mathematical necessity half of them are already below average within their cohort.
Note: Blogger has decided to behave better tonight.....Nice blogger, nice blogger.
As a post script: Six Bears (probably looking at the same originating article) has an interesting take on the same subject he put his to press first and has some interesting examples.
2 comments:
Sixbears' formula will be my only "retirement", I have no misconceptions of "golden years" as defined today. Mostly because I think the Ponzi scheme will go full on collapse WAY before I could even entertain the thought of even the very simple retirement I envision.
They can always inflate their way to "solvency". The current, likely temporary, stubbornness of the tea party people in congress is making it more difficult to kick this can down the road.
The real problem is this:
Even if we all of the sudden became great savers, and saved up enough of our own money to "live" off our retirement savings, even if this money was in gold bullion form, the question becomes: What exactly have we saved?
One way to look at money is as a lien against future production: a promissory note if you will.
But if 2/3 of the population are either retired or the equivalent of Wal-mart greeters, what exactly is that a lien against?
Since you are younger than I am, your only real hope (presuming the system keeps going at all) is that the boomers age-out (a.k.a. die) in sufficient numbers that you have a reasonable amount of productivity to support the number of retirees.
Post a Comment