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.
A world without retirement?
11–20 of 169 posts
Re: A world without retirement?
#12Where 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. I…
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.
Re: A world without retirement?
#13If 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.
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.
Re: A world without retirement?
#14> 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.
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.
Re: A world without retirement?
#15I'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 w…
Taxes, with preferably much more progressive rates.
The pension age depends on the number of people of working age and their tax rate. Population growth is slowing down, so the options are to increase taxes or the retirement age.
Re: A world without retirement?
#16Where 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. I…
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 d…
Maybe I did not phrase it clearly enough, but I know that there is plenty of work, just not paid work. That's why I used the word "jobs".
Companies leave the demand for mental health on the table, because the metally ill don't have anything to offer to them in exchange.
But I certainly hope that the future is so bright as you describe it.
Re: A world without retirement?
#17I'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 w…
"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.
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.
Re: A world without retirement?
#18Step 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.
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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.
Re: A world without retirement?
#19I'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 w…
UBI is a redistribution expense, that means, the government takes taxes from richer people, and distribute it to everybody.
Retirement is an entitlement pyramid, that means, people pay the government for it to take care of older participants, and by doing so they get entitled into receiving something in proportion to what they paid.
Besides it being a pyramid, a UBI scheme where total received is proportional to total paid wouldn't work either. Yet, none of that means that UBI wouldn't work, those are completely different.
Re: A world without retirement?
#20I'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 w…
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