<story><title>The End of Retirement (2014)</title><url>https://harpers.org/archive/2014/08/the-end-of-retirement/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>piva00</author><text>&amp;gt; If you gave europeans those 25% as an extra net pay, there would be a lot more new cars on the road, a bit more savings&amp;#x2F;investments, and a lot more problems when people get old. &amp;quot;Smart&amp;quot; people would save and invest, and have better &amp;quot;pensions&amp;quot; than they&amp;#x27;d have in the current system, and &amp;quot;stupid&amp;quot; people would work until 85yo, and die of hunger.&lt;p&gt;Exactly, there is an ideology of pushing this kind of issue completely into &amp;quot;personal responsibility&amp;quot; territory which, for me, is frankly a total lack of empathy.&lt;p&gt;The way it works here in Sweden seems pretty decent to me so far: you get a public pension that you and your employer have paid into the system (of course, it pays the current pensioners) and another part of my pension is put into a pension investment account, that I can operate&amp;#x2F;manage however I want.&lt;p&gt;So you get both, a minimum pension sustained by the system paid by current working people and an investment account that I can manage and grow as a portfolio to use during my retirement.</text></item><item><author>ajsnigrutin</author><text>I also live in europe.&lt;p&gt;My retirement is based on paying ~25% of my gross income into a retirement fund, which is then spent on current retirees, and hoping that in many years, there will be enough people working to be able to pay my retirement.&lt;p&gt;If you gave europeans those 25% as an extra net pay, there would be a lot more new cars on the road, a bit more savings&amp;#x2F;investments, and a lot more problems when people get old. &amp;quot;Smart&amp;quot; people would save and invest, and have better &amp;quot;pensions&amp;quot; than they&amp;#x27;d have in the current system, and &amp;quot;stupid&amp;quot; people would work until 85yo, and die of hunger.</text></item><item><author>jillesvangurp</author><text>The real problem here is poverty and a lack of social security in the US. That&amp;#x27;s a solvable problem. It just requires the will to solve it and for whatever reason that is actually controversial in the US.&lt;p&gt;I live in Europe. Retirement is very much on my mind but more in the sense that I need to secure a little more than just the state pension. You can live on that but only barely. A lot of European countries are lot poorer than the US. Yet retirement is a thing in those countries and not really under any threat.&lt;p&gt;The need to work and the reality that a lot of work is just busy work that isn&amp;#x27;t really that critical because all the critical work is increasingly automated does not help with this. No offense but I work doing CTO work in startups and technically it&amp;#x27;s been a long time since I did anything close to producing critical goods or services. It&amp;#x27;s nice what I do and I live on it but I can&amp;#x27;t say with a straight face that it is all that critical or important. A lot of our jobs are like that. We keep ourselves busy doing things for each other or ourselves and try to monetize that. I can probably do that beyond retirement if I stay healthy. I might even enjoy that.&lt;p&gt;Post scarcity society is not that different from where we are today (at least us privileged people working tech jobs). Poverty is increasingly having to do actual work to feed yourself. In most countries that at least gets you to retirement. The US is kind of unique in that it is very wealthy and yet does not take care of its people in the same way that much poorer countries have been doing for the last century.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jdasdf</author><text>&amp;gt;Exactly, there is an ideology of pushing this kind of issue completely into &amp;quot;personal responsibility&amp;quot; territory which, for me, is frankly a total lack of empathy.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not a lack of empathy, it&amp;#x27;s an understanding of the pernicious incentives you are creating with such a system.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m being forced to pay over half of my income into a ponzi scheme that i am and will never get anything worthwhile out of. This isn&amp;#x27;t good for anyone, and it certainly isn&amp;#x27;t good for the people who are working and providing value and having that value thrown into a raging fire.&lt;p&gt;This is nothing more than theft from the responsible to the irresponsible, with the associated long term issues.&lt;p&gt;When you have support these policies you need to understand that they will not and cannot help the people you seek to help.&lt;p&gt;All that happens is remove the need for people to be responsible and make good financial decisions, for the fact that &amp;quot;the state will save me&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;But of course, the state can&amp;#x27;t, because social security in most countries is no more than very large ponzi schemes, supported by ever growing tax revenues and increasingly high retirement ages. But even that is not enough, in Portugal retirement benefits are expected to fall by half in the next 20 years.&lt;p&gt;And don&amp;#x27;t think these pernicious incentives don&amp;#x27;t exist and that peoples reliance on social security doesn&amp;#x27;t happen. That quote of &amp;quot;The state will save me&amp;quot; is almost word for word out of the mouth of friends and colleagues, with children and families, who despite being very well paid refuse to save and invest for their retirement, choosing instead to spend what they have today and only rely on social security for their retirement.&lt;p&gt;These are terrible incentives, and they will and have had predictable results.</text></comment>
<story><title>The End of Retirement (2014)</title><url>https://harpers.org/archive/2014/08/the-end-of-retirement/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>piva00</author><text>&amp;gt; If you gave europeans those 25% as an extra net pay, there would be a lot more new cars on the road, a bit more savings&amp;#x2F;investments, and a lot more problems when people get old. &amp;quot;Smart&amp;quot; people would save and invest, and have better &amp;quot;pensions&amp;quot; than they&amp;#x27;d have in the current system, and &amp;quot;stupid&amp;quot; people would work until 85yo, and die of hunger.&lt;p&gt;Exactly, there is an ideology of pushing this kind of issue completely into &amp;quot;personal responsibility&amp;quot; territory which, for me, is frankly a total lack of empathy.&lt;p&gt;The way it works here in Sweden seems pretty decent to me so far: you get a public pension that you and your employer have paid into the system (of course, it pays the current pensioners) and another part of my pension is put into a pension investment account, that I can operate&amp;#x2F;manage however I want.&lt;p&gt;So you get both, a minimum pension sustained by the system paid by current working people and an investment account that I can manage and grow as a portfolio to use during my retirement.</text></item><item><author>ajsnigrutin</author><text>I also live in europe.&lt;p&gt;My retirement is based on paying ~25% of my gross income into a retirement fund, which is then spent on current retirees, and hoping that in many years, there will be enough people working to be able to pay my retirement.&lt;p&gt;If you gave europeans those 25% as an extra net pay, there would be a lot more new cars on the road, a bit more savings&amp;#x2F;investments, and a lot more problems when people get old. &amp;quot;Smart&amp;quot; people would save and invest, and have better &amp;quot;pensions&amp;quot; than they&amp;#x27;d have in the current system, and &amp;quot;stupid&amp;quot; people would work until 85yo, and die of hunger.</text></item><item><author>jillesvangurp</author><text>The real problem here is poverty and a lack of social security in the US. That&amp;#x27;s a solvable problem. It just requires the will to solve it and for whatever reason that is actually controversial in the US.&lt;p&gt;I live in Europe. Retirement is very much on my mind but more in the sense that I need to secure a little more than just the state pension. You can live on that but only barely. A lot of European countries are lot poorer than the US. Yet retirement is a thing in those countries and not really under any threat.&lt;p&gt;The need to work and the reality that a lot of work is just busy work that isn&amp;#x27;t really that critical because all the critical work is increasingly automated does not help with this. No offense but I work doing CTO work in startups and technically it&amp;#x27;s been a long time since I did anything close to producing critical goods or services. It&amp;#x27;s nice what I do and I live on it but I can&amp;#x27;t say with a straight face that it is all that critical or important. A lot of our jobs are like that. We keep ourselves busy doing things for each other or ourselves and try to monetize that. I can probably do that beyond retirement if I stay healthy. I might even enjoy that.&lt;p&gt;Post scarcity society is not that different from where we are today (at least us privileged people working tech jobs). Poverty is increasingly having to do actual work to feed yourself. In most countries that at least gets you to retirement. The US is kind of unique in that it is very wealthy and yet does not take care of its people in the same way that much poorer countries have been doing for the last century.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>null_object</author><text>&amp;gt; The way it works here in Sweden seems pretty decent to me so far: you get a public pension that you and your employer have paid into the system (of course, it pays the current pensioners) and another part of my pension is put into a pension investment account, that I can operate&amp;#x2F;manage however I want.  
&amp;gt; So you get both, a minimum pension sustained by the system paid by current working people and an investment account that I can manage and grow as a portfolio to use during my retirement.&lt;p&gt;I think the word &amp;#x27;minimum&amp;#x27; is going to have totally different implications for those of us working and saving now, compared to the previous generation, that are living on pretty generous pension plans that were wholly publicly-funded, and which our current payments are maintaining.&lt;p&gt;Also the privatized pension plans in Sweden have been prey both to fraud and high fees. So even though they may give the illusion of future prosperity to those who are trying to save now, that&amp;#x27;s in no way a guarantee.</text></comment>