What the hell is this shit? Instead of pushing for the return to traditional pensions, capitalism is celebrating the idea that Millennials and Gen Z may simply never be able to stop working.
Traditionally, retiring entails leaving the workforce permanently. However, experts found that the very definition of retirement is also changing between generations.
About 41% of Gen Z and 44% of millennials — those who are currently between 27 and 42 years old — are significantly more likely to want to do some form of paid work during retirement.
...
This increasing preference for a lifelong income, could perhaps make the act of “retiring” obsolete.
Although younger workers don’t intend to stop working, there is still an effort to beef up their retirement savings.
It's ok! Don't ever retire! Just work until you die, preferably not at work, where we'd have to deal with the removal of your corpse.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/23/soft-saving-trends-reshape-gen-z-millennials-personal-finance-goals.htmlOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works1029
Comments273
I could see some people wanting low level jobs in their retirement because they don’t know what to do with their time otherwise.
But it should absolutely not be a requirement.
Was this in 2008?
Definitely. When I was a teenager this retired guy Al worked at chick fil a with me, not because he needed to but he wanted to. He had a cushy position too. He would just go talk to customers and make sure they had refills and stuff. Great guy, taught me a lot about life.
What a fucking garbage take.
This isn't a lifestyle. This is how life used to be for most people.
Lol even the summary says what they really mean
“3/4 of gen z know that the world is probably gonna be pretty fucked up when they reach retirement age, so they’re doing their best to live an ok life before that happens”
Literally all of the climate change stuff they said was going to happen 50 years from now is happening now. So yeah I'm going to be 70 years old fighting for scraps with a billion refugees in lower Canada. Why the fuck shouldn't I make sure I have fun now? The odds of getting enough money to get out of that situation are vanishingly small so fuck it.
So sick if seeing these articles framing "millennials/gen z killed xyz" as a preference or a want.
Remember when we killed the diamond wedding ring industry? We can't pay our rent ffs.
That industry deserved death tbh, and so does the diamond mining industry in general
They used to advertise a diamond engagement ring as costing 'three months' salary' since that was painful, but affordable.
Who can afford to sacrifice one month's salary anymore?
This is it, right here. I'm a little older than the age range listed in the article and I literally became a nurse with the explicit expectation that I will have to work until I can't stand up anymore. At least this pays well and gives me lots of options for working environments that might be a little more compatible with old age.
But the idea that I'll ever be able to not work AND also afford healthcare? Impossible. Not going to happen. Might as well accept it.
News update! Young people enjoy freezing temperatures so much they get coats. More at 8.
Maybe, just maybe, Gen-Z is not saving as much for the future because (1) they have less money to save due to inflation, and (2) they don’t foresee a viable future. These reasons can also explain the parenthood rate dropping lately.
Main reason I never had kids was I was screwed over by just about everything financially. Student loans, housing/“financial crisis”, medical system, deck stacked against self-employment, predatory credit cards. Great job, USA. Then the same cunts who did that bemoan low birth rates and cry about immigrants.
There are TOO MANY procedures/fees/tax/unsafe ways to lose everything you have or be in a position where you will never be able to live without constantly being demanded to provide more work/cash/time.
Agreed, life wasn't this shakey in the past. Depression era: certainly, but it was caused by the same BS we are dealing with now. For example, it's amazing that medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy and thus degradation of quality of life in the US, and there's little will among politicians or citizens to do much about it. You could save up enough money to retire, even have good insurance, and then be screwed because you or any member of your family had a severe illness or accident, and lose everything.
Even if you make it to 65, Medicare Hospice at the end of your life is designed to wipe you out. So no inheritance...
Right, The hope for Gen X/Z has been "just wait until until your boomer parents die! Then you can have a normal life!" and then it's oh, sorry, guess you have $4 million in medical bills if they don't just die instantly.
Despite all that, things are overall better than previous generations. There is and always has been bad news. Life has always been a constant string of disasters, yet when you pause for a moment to reflect you realize that despite the bad news, overall it wasn't that bad.
In many countries, yes. People in India and China for instance are on average more likely to not be in severe poverty and subsistence vs 40 years ago, though western-style modernization has caused it's own problems. However most people are less well off in the US than we were in the 50s-90s. Reagan economics seems to have been 'wait, why are we letting the middle class exist? We could just keep all their money'. Seriously though i was completely fucked over by what I mentioned and it's only based on luck that I'm not homeless.
Most people in the Us are better off than the 50's-90's. They may feel worse off, but that is not an objective measure.
There are lots of objective measures. is one for you.
The argument of people being 'better off' now is that technology is better and more available. It is much cheaper to buy a big 4k flat panel tv now than a black and white tv with four channels and no remote back in the 50s. We have the Internet, smartphones, better health care, video games, music, streaming services, cheap air travel, food from all over the world, robot vacuum cleaners, air conditioning etc. etc.
What we don't have so much of is cheap housing, good secure jobs, any reasonable degree of income equality etc.
Right, so my question is whether quality of life or satisfaction has improved. I'd say it has not.
Go find old newspapers and read letters to the editor. The exact problems were different ,but the same ideas .
Sure. That is the position I was speaking from.
Are you fucking high?
Unlikely. Getting high is more often associated with realizing that shit is fucked.
When people could afford a decent home on a single job paid minimum wage? Not so sure.
If you were white, sure. Less likely otherwise.
Okay, fair point that racial equity and access to opportunity has increased significantly in most of the country. Gender equality has come a long way as well, though it’s also a “ha ha you have to work now too and your family is still worse off than it was, good luck with paying for day care”
Which was a huge bullshit injustice which need correcting and hurt a lot of people.
But now we're at the point where skin color doesn't matter in this scenario. Only bank balances matter. And you probably don't have a high enough one to afford a house no matter what color your skin is.
https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/
I saw a report that someone my age will need $3m to retire at 65. The average total income from 22-65 for people my age is around $1.4m. So I guess we never get to retire.
Compound interest might get you to that goal, maybe, if you start saving now.
The "start saving now" part is the bit that fucks most people.
When over half of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, saving is not even a possibility.
It seems that a lot of things in the US are carefully designed to keep you in servitude to your current employer, which I find a little ironic coming from the land of the free.
Where I live, Australia, employers are required to put in approx 10 percent of an employee's full time wages into a superannuation fund. This is linked via reportable wages to the tax office and companies will eventually find themselves under a lot of unpleasant attention from the Australian Tax Office if they don't make regular payments for you.
This is basically "invisible" to workers, it's essentially factored into the cost to have an employee by the business.The superannuation fund can be a "default preferred" one selected by the business, or an employee nominated one, and you can transfer/roll over your accumulated funds between any superannuation fund you like as you hop between jobs. You can draw from it in some specific dire circumstances, but usually you can only access it at retirement age.
For most Australians it ticks over in the background by itself. Most super funds easily beat inflation by a fair margin most of the time, and definitely in the long term. The tax office keeps track of balances for you and gives you an easy way to see what's where and the option to roll any scattered amounts into your current main superannuation fund.
You can also contribute extra to your super fund and there are tax benefits if you do. The government actively encourages investment in super, because that way they don't have to provide much in the way of old age pensions come 2050 or so when all workers will have some sort of decent retirement amount.
Is there any form of "mandatory" saving like that in the US? I know you guys have company pension plans of some sort, is there a government version?
That's essentially what social security is (except you can't access it until retirement), but it's constantly being attacked with death by a thousand cuts, so most people under 50 don't really expect to see much of a return.
It's pretty much the opposite in Australia with our setup. Those starting work now will end up with the required 3-ish million at retirement if they work the standard average job here for most of their life.
But I think what you refer to as "social security" is the government "aged pension" here which is about $550 a week or so. That's enough for a pensioner to live a very modest lifestyle here if their accommodation has been sorted previously.
It's also suffering the same kind of squeeze you mention and is means-tested on a sliding scale so the more you can afford not to have it, the less you get of it.
Right now most boomers are on the aged pension to some degree because superannuation schemes here only really kicked in during the last 15-20 years of their working lives so they didn't have much of a balance.
Probably in the next 30 years or so only the truly destitute will be able to get it and the rest of us will have to rely on what we've saved.
Do you get the pension if you don't put into the system? I was self-employed for years, and didn't pay into the social security system for those years because I really couldn't afford to since my business was so modest and I was the only employee. So my SS payout will be minuscule, whereas my wife, who has worked for public libraries since leaving university, will get a small but useful if not survivable check every month. So basically if you don't pay in, you don't get to have a retirement pension from the government.
I'm lucky because I stand to inherit a sizable amount of money when my mother passes away that I can save for retirement, but most people aren't that lucky and will have to live on scraps.
If inflation is as high as it currently is compared to the collected interest it does not matter how much compounding is done, the buying power of that savings will flatline. Add to this equation the need to eat and live now, the amount most put away is minimal and when something comes up even those meager savings are wiped out.
The math in most households is not working out. Debt is becoming peoples rainy day fund, people are unable to even pay their property taxes with the now insufficient government minimum pensions (and a lot of people don't think these pensions will even be there when they are eligible). This leaves people selling things (reverse mortgage, downsizing, moving to lower COL areas, etc) taking on debt to live now and generally giving up.
If you put away $50 a week for 10 years you end up with (based on a generous average 2% rate) $28,554.34. This seems like a good amount but keep in mind that you put $26,000 into this. That $2554.24 does not beat the loss of buying power over 10 years. You need much closer or better returns vs inflation for this to work in your favour. I was once told that you would be better off buying some raw metal like lead, or copper as the return on simple materials at least keeps up with costs.
You're absolutely right, but I'll just point out that superannuation (pension) funds in Australia are hitting 8 percent annual returns over a 30 year timeframe. You need a broader investment base to do that, and that's hard for individuals to do by themselves. How do you diversify your $50 a week investment to maximise return? You can't.
Here, superannuation funds do all the heavy lifting for you, it's mandatory for employers to put a nominal amount of each pay into one. There are no minimum investment amounts with them and fees are waived if the balance is below a few thousand, so even if it's $10 a week you get something back eventually.
So it's possible to have it work if your government sets things up right.
Oh I am not saying people should be the ones wholly responsible for their retirement portfolio, and congrats for having a competent government pension option. I would love to have access to something better then the market equivalent of roulette.
Hell in Canada the pension plan (that you can not get enough to live off at the moment) got a stunning 1.3% return this year. And unlike other plans you need to pay extra for 40 years to get additional funds at the end (no one I know of even thinks of doing this). And some parts of the county want to spin off there own pension plan (Alberta) even though most expect it to perform worse (due to a smaller investment base and using a bad private firm to run it).
savings interest rate was less than 0.1% for about the last 10 years so even thats not looking too solid
There is no magic number you need. $3m will get you some lifestyle. You could retire at 40 with only $300k if you want to live the lifestyle that means (move to very low cost of living area where you walk to groceries). And there is a good chance social security will continue to provide a minimal income once you reach whatever age.
Not enough income to live indoors, but income nonetheless
I know places in the us where it is enough. Towns with populations of 500 are generally cheap. Not much to do in them.
You’re right. In a 1 bedroom in a rural city in a low cost of living state living as a freegan who never needs anything like medications you might be able to live off that.
I for one think that the situation with social security is that my parents and grandparents took one of the best things my country ever did, robbed it blind, and pissed all over it. Fuck. That. Shit.
And yeah I’m prepared to work the rest of my life until I get too old to work and then die homeless. That’s not what people should live like. We had something beautiful and let it fall into disrepair
I said you could. That you wouldn't want to is my point.
Let's say optimistically that you die at 70. That's 30 years living on 300k, so 30k per year on rent, food, utilities and medical. You could live indoors for that amount in some parts of America in 2023. But what about in 2053? Inflation could have a huge impact on your cost of living and if you're already living close to the bread line it's hard to find savings anywhere. You could put your money in stocks but likewise you're at the mercy of the market. It might be fine but if the market tanks when you're 65 you could be in big trouble.
$300k ÷ 30yr = $10k/yr
To put it in perspective, working minimum wage ($7.25/hr) full time would earn around $15,000 in a year.
Historically no young generation has saved a lot. It is when you get older you realize how much it matters.
People who grew up in the Great Depression did. Silent generation remembers that...
Also Millennials are (historically) huge savers from living through multiple downturns.
Want is not the right word there, and it completely changes the message. This is a fucking hit job, trying to convince people that company executives stealing pension plans, and a failed society that abandons its elderly, is something young people desire.
As a person over 40 years old, let me be clear: I never want to work.
I would have retired 20 years ago if I could. I will never understand people that say they don't know what they'd do with themselves in retirement. What unimaginative and boring people they must be. I have a thousand interests I can't fully pursue because of work obligations.
Let me be clear: I want to retire, and I want to do so under ten years from now.
This was my stepdad, always said that. I just would tell him “whatever you want.” And it wasn’t for a lack of hobbies, he has plenty. I just don’t understand the mindset of people that want to “work.” Like, I love making things and “working” on my own things, but never have I gone to work and happy to be there. To work for a manager that micromanages me, another manager who want me to falsify records, (that btw it won’t come back to him but to me,) a GM who would put undo pressure on you to stay longer then you were scheduled. Fuck that place. Nothing made me happier when my situation changed and didn’t need to pick up extra hours. Six hour mark rolled around and I was out. I’d take that time go to the gym, go on a bike ride, go rock climbing, go paddle boarding because I sure as hell enjoyed working on myself more then I ever did at any job. And to work so hard for so little, damn if America isn’t just on large pyramid scheme.
I’m one of those people. If not pointed in a specific direction by someone else I’ll just aimlessly do nothing but kill time for months on end. I have a couple interests, but nothing that could keep me occupied for an extra 40 hours a week.
This isn’t to say I love working, but I don’t hate it either. I’d rather have work than no work, even for the same amount of money.
Just do shit until you say "hey that was nifty" or run out of money. Whatever comes first.
As someone between 27 and 42, I love getting shit accomplished but I have never in my life wanted to work
Or perhaps it's the right word, because it completely changes the message in precisely the way they intend.
It's certainly the intended word. But it's not "right" by any reasonable metric of correctness.
In older vocabulary, "want" was actually the stronger form of "need".
Perhaps we're returning to tradition in more ways than one?
what the fuck is up with all these pansy-ass terms suits keep coming up with? "quiet quitting" and now "soft saving"?
fuck this marshmallow flavoured cyanide bullshit
It's a way to turn people off of what they really mean.
"Quiet quitting" is just doing your job. Trying to make it seem like breaking your back to help someone profit is the minimum to do unless you want to be branded a quitter.
"Soft saving" is apparently the requirement of working til your dead because no one gets paid enough to...hard save...I guess.
No no, they don't die, they "soft live".
yes i definitely didn't know that
now go find literally anyone else to explain the obvious to
Ask a question, albeit rhetorical. Get answer that seems to agree with your stance.
Be a dick about it.
You got many friends?
Also thanks for explaining them, I had no clue what soft saving meant.
it tracks that this place is home to the socially unaware and the illiterate
do you seriously just go through comments sections without reading the article? fuck, critical thinking is a lost art.
dodge
Read in the best announcer voice in your head: "D-d-d-d-douchebag!"
Killer Instinct announcer voice works best for stuttered utterances.
It's their attempt at managing the narrative in their favor.
Neither of those terms were developed by suits. They both were popularized in the Gen Z social sphere, namely TikTok, and then well after they went viral and had plenty of adherents, started being picked up in the normal media cycle of regurgitating whatever is happening on social media and seeing what sticks.
They're both just a rejection of "old" cultural norms, in this case specifically a rejection of "hustle culture" and to a lesser extent the FIRE (i.e. early retirement) movement, both of which had their heyday on the internet many years ago.
And like...this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Gen Z is typically much more concerned about mental health (focus on now) than prior generations, has a very doom and gloom outlook for the future (focus on now), and is the first generation to be raised by people who didn't tell them "just work hard and you'll be fine eventually" (focus on now). Is it any surprise that they're less forward looking? What do they have to look forward to? Call it cyanide if you want, but while I don't necessarily agree with it, it certainly feels like a natural development to me.
did some idiot confuse "worried we will have to work until death" with "wanting to work until death"?
get fucked capitalist class. the minute I can afford not to work I will stop. the problem is you guys fucked the system so hard that it seems that point is so far away, or not attainable at all.
I feel so sorry for the retired boomers on good pensions in their big houses with nothing better to do than wish they were working again
end rant
Yes, the OP and everyone else slurping up this rage bait. The article does not say they "want to work until death". It also doesn't say shit about "capitalism celebrating" anything. This is presenting survey results and generational trends. Guess what, Gen Z is a little different than millennials, and different still from Boomers (though they appear to have some in common with the consumptive, "me generation" that Gen X was broadly painted as). This shouldn't be revolutionary. They don't save as much as millennials because millennials lived through multiple rough markets, and entered the workforce during a historic downturn. They care (even) less about work because they are much more focused on mental health. These are super, SUPER broad strokes, but we're talking about national level surveys. Why everyone is getting their undies in a bunch over this is absurd. No one is saying anything is good or bad. It just is.
This honestly sounds like propaganda trying to convince people this is a thing.
Like “quiet quitting”, which is, in reality, just doing your job and not going above and beyond because it doesn’t benefit you…
news is profit driven, so it literally always has someone's agenda behind it... (e.g. always propaganda) this appears to be corporate flavored
You definitely have a point which is why I try to avoid it most days.
Watch the PBS News Hour show.
It's also available on YouTube.
Speaking of YouTube, 'Breaking Points' is also a really good channel to watch for news.
Wow. I'll look into it. Ty
IMO it's exactly that. They hardly bring up any other external influences on people's income in the article, just a paragraph or two very deep in the article.
It insinuates really hard that people have the money to spend but just don't want to spend, a subtle "killing the messenger" of people being lazy and greedy.
This is some straight up Manufacturing Consent shit that's designed to make you think being poor and working until you fucking die on the assembly line and have to have your corpse dragged into the dogfood machine by the other wage slaves was your idea.
This message is being projected to the leaders of Capitalism, not the workers. It's being said to the wrong audience.
If so, it seems like it's a wasted effort.
The leaders of capitalism are just "capitalists." And they don't read CNBC. This is an article written for middle-class office drones, because it's one of the few websites that isn't blocked by the company firewall that has something approximating entertainment on it.
By the leaders of capitalism one could mean the CEOs and/or upper management, the c-suite, etc.
They sure watch it though, as well as the Sunday morning shows.
They're usually too busy to watch videos on their web browser at work because they are trying to keep the place from burning down project wise, but sure, it could be for them as well.
It is, and what's unfortunate is that on a long enough timeline, it works.
Forgot the guillotines silly!
They didn't need guillotines in Holland.
One thing worth noting that's tangentially related: the reason Social Security faces solvency concerns is not that they couldn't anticipate the Boomers' retirement, but because under Boomer management, wages (which are the basis for Social Security's funding) have been suppressed, particularly on the low end of the wage scale.
They saw the Boomers coming a mile away. What they didn't see coming was that they'd flatline the minimum wage and kill off unions
That and the Boomers modified social security to cap contributions for high income earners. If we removed that cap the issues with solvency get mostly solved.
Omg, I hadn't thought of that. Social security is taxed from income, American wages have been stagnant since the 70s.
Generation Ladder Pull
I have no idea where they pull these statistics from. It's increasingly sad that we should get more time off as labour gets automated and cheaper, not less.
I do the manual labour while machines paint and write poetry, this is not the future I expected.
My retirement plan is a cave in the hills, growing my own food on guerilla gardens until I'm eaten by wolves.
Hi, it's me, Wolves
Can I join
No. I'm a hermit. Nobody can join me. Find your own cave.
Well, we could meet up every 10 years, swap stories about caves. It's good fun.
I too have decided to look to the past. I'm raising an AI that will hopefully be able to provide for me in my old age
If that doesn't pan out, I'm going to try to join a pack of wolves
Here's a study of work hours from medieval times until now, by my favourite YouTube channel, Historian Civilis: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo
Had to bail at the first YT ad, so I’ll finish on Piped. My first take is that even though I get paid for eight hours, I work very similarly as the Stone Age worker in bursts. Some days I’m not working very hard and some days I am. I usually try to ensure I get something done over the course of the week, but it doesn’t always work out. Shrug. I don’t lose any sleep over it.
Most people are using that extra productivity to have more toys. Houses are much larger than 70 years ago. People now commonly have AC in the house. Most people have a phone/computer in their pocket (the video phone of 1950s science fiction not only exists, and it isn't a room sized machine but something even kids have in their pocket). You don't have to - get rid of the phone and you save a lot of money per month - but most people have chosen not to. Maybe they just feel forced to, but it is still a choice and there are a few people who by not having them prove it isn't forced.
What world do you live in where you can get by living like a hermit in the woods?
You may be okay with having a shitty existence but I certainly am not. Shaming people for having AIR CONDITIONING in a time where we are encountering record high temperatures, the likes of which are killing people? Fuck you pal, all the “advice” or “wisdom” you think you’re spewing here is nothing but garbage.
GUYS GET IN HERE. THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IN AMERICA NOW IS TO STOP PARTICIPATING IN SOCIETY.
Come on man…
?
Have you tried living without a phone? This is very hard to pull off in America. You need an email address. Ok, fine, you say, but that doesn't mean you need a phone. Okay, so you need to pay for home internet and have a PC? Still a cost here.
No, you say, walk/drive to the library every time you need to check your email. Every time you need to use a website to make an appointment or fill a form out. Every time you need to check google for information (by the way, I have saved thousands of dollars by googling things, I am sure you have, too).
There's still a cost here - time. Many people who have smartphones in America don't have home internet.
You still need a phone number if you're employed. I'm sure there are jobs that will put up with not being able to contact you, but good luck with that, I'm sure they pay well. You're paying for a dumb phone or a land line either way.
And you're right, it is a choice. I choose to participate in society, and that pretty much requires the internet. I choose not to live naked in the woods, surviving on what I forage like a bear.
By making that choice you pay the price. I knowany people without a phone, they live in a different society. Most are old.
Bingo!
Try balancing a job and kids, reaching companies and schools without a smart phone. It will cost you time if you can't just reach into your pocket. Example, schools in my area put school closures on Facebook and through email. Guess you could listen to the radio if you didn't have access. Or watch the news on TV (Oh, actually, TV is a luxury, nevermind, much less useful. I don't have TV, don't have time to watch or the money to waste on cable).
Smart phones are not an expensive luxury anymore, they're a tool. They're a tool that the younger, employed and child-raising part of society is assumed to have. I'm not saying you can't do it, it's just, well... Hope your kids can adjust to college life if they haven't been exposed to tools like easy access to the internet. Their peers will probably have smart phones, at least as teenagers/young adults. Doesn't bode well for them. You can get a cheap smart phone, even used iPhones aren't always that expensive, though I think androids are far more economical.
The person you're replying to is a moron, basic maths tells me they're wrong. My phone costs £400/year, let's round that up to £500 for ease of calculation (less once the handset is paid off, but I'll give them the best possible argument). Living in a 3 bed semi, nothing fancy, decent area. Currently my house would cost £200-250k, I'll take the lower end, again benefits their argument. At £500/year it would take 400 years for me to save for my home. Not a big fancy home, a relatively small starter home. My smart phone is not the reason I can't afford a bigger house.
Yea I know, lmao. I work with people who think that some people don’t deserve smart phones. It’s cathartic to argue about it on the internet.
Wouldn't a radio also be a luxury? Should we be spending money on anything other than ramen and a rug to sleep on?
Excellent point. Radios are clearly pushing it, I'm sure some of them cost like $20. People can just learn how to do without!
By making the choice to not have a job since you don't have a phone, you're not going to be able to buy those toys. Or afford rent. Homeless people have phones because they need them to work the minimum wage jobs they're forced to work just to be able to sleep in their cars.
Out of touch
A soft lifestyle? And to think this whole time I thought it was just called "being poor and underpaid"
Generally the people being discussed in this article are not poor and underpaid, but rather prefer work-life balance to be heavily slanted toward "life" and "experiences" rather than "work as much as possible to make as much as possible."
From the article, buried inside of it...
I know the article insinuates it, but I don't think we can assume that people can afford more but just don't want to spend more, to protect their lifestyle.
I believe it's more of people want a better lifestyle and they're not getting paid enough for it, that they're expecting the same lifestyle that the previous generations had, and are not being selfish and asking for more than others had.
Yeah! They should be raising themselves up by pulling up those bootstraps. That's the way anyone can reach a higher socio-economic status. America!! /s
This really has nothing to do with "bootstraps" which is a satirical metaphor (originally satirical) about climbing from poverty.
I don't get the privilege of owning a home, why should I get to retire? 🤷♀️
I don't get the privilege of having a life, why shouldn't we get to work till death?
Who need a life if you're working all the time? If you were serious about retiring you'd work yourself to death to get there!
From the article...
It really just is time for companies to pay more money to their employees, to share the wealth better, back like how we used to.
It's wild to think that in the past only one person would have to work and a couple would be able to afford a house and raise a family. I can't see how that can be done in today's world.
Someone dig up FDR and ask him the redo the 'New Deal'.
I feel like this is the most significant piece of information in the entire article and it just skims over it. People aren't failing to save because of lifestyle choices. They're failing to save because groceries for 1 person costs like 200 bucks a week in some cities. Shit is more expensive than ever before, and things like home ownership, which is historically THE default hedge against inflation, is outside the grasp of pretty much anyone below 40 who isn't a doctor or working in a similarly lucrative field.
Man, I remember when I was a kid groceries cost $100~$200 for a family of 4 for a week, and some of that food (like bags of chips) would get spread out over multiple weeks. 11-year-old me couldn't believe that my parents spent that much on food but wouldn't get me a $40 lego set.
I think the formula for minimum wage should be as follows
Minimum wage adds up to enough per month that the average number of hours worked times the minimum wage are large enough for the national average for rent to make up at most 40% of a minimum wage worker's budget.
If a county (or equivalent subdivision) has a higher average rent than that average, the minimum wage there is the same formula but for that higher average rent instead of the national average.
If there's a discrepancy between where someone lives and where they work, their minimum wage is the higher between the two.
The only modification I think it'd need is maybe finding a scientific way to replace monthly rent with "average monthly expenditure" so that folks getting billed for medicine aren't being screwed over, but frankly a country that can get the above proposition done is probably one that made UHC happen too anyways.
Also just to keep those landlords from thinking they can get wise, rent can only be raised on lease renewal, and only by as much as the reported inflation rate at the time of lease renewal. Also, constructive eviction to try and get around this is a felony and you lose all rights to own housing property other than your own home ever again.
Constructive? Elaborate?
I think that's a step too far, and wouldn't(?) pass muster, legally.
A felony would come with high penalty fees to pay, and could be enough of a deterrent.
If you're unfamiliar with the concept of constructive dismissal, it's where an employer skirts termination laws by doing shit like booking the employee on all the worst hours or piling on tasks or moving their office space to somewhere far away or unpleasant to make work so unbearable that they quit. In parts of Canada that's illegal and you're required to pay out as if you'd fired them anyways if it's shown you did that.
Constructive eviction would be the same idea, not forcing an eviction before date because they want to spike the rent, but instead scheduling a shitton of construction and maintenance and other shit that make the place unlivable until the tenant eventually has to break the lease to be able to find anywhere else to get a consistent night's sleep.
Landlords were pulling it all over the dang place during the COVID eviction holds.
Also, not being able to own or manage housing property other than your personal residence seems like a perfectly apt punishment for someone who's demonstrated quite blatantly that they're the worst kind of scumlord to trust with people's housing rights.
Thank you for the education. I had not heard of that tactic described using that term before.
IANAL, but that seems to cross a legal 'free will' line that most people wouldn't want to cross.
Other forms of punishment without losing ownership would be the more established go to alternative.
No, that's a capitalist "greed is good" article in disguise.
Some of us Boomers actually wonder WTF the 'New Deal' went, and lament it's loss for our grand/children.
Seriously, stop buying into and dividing up one side that would stand together against that kind of thing.
Why should people push for traditional pensions? I don't want to be stuck at a crappy job just because leaving would reset my retirement clock. It's the same reason healthcare shouldn't be attached to the employer either.
Yes, a universal pension system is the solution.
The problem is the alternative has become 401(k)s, which can be wiped out of the market does badly. This requires government intervention to be fixed, but the will is not there.
If my calculations are correct, my cheeseburger and pizza diet will kill me around the time I want to stop working. That's my retirement.
Na, medical care and medicine are better than they've ever been. They'll save you from your heart attack and you'll spend the next 3 decades paying for heart medication.
If they save you with meds, why not just try and overdose on those if you really wanna die at that point?
Why wait when you could just achieve your goals today?
A better retirement plan would be Costco hot dogs.
Who am I skimping out on cheeseburger money for?
The Unknown Ones.
It's like a version of The Whale where he doesn't have a daughter and isn't depressed from his gay lover dying, but just depressed because of general socioeconomic conditions and the overall shitty state of the world.
These crazy kids with their preferences for avocado toast and Tik Tok and never being able to stop working!
You know, I am Gen X and honestly have never thought I'd be able to retire. I worked when pregnant until the day I had the baby, every time.
I now just try to keep work sustainable, take my PTO, don't give them everything now for some potential future return.
No, I don't need paid employment to have a full and happy life. There is plenty to do. But it's not the worst life either.
I'm gen X, and I don't care if I have to retire eating Dog food, I'm not working until I drop. The capitalists can bash that idea straight up their date.
If it's good enough for the boomers, it's good enough for me.
Same, except I'm a Gen X/Xennial man who never got anyone pregnant, so I didn't have to deal with that problem. From the age of 12 when I entered the workforce part time to earn "spending money" by stripping tobacco, until 16 when I entered "the kitchen" with a food handlers licence the first time, until I was 39 and threw my back out I didn't believe that I would ever be able to retire.
Since then my "luckiest bastard to ever exist" trait has kicked in. I've managed to accidentally start two "businesses" that will allow me to retire by the year 2026. I'll be 45.
Don't give up. Believe in your talents and stop falling prey to imposter syndrome. You have far more ability than you know. I know this to be true, because I am not special, and I found out the hard way that I have more abilities than I knew.
There’s about a 0.1% chance Social Security will be around when I retire, and the increasing costs of living have almost certainly cut into my ability to retire at a reasonable age.
I’m probably going to work till the day I die, it’ll just be contingent on if I work for myself or not.
lolz gen X forgotten again.
Sorry lads, you know how it is, no catchy name, no political representation.
I'm 40 and I've always "known" that there would be no retirement for "us".
Consequentially, as the eternally wise Homer Simpson once stated; "my lifestyle is my retirement plan".
I genuinely hope never to reach age 70 or over. I've known lots of old people in my life and the ONLY TWO who were somewhat happy were my maternal grandparents. And even they will soon have to deal with losing one another since they're so old.
I don't intend to go through all that. I'll live what I can, as long as I can, and as soon as I can't anymore, it's exit left.
I doubt I'll be the only one.
And this is why I'll "waste" money on gyms and travelling to interesting places to hike, fresh produce and over-hyped barely scientific superfoods .... because I want more quality years.
There's a genetic condition running through my family, and it's a dice roll. I've had cousins die at 17-25 from this condition, most of my uncles passed at 50-60 from it, a few aunts passed in their 40s, a huge chunk of my cousins died in childbirth in their 30s because of complications associated with this condition.
And yet my grandmother, who passed this down to us made it to 94, and she was still going at full speed with all her wits until her last day. On my dad's side, there are autoimmune issues, which reduces quality of life, the men die in their 60s and very early 70s, but all the women are still kicking at 85+ but their cost of living is astronomical because they've been disabled for the last 30+ years of their lives.
I'm one of the oldest in the family that was young enough to get a diagnosis and get some early intervention (the condition wasn't fully known until the mid 90s)
I really don't know what my medical future holds.
Maybe I'll get an AAA and die at 35.
Maybe I'll have a CVA in my 40s, and live another 30 years severely disabled. (I had a series of TIAs in my late teens before I was diagnosed and properly managed, so I know I'm a high stroke risk)
Maybe I'll be running around in my 90s like my nan.
If I saved every single cent of my income from the day I got my first job until I turn 67 (current retirement age in my country) , I'd still only truly be able to afford one of those above scenarios.... Why "hard save" when hard saving will achieve nothing long term, but soft saving can achieve a miriad of important short term goals, and possibly even give me a better chance of making a living long into life.
83 bro here. I've got a pension and a bit in my 401k. I still plan on going out with a bang on my own terms. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe 15y from now.
I stand with ye
What did Kanye do this time?
A belief in the future is actually a foundational requirement of capitalism.
What we have here is neo-fudalism, where the points are made up and the people believe in nothing.
Want? No. Need.
Barely mentioned: wage stagnation and inflation.
It always got me how much it costs to be able to work.
I just dropped $150 on clothes for my new job, which isn't the same color palate as the clothes from my old job.
I feel like my impression of CNBC from a while back was that it just covered stocks and business mergers and stuff like that, but between this, COVID, and the UAW strike it's really been demonstrating its position as a newspaper for business rather than simply about it.
Same as WSJ. They exist to manipulate people with pro-.1% propaganda.
There was a post earlier from wsj about how it makes more sense to rent because mortgage rates are high right now. Because, you know, refinancing doesn't exist and landlords never arbitrarily raise rent
Ah, I'll read that right after "back to office is better for workers!"
Report: 75% of remote employees have asked their employers to let them work at the office again
Source: uhhhhhhhhh
I disagree with the editorialising from the title comment. To me it doesn't seem to celebrate or even opine anything, and that's actually kind of frustrating, because it's obviously bad that people are intending to work longer, regardless of their actual preferences.
Having read the article, to me it's not entirely obvious whether people feel that (A) they don't have enough to save regardless of their intentions (B) they feel saving for retirement is futile for whatever reason, or (C) even if they had extra money, they would prefer to spend the extra on here and now.
The article kind of hints that it's more B or C than A, but it isn't really explicit, and I think that would be the really interesting part of this story to report.
You're right. I was angry when I posted this, and couldn't help but read glee in the repeated ways they described generations of people who are on track to simply never be able to save up for a comfortable retirement.
It does feel hopeless, though. I love my job and earn a decent wage, but if I had the money to retire, I'd do it today. I definitely don't want to work until I drop.
I think there is also inflation fear and a understandably low desire to try and save/invest. I know a few people that just had to start working again because the money they had coming in for retirement was not enough for what they thought was their lowest acceptable standard of living.
Its not hard to see with inflation above return on most safe investment vehicles (GICs paying 4.5% max with inflation at 5%) that people don't see the point.
it's mathematically impossible for any long term investment vehicle to payout more than inflation, unless you get lucky and happen to hit the Apple stock.
Sorry but by that logic there is no point in any investment mechanism. Historically GIC rates have been the oposite of what you claim https://www.ratehub.ca/blog/the-history-of-gic-rates/ . For example in 1995 GICs paid 7.1% vs the inflation rate of 1.7%.
I think the odd position that it is "mathematically" impossible to have any expectation of return is indicative of our messed up system.
I don't know, this article seems horribly out of touch. I mean you have the opinions of Intuit, who feed on your tax return, and Blackrock, the company often cited as the reason Millennials and Gen Z will never own a house. They have a vested interest in keeping people paying income tax and taking out loans.
I agree the article seems very out of touch, and the reason I think is because it reports this in a very neutral way. If it made clear that the author thought this was a bad thing that was happening, would you still think it was out of touch?
I believe it's out of touch not because they didn't come to the conclusion I wanted them to, but because they cite the opinions and data curated by tax and investment companies at face value instead of actually asking responders why they answered the way they did. Who is Blackrock to say what young people want to do? Hell, Blackrock garners disdain from both sides of the aisle, would millennials and Gen Z really pick them as a representative of their wants and needs?
To me it didn't seem neutral, it seemed to imply a sense of laziness and wanting luxury over hard work from the newer generation.
So glad someone else read the article. I really thought we'd escape clickbait like this post on Lemmy, but there's so much rage people are up voting this stuff and commenting how horrible it is based on the false title, not the actual article which is freaking survey results.
Like yes things are bad, but these results could have printed about any generation at any time post 1940s (advent of the concept of young adulthood) as long as they were all under 25.
This just in - young people thinking on shorter time horizons, bad at planning for future. More in tomorrow's newspaper dated any time in the last hundred years or so.
Where in the world do you get that I'm an angry old person? I didn't say youth today suck. My other comments in this thread were mentioning why gen z gets a raw deal for crying out loud.
What I said was that young people think on shorter time horizons, which is empirically true and also literally backed up in this empirical case. Hence why I also said it applies to every generation. What a weird take. Defensive much?
{SIGHS} Don't eat the rich. That's how you get easily communicable diseases. Instead you should compost them and use them to grow a nice, non edible garden. Preferably one that's good at sequestering carbon!
Prion diseases are pretty terrifying.
greedy people have all the money, you just have to take it from them.. they're not going to give up their wealth and power because it's the right thing to do..
Would be a shame if some internet pals showed up with cyber punk guillotines and a fanny pack full of Mollys and said "pick one."
well, let's just agree that a bunch of rich assholes have a whole lot of learning to do, one way or another
Heads won't be the only thing rolling
The only solution is to eat the rich.
Industrial society and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race
Yet it’s also the best thing that has ever happened to us lol
As a worker I don't like the idea of a pension. It's too easy for some future regime to just get rid of my retirement fund. As long as wage slavery exist I would rather own my own retirement plan.
It's just as easy for a market crash to get rid of your private retirement fund.
you don't even need a market crash, just a corrupt investor managing the fund
True. Madoff wiped a lot of people out.
Diversify homie.
I'm not a financial wizard, "homie." It's not my area of expertise. I wouldn't try doing surgery on myself either.
Ah, the typical "I did it so anyone can" that I hear from libertarians all the time.
Financial advisors also exist for a reason. And they aren't bankers. Bankers don't even give financial advice when it comes to investment to have money for retirement, so I'm not sure why you keep bringing up bankers.
Don't be your own worst enemy.
Getting good sound advice for free is a rare event, one that shouldn't be passed up on.
Diversification isn't brain surgery. It just means buy different things. Put some into a savings account, some into your retirement account, and some shares of VOO. Consider property, gold, bitcoin, bonds, and whatever else floats your boat. Spend a few hours on Google and you're good to go. You can obviously read and you have the internet so you'll have no issues with any of this.
I have no idea what VOO means. I don't have time to research this sort of thing. I sincerely doubt you can learn enough in a few hours on Google to ensure proper retirement investment. I think that is highly unlikely and if that is what has done it for you, you've just been lucky.
Business schools in universities exist for a reason. MBAs exist for a reason.
Since you can read and you have the internet, you could find out what VOO is within seconds. This learned helplessness routine of yours is not believable. You don't need an MBA to open a bank account, or an account with a broker.
You know how every bank commercial says "FDIC insured" at the end? That means you've got insurance on your money in there up to $250K. Don't put more than that in any account or a crash may disappear it. This is why you diversify.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/121814/look-vanguards-sp-500-etf.asp
You don't lose it all though, at least eventually it'll recover, to the range of somewhat to total amount of the loss.
If it crashes five minutes before you want to retire, then yeah you're screwed. That's why you try to have a balanced retirement plan.
If that occurs, hiwever, its not just you it's the whole economy, which in my experience leads to more neighbors acting neighborly, while when its just you and your fellow Workers, you are fucked. ymmv
Have you ever been to the U.S.?
yes
Then you should know better.
It's probably different in the burbs, but where real people live, the rural areas and the inner city, adversity certainty builds community.
Please explain why people who live in the suburbs are not humans. Try to do it without being a fascist. This should be interesting.
I don’t mind working to old age, as long as I can have 6 hour workdays. But let’s be reasonable, no 80 year old grandpa is going to be productive at work.
As a millennial, I probably would also want to work a bit in retirement for fun, but not like the job I work now, something more chill or maybe freelance projects.
Obviously that'd require having lots of retirement savings so that working isn't a requirement
Lots of people start their working careers with the mindset of continuing to do some form of work in retirement. As you get closer, that opinion often changes.
Fair, guess we'll have to see :p
In the meantime, enjoy the ride!
It's interesting that we have a generation of politicians who refuse to retire, meanwhile the generations behind them see the option to retire going away. Maybe there is a connection?
hmm. like ... maybe they're immortal?
For that they would need youthful energy... From children's blood or something... Yeah that must be it 😂
That makes no sense.
Speaking for myself, I plan to remain active for as long as I can manage because I've seen what retirement causes to people. Vegetating on a sofa in front of a TV is not a good way to spend your last stretch on this planet. But neither is working.
And even when I no longer have interest in working for a salary, I want to remain active. Hopefully I'll have grandchildren to help with, my dogs to train and a garden to tend. But I do want to retire and expect everyone to do the same.
The way the system is being "overhauled" is bonkers. I was listening to a podcast the other day where it was calculated that for the EU, by 2050, pensions would be around 45% of the final salary earned, with some exceptions reaching 95%.
I don't expect for my (hopefully) pension to cover for luxuries but I do expect it to aid me maintaining a decent, even if frugal, standard of living. I do not want a millionaire pension, like many paid today, over tens of thousands of Euros.
Be brave and set maximum values for pensions. I've known people with pensions over €5000; minimum wage in my country is €765x14: that's €10.710, yearly, before taxes. Do rest of the math in your head. A few years back, it was outed the highest pension paid in the country was around €120.000, per month. That is insane. Meanwhile, many receive pensions below €200.
Just as an FYI, older people do such things not because want to, but because their bodies' current condition won't let them do otherwise.
You really do start going downhill quickly in your late 50s, healthwise.
Regardless every person being different from the next, spending days on end watching brainrot television is not a good way to spend your life.
Even with reduced mobility, a person can enjoy other things. Reading, writing, listen to music, solve puzzles, etc. There are numerous activities to persue.
Of course, I wasn't suggesting otherwise.
My point is when you see Grandma sitting in the rocker on the porch she may be doing that not be because she's there to enjoy herself, but because she's incapable of doing other things, and even movement is problematic.
In essence we don't get old, we just break down, and when we do, the lack of mobility and pain are your constant companions.
HA, I hope people realize how a large amount of Gen X also are not able to retire. This is just accepted that now for people under a certain threshold of wealth retirement is but a fantasy.
Preface: I'm not intending to come off as bragging, but providing some justification
I make plenty enough to retire by 45. Does that mean I'll stop working by 45? No, that sounds ridiculously boring. I'd rather work part time or do contract work until I'm physically and mentally unable because otherwise I'll become a vegetable. I enjoy my work and at the moment have no intentions of stopping at any point
I feel bad for anyone who's identity and self worth is so tied to their job that they'd feel this way.
If I woke up tomorrow and was told I could keep receiving my current income for the rest of my life, but I just wouldn't have to actually put in the time and do the work?
I would never touch that work again.
There's so many things I could do, activities to try, things to learn, and skills to develop that I could never imagine getting so damn bored with my life without work that I'd ever remotely consider getting back into the work force.
Work is what I do in order to afford the life I want. It's not the life I want.
I've not worked for ten years, and I've never been happier. Not a moment of boredom and I get to throw myself into whatever hobby I want.
I feel real sad for people who can't comprehend enjoying free time.
What do they do, stare at walls and watch paint dry?
I feel more in touch with myself and other people than ever before
So much this.
I love my job, but doing whatever the fuck I want kind of beats it. I have many project ideas and also some skills I want to learn, would finally have time to go all in.
Have you considered that some people might actually enjoy their jobs?
I'm not saying you do but that's fine, but you're pretty much saying that working has to be boring and undesirable, which it absolutely doesn't have to be.
I'm saying nothing of the sort.
All I'm saying is that if you're working at a job, you're being paid to do what your employer asks you to do. If you happen to enjoy it, great, but that's incidental, your only choice is to keep doing what they want or to stop and then stop getting paid.
If you don't have to work, though, now you get to choose what to do with your time. And if the thing you'd most want to do with that power of choice is to give it right back to your employer, then idk...just seems sad to me.
What's you opinion on volunteering then? Maybe people do it because it makes them feel good that they're doing something they want to.
And they're not getting paid to do it.
Why not do something you enjoy and get paid while you're at it?
What I do for work is also my hobby outside of work! I enjoy work due to the new challenges that come and require solving. If I'm working on my own stuff I end up side-tracked and never actually finish things which gets demoralizing quickly. Work helps keep me on task so I can actually get to have the satisfaction of a job well done
So that's the thing. People say that they'll never retire and that it sounds boring, but the reality is much different. You just find other things to do. What you'll find is that when you stop working for someone else, you start working for yourself... and if you're a determined individual you'll be busier than you've ever been in your life. Just something to consider.
I barely lasted six months or a year without a job last time it happened, and before that I was bored out of my mind for four years
Okay but like, why don't you do something for yourself instead of working for someone else.
I'm convinced people with this attitude can't think for themselves and must be directed by a superior or they're useless.
Focus on yourself instead.
I do do things for myself. What I do for work is also my hobby, but I have zero self control. I would happily dive into my side projects for weeks on end just to have them crash and burn from burnout or from my getting side-tracked.
Last time I wasn't working I lasted about six months before I had to get back to some sort of work simply because my own personal projects became extremely boring. Even things I have put years into at this point, I ended up getting bored quickly even though I hadn't increased my workload
To be clear, I wouldn't be working full-time, but I enjoy the unique challenges that work brings me. It gives me things to think about and solve that I wouldn't have considered, and that helps keep the burnout at bay
You're really just reaffirming my position here. You can't keep yourself interested without having someone else direct you.
No, I just need to be better about moderating myself. I still work on my side projects quite a lot, but having something else to do helps keep me motivated.
I've been out of a job and going to school through the VA for 4 years. I love it. I do projects to improve my home,I visit family without limits, and go to different states on a whim just to see them. If I want to go to see or do anything in the middle of the day I just leave. Working until your too old to do anything isn't sounding great.
I still do quite a bit. I'm a remote worker so I travel relatively frequently, and my work is generous with vacation time. I don't feel over-worked and simply just enjoy some of the challenge that work brings me. It helps that I genuinely enjoy my work because what I do for work is also my hobby that I already do outside of work, it just ensures I don't stay fixated on a single project which helps prevent burnout.
There's very few things I've found so far that are genuinely entertaining to participate in, and splitting up my time helps me in keeping those few things entertaining in perpituity instead of burning myself out
Firstly, I appreciate your candid response. It is great that you enjoy what you do not many people get that. Secondly, congratulations on the remote position. I am sure that helps a lot to prevent burn out.
They're almost asking us to become Lenin at this point
There must be an advocation for a universal monthly social security payment (and expanded universal medicaid) from birth. Fund them in the short term by eliminating the taxable income cap for OASDI.
If we were in a functioning society that responded to actual issues... Gotta finish the civil war first tho.
Taxable income cap for what?
OASDI is the program name for social security. It stands for Old Age, Survivors Disability Insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)
Retirement sounds like hell to me and has long seemed merely like a way to convince massive amounts of the population to delay taking earnings (pensions) or indirectly give their money to hedge fund managers to operate against their interests.
There are barely no conceptual issues with retirement in countries with public pension systems. Whatever the hell you guys have got going on in the US is a problem with the US implementation.
If you personally want to keep working at an old age, that's ok, but you should still respect other people's right to be sustained by society when they're too weak or feeble to properly gain their own bread.
In rich countries with public pension systems. Of course you would have no problem to retire if public pension is good enough for decent living
How did I not respect others?
I'm American, so I legitimately forgot other nations refer to social security retirement plans as pensions when I wrote that.
No personal attacks against you. An uncharitable interpretation of your previous comment would have interpreted your position as being against all forms of retirement, possibly because you personally didn't want to retire. I tried to word it in a way that attacked this idea, but without being overly confrontational with you. You sound like a reasonable person.
"traditional pensions" is a misleading lie. The idea of ceasing to work after reaching a certain age, has been around since around the 18th century, quite new stuff considering how long homo sapiens is around.
And don't get angry at me, I personally think it's a great thing, I'm not an entrepeneur, I'm salaried and I'm hoping to retire eventually, but how the world economics is going, I'm not holding my breath.
Retirement plans worked great during the wars, lots of fine men never reclaiming their retirement money after years of paying for it because they're all KIA. More money to share with fewer people.
Then, after the war, we got the baby boom, lots of fresh meat eager to work to support the retirement of the previous workforce, or what remains of that, after all the PTSD and diseases.
Now? Since you are reading this here on Lemmy, I'm supposing you're tech savy, educated and curious. So you already know population is shrinking around the (first) world. Retirement plans as we know are not sustainable.
What I suggest, is talk to your bank, your consultant, your insurance. Figure out what kind of products they offer as "private retirement plans" and what's their suggestion. Don't expect the government to do something for you (especially in the US).
Do it yesterday, if not possible, then as soon as you can. The earlier you start planning your future, the better.
And if you change your mind, you could always withdraw that money and buy a house, which is something almost impossible until you escape the "living paycheck to paycheck" mentality.
Were you speaking towards a SEP/IRA?
When everything is said and done, I can't see them ever ever letting Social Security fail, at all. That would truly be the spark of a revolution if so.
Older voters are the best voters, so at the end of the day they'll make sure that stuff stays intact, one way or the other. Even if it means they have to build less battleships, etc.
you know? that's actually a valid point.
Living paycheck to paycheck isn't a mentality... But pushing personal responsibility for what is a societal issue certainly is.
I can agree with you. Thankfully I live in Europe where it's good ethics for politicians thinking about societal issues, but in the "land of the free" that's a luxury most people don't expect. So help yourself.
Trying to get the "Who watches the Watchers" crowd to reform themselves is always a problematic thing to do.
The real test of a true democracy.
It's better for a few to break up pension investment and have a generation die at a desk, perhaps
Hell of a fake news editorialize. Where is the "celebration" in this article? You could equally spin this article as "Gen Z and Millennials refuse to contribute to generational wealth and prioritize making capital enrich their lives instead."
I am seeing that with my parents. My dad has had offers to make some pretty good cash as a consultant for a few hours a week here or there. In some industries, like law, a retired judge can make bank working in arbitration where they can pick up just a little work for a good pay check to keep them busy and have more fun money. And then there's the God's work that is unpaid, child care for grandchildren. For a generation that has lower birth rates as a personal choice, I can see those folks looking to do part time work if it's enjoyable and supports their other endeavors.
capitalism is not a person
You're right, it is an ideology.
I don't think this is necessarily negative. I'm a millennial in that 44% and I'm in no hurry to retire because my profession is my identity. I hope I live a long time, but I also hope that I can work until I die. What would I even do if I didn't work? I tried taking a year off once but I lasted a month before I was bored and looking for job.
(I don't mean to sound smug - I get that I'm lucky. But I'm also not that unusual.)
In a way i can see why you think you're lucky as you will suffer less in these terrible times, but damn, there are so many things I want to do in life that I'll run out of time before I run out of things.
I am also a millenial and have a decent non-shitty job, but I'd drop that in a second if I didn't need it. It takes such a chunk of my life.
How very sad for you.
Eh, no one says "how sad" when a person's Identity is creating art. I'm an engineer so I create practical things, but that doesn't mean I have less passion for what I do.
Having passion for something and using it as the basis of your identity are two very different things. If a painter says that painting is their identity, yes, I would say that was sad too.
What would you say is a good basis for one's identity?
Why should any one thing be your whole identity?