They shift the social responsibility of caring for those who cannot work for pay into a personal responsibility. Retirement should not be something that you have to save for by bending over backwards for corporate overlords to get a well-paying job and putting away a tiny share of your tiny share of the profits for later. Retirement should be part of a robust social safety net. People should be cared for in their old age (and at every age) regardless of whether they would be able to earn enough wages to put away retirement savings.
To younger generations, the idea of retirement savings is laughable. Not just because it’s so far away and it’s dubious whether society will even last that long, but because the social safety net is in such a bad state that able-bodied young people are suffering at a massive scale right now. We aren’t even earning enough to pay our cost of living, let alone retirement savings. The system is deeply broken and needs much deeper and much wider fixes than a bailout only for those lucky enough to have retirement savings in the first place. Not to mention that most of the bailout money would go to the wealthier shareholders that have more shares.
We need the rich to be taxed much more and for money to be distributed as aid to all who need it, not just those who have retirement savings at stake.
Great points, but not the world we currently live in, nor on any track towards. I’ll just let my mom know she can stop working because society should be taking care of her and I’ll go ahead and liquidate my 401k and IRAs since they won’t be needed.
It’s great to work towards those goals of having better social programs, but you still have to exist in the world that you actually live in.
It’s easy to talk about the living in the world we live in when such a world is not an existential threat to you. There are many for whom this world has become an existential threat, and the numbers keep going up as we continue to live in this world that we live in, as you put it.
Who said that this world isn’t also an existential threat to me? I’ve never implied that things shouldn’t change, in fact I said that they should. My statement about having to live in the world we have is merely a statement of fact, but I was hoping to imply that for many this still means investing for your future. Just because it isn’t useful advice for some, doesn’t mean it isn’t still helpful for others.
“Retirement savings” are a scam.
They shift the social responsibility of caring for those who cannot work for pay into a personal responsibility. Retirement should not be something that you have to save for by bending over backwards for corporate overlords to get a well-paying job and putting away a tiny share of your tiny share of the profits for later. Retirement should be part of a robust social safety net. People should be cared for in their old age (and at every age) regardless of whether they would be able to earn enough wages to put away retirement savings.
To younger generations, the idea of retirement savings is laughable. Not just because it’s so far away and it’s dubious whether society will even last that long, but because the social safety net is in such a bad state that able-bodied young people are suffering at a massive scale right now. We aren’t even earning enough to pay our cost of living, let alone retirement savings. The system is deeply broken and needs much deeper and much wider fixes than a bailout only for those lucky enough to have retirement savings in the first place. Not to mention that most of the bailout money would go to the wealthier shareholders that have more shares.
We need the rich to be taxed much more and for money to be distributed as aid to all who need it, not just those who have retirement savings at stake.
Great points, but not the world we currently live in, nor on any track towards. I’ll just let my mom know she can stop working because society should be taking care of her and I’ll go ahead and liquidate my 401k and IRAs since they won’t be needed.
It’s great to work towards those goals of having better social programs, but you still have to exist in the world that you actually live in.
It’s easy to talk about the living in the world we live in when such a world is not an existential threat to you. There are many for whom this world has become an existential threat, and the numbers keep going up as we continue to live in this world that we live in, as you put it.
Who said that this world isn’t also an existential threat to me? I’ve never implied that things shouldn’t change, in fact I said that they should. My statement about having to live in the world we have is merely a statement of fact, but I was hoping to imply that for many this still means investing for your future. Just because it isn’t useful advice for some, doesn’t mean it isn’t still helpful for others.