Welcome to the new dark ages, where only the wealthy can retire

[n2doc]

By Peter Fleming

It’s almost too easy to imagine the scenario. After spending most of our adult life in paid employment, the golden day arrives. A well-earned retirement. Suddenly we’re released from the grip of office email and that long commute. Finally we can enjoy our remaining time on Earth pursuing those interests we’d never had time for, perhaps reconnecting with family and finishing those repairs on the house. Above all, time to relax.

Sadly, this probably won’t be your future … unless you’re independently wealthy. What can only be described as the “battle over work” in the neoliberal era in relation to pay and conditions has just opened another front. Retirement. And things are beginning to get nasty.

We’re now told that the real question is no longer when we will retire but if we will retire, with the prospect of working until you drop likely to become the norm. Due to an ageing population, longer life expectancy and a state pension scheme that can’t keep up, retirement might soon be a thing of the past. According to David Blake, director of the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School, “the danger now is we will have a generation who really can’t afford to retire”.

more
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/14/wealthy-retire-austerity-pensioners-work?CMP=fb_gu
That future is here.

[Zoonart]

1. So true...

I have been dealing with the finances of my and my husband's surviving parents for the last four years.
My mother-in-law, Bless her heart, will turn 95 in couple of weeks and has taken care throughout her life to deal with end of life issues, including having long term care insurance. She is a veteran, a former college librarian and a life long Quaker.

Despite all of her saving and planning... there is a real chance that she will outlive her savings. She is currently in a nursing home facility, and many of us know what it costs to have a relative in that kind of care. My dad's bill, before his death in January of 2016, was around $300,000.
Luckily, my parents were able to afford this, but many other families are going broke caring for elder parents, and my husband and his brother will be unable to pick up the tab for their mother without hardship.

The middle class was created by inheritance; generational transfer of property from Parent to child, but that is being destroyed, and with it, the prospect of a comfortable, if any, retirement.

I constantly struggle with the bitterness that arises from my knowledge that my parents, after enjoying the greatest shank of the most middle class building programs of the 20th century, consistently voted to have those programs destroyed for myself and my children and grandchildren.

Now the Republicans have the knives out for Medicare and Social Security. Young people have to wake up to the fact that this is NOT about the profligacy of Baby Boomers, but the strain of contributing to the care of their long lived parents and having nothing left for their own future care and, by extension...nothing to leave their children and grandchildren that will leave the economy in tatters for their future.

[HughBeaumont]

2. Nobody has an answer to near-pure Capitalism's glaring distribution problems.

Too much money at the top of the heap combined with the figurative moats being built and the drawbridges being raised means less and less and less for every incoming generation . . . and 75-80% of politicians, business owners, CEOs, VCs, etc. etc. are perfectly OK with this House of Cards being continued without ANY modification or accommodation to fairness whatsoever.

Earlier last year, I asked what America's long-term plans are for it's economic future in terms of offering a shred of hope - OH, the VENOM. From a progressive board. I mean, what about such concerns are unfounded? What shouldn't I be worried about? Trapitalism's distribution issue has been a problem originating with Reagan and slowly growing worse every decade.

There was a recent video where a student whose parents filed for bankruptcy during the recovery of the Great Recession asked Nancy Pelosi what does the Democratic party plan to do to stop the increasing purity of Capitalism and the growing income inequality that comes with it, which is evidently crippling the progress of Millennials (and in turn, economic future for the rest of us). She just shrugged and said "We're Capitalists, and that's just the way it is". Um, Oooooooooooo-KAY, good luck with that.

[leftstreet]

3. Good God! She actually said that?

[HughBeaumont]

5. Yes. Without a hint of empathy.

https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/posts/1323319597758161

It's amazing to me that no one is taking the glaring distribution problem as seriously as we should be.

[leftstreet]

6. sigh

Americans demand equality, fairness, and proper distribution when it comes to rights

But never when it comes to the product of their labors



Capitalism is a religion

[leftstreet]

4. DURec