Here is some good news for all the working stiffs: nobody except the top quartile of income earners will be able to retire at 65 anymore, so plan on working until you die. Young people trying to find jobs? You will never, ever find a job because all the jobs will be taken by 80-year-old people, especially those good Wal-Mart jobs.
Those who earned between $11,700 and $31,200 will need to work till age 76 to have a 50% chance of covering basic expenses in retirement. Those who earned between $31,200 and $72,500 will need to work to age 72 to have a 50% chance and those who earned more than $72,500, those in the highest income quartile, catch a break; they get stop working at age 65 to have a 50/50 chance of funding their retirement.
Do you really love whatever job you are doing now? Good, you will be doing it for another fifty years. [MarketWatch]
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And that is why we need to cut Medicare and Social Security.
Not to mention defunding pension plans because, pfft, who needs 'em?
And get rid of Planned Parenthood and NPR as well.
Where's the good news for us stiffs without work?
~
Bootstrapsblahblahblah, independent spiritblahblah, American exceptionalismblahblahblah, shared sacrificeyaddayadda….
Well, if you're unemployed and have a pee-in-a-cup fetish, here's some good news.
Go to China and make a movie about you trying to apply for your old, outsourced job.
Hi-lar-ious!!!!
You could be the next Michael Moore…
That we can continue to go without work until we die, too. Boo-yeah!
I always figured my retirement announcement and my obituary would be listed at the same time.
Yeah, I gave up the idea of ever being able to retire about 7 years ago. Besides, I thought that this was the Republiklan game plan since the Raygun Regime? Now they can start working in the other direction and do away with those Child Labor and Minimum Wage Laws so our grandchildren can be born into indentured servitude.
Fortunately, death will come sooner than later as the Republicans will dismantle Mediicare and the Dems will go along to achieve a "Grand Bargain". We gotta get outta this place.
If it's the last thing we ever do.
Alan Grayson had it right. Since more Working Oldz means more deaths in the workplace, Rethuglicans will pass a bill which allows employers to charge the deceased for body removal. No last check for you!
I owe my soul to the company
storemortuary.And by golly, I bet a lot of those workplaces will have crematoriums for just such eventualities. 21st century capitalism, plucking the best ideas of early to mid 20th century Germany. And charging the relatives left behind for the services rendered! Damn, these rich folk have thought of everything!
Wow. Just in time to replace the on-site day care?
Well these olds are just trying to impede Amurika's progress by dying in the traces! Of course, we should charge them!
I hear there's a future in snowbilly grifting.
I also hear the Newter is hiring.
It helps to have a Bristol Meth franchise too.
Most will be looking forward to death as it will be a reprise from making cheap widgets for our Chinese overlords…
"Those who earned between $11,700 and $31,200 will need to work till age 76 to have a 50% chance of covering basic expenses in retirement, providing they don't live past 77."
It almost makes one want to take up smoking, drinking and whoring because who the fuck (outside of the riches) wants to live forever?
Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, "take up?" You mean "continue," don't you?
Well… I don't smoke… so I can run from the whore to the liquor store.
I'd think someone in that range is unlikely to be covering basic expenses now. Does the 50/50 cover the odds of socialism by that time?
Basic expenses include and are limited to:
Soda Crackers
Peanut Butter on Friday and Christmas
A Towel
Meth
…everything else is classified as a "luxury" for the purposes of this study.
Yeah, this is what happened to my father. Totally f*ing unfair.
It's my retirement plan as well, unless I win the lottery and don't go all Palin with the winnings.
Stories like this will make me less than sympathetic to the crying and whining of the cranky senile bitter olds (who helped elect these dipshits) when we convert them into delicious Soylent Green.
And people made fun of Alan Grayson for that "Die Quickly" statement, not knowing it was a jobs program.
Those graves aren't going to dig themselves! JOBS!
Raising the retirement age and cutting benefits is the only way to save Social Security. Because eliminating the cap on SS taxes so the wealthy pay their share is just too crazy of an idea.
Shared sacrifice is for suckers.
Destroying the village to save it, the lesson resonates down to the present. And still makes as much sense.
Personally I wouldn’t mind that scenario if there was meaningful work to be done in my Depends years
Which is lovely, but cold comfort to people who beat their bodies to pieces in repetitive motion jobs and physically demanding jobs. If you are a doctor, an educator, a stock broker, it sounds perfectly reasonable. Most folks working crap jobs or even well paying factory jobs are physically incapable of doing those jobs into their 70s and beyond. The Catfood Comission conveniently omitted that group from consideration as they examined alternatives to having the wealthy throw a little more in the kitty.
Yeah, but there are "Pawlenty" of bridges to sleep under and if they happen to fall on your head when you're not lookin' (and President Pawlenty will make sure they're in prime fallin' down condition), you'll be saved the trouble of looking for the can opener to get at your daily ration of "Friskies".
Meaningful work! Ha ha ha!
My new vacation scenario is also my retirement scenario. I'm gonna re-enact Leaving Las Vegas. Except without the beautiful whore. More despair that way. Less "Hollywood," more real life.
I've already cast the desiccated corpse of Brittany Murphy to play that part.
Everyone's plan for suicidal despair starts off looking like Leaving Las Vegas and ends up more like Barfly.
New American vacation sscenario: I only snort it on weekends.
Jokes on them! None of us will live past 34.
Those Death Panels are looking more and more appealing.
Each day at work, I die a little – call it attrition.
Yup. dead soul, living body.
You know what would fix all this? Giving millionaires another tax cut.
Quads in Yosemite could help…
How about ocean floor sludge…
Nuclear meltdowns will be it… that's what is really gonna do it…
And fucking over some public employees. That's a good idea, too.
Scott Walker gives this an upfist.
Sure. It's worked so well for the last, oh, 30 years?
Sounds to me like it all works out: you're retired (well, technically, unemployed) in your 20s and 30s, when you can enjoy it; while you're working in your 60s and 70s, when you couldn't do much with the free time anyway. Win-win.
This is why having kids is out of the question for me. On the one hand, some argue that said progeny (assuming we get along well enough as we age) can handle the burden of the caretaking of my ageing ass. Then I look at my dad, who at 72 is refusing to quit working his accounting job, & while he did 'retire' from smoking only around age 65, shows no sign of elderliness-onset — only the unabated workaholistic lifestyle.
Maybe I should have done the accounting thing too. It could have meant steady work and I could go on working at it, forever. Because my health/longevity-charged genes would make it so. But kudo's to anyone out there financing their own future *and* putting kids through college. Honest to goodness, I can barely see how I'm supporting myself on zero-wage growth let alone extra mouths and brains to feed. So seriously, snarklessly, hats off to you parents.
You have a wage?
I'd have kids, but since I'm a vegetarian, they would be useless in a crisis. Unless I sold them for meat…
If you have a big garden, they can weed it.
Does this include porn actors?
DO NOT WANT
Who buys those Busty Grandmas DVDs anyways?
Yeah, leave me at least one on the shelves already, jerk!
They menopaus dries you out — but not these gals!
Yes, but no gubmint money for you.
Here we are at last
The moment soon will pass
We'll go our seperate ways
We'll vanish in the haze
We'll never be the same
We'll forget each other's names
We'll grow old and lose our hair
It's all downhill from there
But tonight we'll reach for the stars
We'll rent expensive cars
And dream our dreams
Of a perfect night
And we'll sing our prom theme
[&] Here we are at last
We're running out of gas
The air is getting thick
The girls are feeling sick
We'll pass out on the beach
Our keys just out of reach
And soon we'll say goodbye
Then we'll work until we die
But tonight we feel like stars
We'll play our air guitars
Cause we're eighteen
It's a perfect night
To sing our prom theme
Happy Graduation, Class of 2010! (Though the sentiment is from when you were seven (!) years old.)
Well, this looks like a good time to get in on applying for jobs with those Death Panels (at the private insurers)!
This is why I have my eye on a Sikh ashram in New Mexico. I think I can get use to wearing the turban.
That's the one that Bush gave the Homeland Security contracts?
They're into money, and you will have to work hard there….
All kidding aside, it's nice that rule of law and the civil societies they encouraged have worked as long as they did for us. But as long as we are bound by the appliance, we're still slaves. Our shackles are convenience.
As much as they were ridiculed, I have a great amount of respect for Helen and Scott Nearing, because they were capitalist enough to sell the goods from their farm, yet had enough dignity to keep working it well into their nineties.
And — to be fair — I could probably enjoy that way more than being a greeter.
I've had a lot of practice being poor, having grown up that way and never doing much to improve my lot in life. It's finally worked to my advantage–they shoved me out the door at 55, and now I'm bringing in about the same as my highest wage-earning years, but no more commute, no more union dues, no more soul-crushing pecking order to deal with. Living within my means has really never been easier. I can only wish the same for my fellow wonketeers…
This is why I smoke and eat bacon cheese burgers.
mmmmmm smoked cheeseburgers.
You could try smoking bacon.
So… there's that…
And yet America refuses to even acknowledge my low-cost, maximum pleasure answer to the problem of the Oldz (which, much to my surprise, I seem to have become while I wasn't paying attention): Opium dens. Opium kills the appetite (hence their popularity in 19th C. England, where the dope was cheaper than the food) and makes the user hap-hap-happy until they waste away and die.
Appointing myself as spokesperson for the Baby Boomers who went to college in the 60s, I know it would fulfill one of my lifetime dreams. So what about it, America?
As I approach 62, my aged mind turns to the drugs of my youth. Too bad I don't know any dealers any more.
Dr. Caveman (accredited and licensed since 2010 by the Rand Paul Opthomology Board) has closely examined you, and determined that your nascent glaucoma may well be slowed or even reversed with daily doses of medical marijuana.
Let me write you a scrip for that…
Opiates cause constipation. And as a fellow Old, I can tell you, being constipated makes me cranky.
sign me up
"hap-hap-happy"?
Republicans will vote that down in an instant.
(They're much like El Fistula in that respect.)
Exactly! Because to fulfill the American Dream, it will be necessary to find it in a pipe.
Republicans in government remind me of those stories about infantryman who capture a prisoner and maybe the guy's wounded or suspected of planting bombs or something, and they ought to bring the dude in, but then just decide it's too much trouble (all that paperwork! gathering evidence! the mess — the fuss!) and so just shoot him in the street and plant a weapon on him.
They don't really believe in all that laissez-faire stuff, clearly, or they'd engage in actual competition instead of fixing the game in their favor — but it's just too much damn trouble to deal with the long-term implications of all their decisions and plan for those, too. So they settle for the "Okay, you people are on your own — some of you will get sick or injured and die, and many of you will be far more miserable, but planning is hard work, so seeya" approach. As long as they can live like their money will never run out and the rest of the world is their ashtray, who gives a fuck about anyone else?
50% chance…
Shit, Russian Roulette gives ya a 5 in 6 chance of survival…
The refrigerator box I set aside for retirement has some extra room. My wife and I are heavy sleepers, so we don't mind.
I think that they should also put loudspeakers in every home and at work so the corporate overlords can exhort us to greater efforts.
Win. I'll be stealing that line for future debates. Thank you.
Unfortunately, my experience is that my attempt to use sarcasm as a counter will backfire, this will be part of the Republican platform within the next decade.
Well, I've always said that I want to live rich, not die rich.
Now where is that Sapphire martini?
Trader Joe's cat food tuna is top notch relatively speaking.
This is true. Just beware of the bones.
Like anyone other then the wealthyz is going to live until 76. Lol.
Birth. School. Work. Death.
Any questions?
snarkless aside: I have fond memories of singing this to my nephew on the night before his first day of school. He grew up with no illusions from Uncle Widestance, but with one hell of a dark sense of humor.
Or as the Kids in the Hall said, "Life is short, life is shit, and soon it will be over."
Shorter NYC version: "Life's a bitch, and then you die."
Once they privatize Social Security, you'll be personally responsible to invest your money the stock market, where you'll make tons of money.
What can possibly go wrong?
I keep hoping by the time I retire we'll have single-payer healthcare and even distribution of wealth so those other problems will take care of themselves.
Back to work, lazy good-for-nothing poors! Prince Phillip is still working, and he's 90.
"Do you really love whatever job you are doing now? Good, you will be doing it for another fifty years."
I only wish. Since they'll force me out at 68 (should I get that far), I'll be exactly like that senior citizen in the old commercial where McDonald's thought it would somehow be appealing to retirees to envision themselves spending the rest of their lives next to the deep fryer.
The future: People will work till they drop, then be recycled into food for the other lower quartiles. And they will continue to struggle politically for their beloved rich people, whom they continue to believe care about their freedoms and will trickle stuff (at that time it will also mean actual food) down to them.
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!1!!
next step, raise the age of retirement to when you die at your desk, or plow, or….
You know who else didn't get to retire?
Jesus?
Larry King?
Evander Holyfield?
Grendel?
The discretionary spending pool of the middle class got hoovered out by our friends in the banking business. Increases in wages are inflationary, as opposed to increases in dividends and profits and managerial salaries. The driver of the consumer driven economy ran out of gas money, the tires have come off and the battery is dead. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I'm betting that it is going to get a whole lot uglier before things turn around, assuming they ever do.
The prospect of having diapered confused people working fast food really is terrifying: Drop by any nursing home (the larger ones run by state and county agencies are better examples) about an hour to an hour and a half after feeding time. Even in the best run homes the smell is enough to knock a buzzard off a shitwagon at a hundred yards. In the bad ones it's like the good ones at their worst, all the time. Now imagine that being emitted at McDonalds, Subway, and Taco Bell. And they would be taking advantage of the free meal for employees. Taco Bell flatus and blowback from an eighty year old.
Maybe we'll lose weight?
Adult diaper tester?
This post is so funny, because, ha ha, it's my mother's life. I'm so sad for her: worked at the same job for 30 years, then fired several months before her scheduled retirement by her sociopathic supervisor. Now works part-time trying to make ends meet at seventy years old. In America!
I think that in RepublicanWorld this is a sign that your Mom is just no good.
Soylent Green is made from PEOPLE!
elitist.
Yeah who does my Mom think she is anyway, laying around all day? Just cuz she's in hospice, sheesh.
Ha ha ha. Silly Wonkette. Crime is the answer. Rob a bank a week, stay on the move. Use a note, not a gun. The locals will be eager to turn the cases over to the FBI, they are so busy setting up fabricated terror cells they don't have time for the small shit. Anyway, they couldn't find a bale of hay in a telephone booth. If they get lucky and catch you, so what? Three hots and a cot, free medical. …Either way you're fixed for life.
Ttommy m'dear, you are on to a plan. Genius, you are!
I am truly humbled…
The Feel Good Movie of the Year!
The Republican answer to your riddle is this – "I'd really like to stop and chat but I'm on my way to the Lexus dealer, see you 'round". If you need help translating this into American, go back to where you came from.
Ask DustBowlBlues (see above) to pass the opium pipe because this is what they call "a pipe dream".
You sayin' Reagan raised taxes?! them's fighting words!
They're true, but still.
And yes, the Dems are so feckless they refuse to stand up for their platform even when the vast majority of the country agree with them (e.g., abolishing Bush tax cuts for the rich), which is why I think they're in the same pockets as the GOP but they put on a good show to convince the rest of us they're on our side.
"If you are Righteous and go to the right church, G-d will make you rich!" — Republican
United States Senator seems to fit the bill.
That was the first attempt at the Matrix. It failed, because Republicans kept trying to find ways to fuck over Paradise.
Teabagger candidate for public office ought to be a good match, and the Koch brothers pay well.
i hope i die before i get old.
To be honest, my plan is to take a plastic jet boat far, far upriver, find a stone age tribe, become their Living God and Split the Whole Fucking Program. Then, an Errand Boy will behead me while Jim Morrison screams "Yeahhhhhhh!" & the jungle erupts in flame.
Who's with me?
Well, I'm rich so I got that going for me. Well, rich in spirit. So, I got that going for me. Plus, I know when they dump the good shit in the dumpster at Safeway. So I got that going for me, too. And I know how to give myself a lobotomy, cause I learned how to do it from watching "Francis". Actually, Alzheimer's is looking like a great retirement option.
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