1
‘Will I ever retire?’: millennials wonder what’s on the other side of middle age
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
1 points (100.0% liked)
News
28284 readers
3955 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm a late gen-Xer (born in '80, so I'm more of a "Xennial"). I have a stable job, pension, matching 401k, no kids, no debt (paid off my car and student loans), make 6 figures, and I am STILL convinced that I will never be able to retire. I feel horrible for all those who are in a worse financial situation than me, but we are all really fucked in the next 20 years.
If this is your reality, there's more wrong with your expectations than your situation.
Social Security is set to run out in the 2030s, and I fully expect the stock market to crash, effectively wiping out my 401k. As others have mentioned, resources like water will start to become scarce, inciting instability.
You only lose money if you sell. Those who were able to stay the course after '08 made it all back and then some.
The risk is a huge crash right before you retire, or you have to pull from your 401k to fund living expenses.
I think the fear is it stays crashed. Like a new paradigm takes over that is hard to plan for
Well that's a silly fear.
That's very pessimistic.
I call it realistic. If you think everything is going to work out, you're delusional, man. But I hope you prove me wrong some day, I really do.
Yeah, I'm not going to live my life like that.
i want to live like you; what evidence to you use to shore up this viewpoint?
Jumping in here with a couple cents. Background: Old millennial, paid off home, pension, 401K, 6 figs. I'll be able to retire. My viewpoint: Automation and AI will accelerate. "Safe" jobs will be gone. In fact most jobs will be gone by 2029 (my guess). Goal: keep working and investing until I lose my job.
Hard times will hit because government is slow and wealthy people won't care until it affects them. Once jobs are cut, profits for many businesses will fall because no one will be buying anything with the money they aren't making. As big companies begin to fail, stocks will have already begun dropping. Wealthy will go after government and government will have to do something. Only good option to keep things running: Universal Basic Income. Question is where does the money come from? Answer: AI/robots will be taxed and taxed almost 100% more than a human. Why? They won't care.
This leads us into humans have free-time to do whatever they like. Some can work where AI/robots fail for whatever reason, some can create new things using all the new tools. Businesses will still try and make the best products so the wealthy can still feel better with all the money that really won't matter as much anymore. They'll enjoy some exclusive things but it will likely be just locations and not technology.
TL;DR: Hell at first, then modern day renaissance.
That's, a remarkably rosy set of predictions.
I hope you are right, and big picture, I think things might shake out that way eventually.
But I am not as optimistic as you on several points.
I don't think LLM AI will do as much as you claim as fast as you imagine.
I don't think the owner class will put enough pressure on the politicians to generate that level of systemic change. They will muddle through with a thousand band aids stuck together.
Which will lead to an increasingly dystopic hellscape in which young people increasingly persue careers as scam artists, wanna be celebrities, and outright criminals because those are the only paths to a comfortable life.
But so hope to be wrong. Good luck to us all.
Not for the entire southwestern United States. There's 5 major cities off the top of my head getting ready to face a zero day. If you don't think the stock market is going to react when that happens...
What's a "zero day" in this context?
Zero day is the day a city runs out of water and must literally truck it in.
SSI isn’t set to run out. It will have to be reduced if they don’t take the income cap off of it, however.
But all the other things you said will happen.
Correct. IIRC there's an auto mechanism that will cut all benefits by 23% or something. So you're mom/dad getting $2,000 a month would now only get about $1,500.
that's as realistic as single payer healthcare; or universal basic income; or sensible gun control legislation; or abolishing the electoral college, they all have super majority support of everyone in this country but there's too much monied political interest against ever allowing it happen.
The one thing you can count on conservatives paying attention to is messing with their money.
What happens might not be pretty, but if they try to day "fuck it, guess we are ending the program" there will be hell to pay.
Nah. They'll be happy that minorities are hurt too.
With enough propaganda anything is possible.
It will probably happen once the cut triggers. You are going to immediately see a lot of angry voters.
Considering how one party is hellbent on getting rid of social security and the other party just shrugs and let's them get what they want; id expect the shrugging party to be left holding to bag and suffer the political consequences once the cut hits with nothing happening
If you think the stock market crashing wipes your 401k to 0 and that's realistic you need to get your head checked.
In 2020 it only dropped 20% and bounced back within 3 years.
Where do you chicken littles come from? Lol