• febra@lemmy.world
    35·
    7 days ago

    That’s why the western world is racing towards fascism.

    It’s either socialism or barbarism, as Rosa Luxemburg put it.

    The less sustainable this economic model becomes, especially now that the overexploited nations of the Global South start emancipating themselves and the fruits of imperialism become fewer and fewer, the more state mandated violence will have to be exerted upon us by the capitalist class to keep us from organizing against them.

    There will be no retirement plans for most of us. We will die working. Those that will refuse to work themselves to death will be criminalized or slowly killed by the powers that be (existing as homeless is already virtually illegal). Those that are caught living in illegality will be put in prisons and will be loaned out to companies as prison labour (already legal in the US).

    That is if we don’t die in another Great War just to resuscitate the powers of the empire over the Global South.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
    25·
    6 days ago

    This is already happening. Every store in my vicinity has people who look like they should be spending time with their grandchildren doing menial service jobs.

    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      6 days ago

      they might be doing it because they are bored. a low key part time job is a choice some folks make just to get out of the house. don’t asssume it’s because they are broke.

      a lot of people straight up die after they retire because they have no purpose in life anymore, leading to depression and deaths of despair. my dad died like 1.5 years after he retired because all he did was sit around, drink, and gamble.

      my grandparents both volunteered and did odd jobs to keep active in retirement and lived until their early 80s thanks to that, they had plenty of money.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        6 days ago

        they might be doing it because they are bored

        Both/And. Retirement is boring. Retirement when you’re broke is absolutely enervating. Menial employment kinda-sorta solves both problems. Although, its as much a pox on the employer as the employee. Elderly workers don’t tend to be the most motivated or the most energetic. And when you’re paying a pittance, they don’t want to bend over backwards for you, either.

        my grandparents both volunteered and did odd jobs to keep active in retirement and lived until their early 80s thanks to that, they had plenty of money.

        I mean, “plenty of money” is sort of a YMMV situation. I’ve got two in-laws both with less than a million in savings. One lives frugally to the point of a asceticism while the other just seems content to YOLO until he’s down to whatever SS has to offer. Idk how much money they’re going to need in another ten years. Nevermind another twenty. But they’re both in an inflationary vice that keeps squeezing tighter with every year.

        My own surviving parent spends her more generous retirement savings endlessly fixing up the four bedroom house she refuses to sell, in between routine visits to the doctor to find a cure for being old. She might actually benefit from getting out of the house to do some bullshit retail work, except she’s more of a management-type personality than a worker bee. I’m not worried about her finances nearly as much her mental health. But I could see a future in which she’s suckered out of a big part of her fortune, simply because someone on the TV sold her on it in a moment of weakness.

  • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    7 days ago

    oh it’s gonna be a lot sooner than 30 years.

    The vast majority of genx have had their retirement savings raided over and over again. 2000, 2009, covid, now - each saw people raiding their retirement to make ends meet short term. It used to work in a 'well, we pull funds out of this now but we’ll be more diligent saving when times are good - "

    the good times for most folks rarely came back. I know people in their late 40s and 50s who have basically nothing, and with little hope to keep their head above water, much less pour massive amounts of their income into making up for lost savings.

  • HexesofVexes@lemmy.world
    16·
    6 days ago

    Ahahahah, retirement?!?

    That ship has sailed, hit an iceberg, annoyed a gang of killer whales, suffered a meteor impact and sunk into a nuclear testing site. It caught fire shortly after.

    I’m saving for it, but deep down I know they’ll find me dead in my office at 90, and give me a disciplinary for the unmarked papers.

  • isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    24·
    7 days ago

    Long term, I predict a violent revolution of the young overthrowing the tyranny of the old.

    Aging societies tend to divert resources from the young to the old. People vote for their own interests. When retirees outnumber parents, more money goes to retirees and less to kids. This lowers the birth rate even more and continues the spiral. In increasingly aging societies, young people face the prospect of having to pay a lifetime of ruinously high taxes (far higher than their elders did) to pay for the retirements of the old that outnumber them. And they’ll do this knowing that they themselves will never have a retirement of anywhere near the quality of the retirements they’re being taxed to death to fund.

    Long term, we’re entering a very dangerous situation in developed countries. We have a trifecta of three dangerous conditions:

    1. The young will be ruinously taxed to fund retirements of existing elderly, a retirement far more generous than they will ever receive.
    2. The young will be completely shut out of political power due to being outnumbered by the old.
    3. The young are the only ones actually capable of fighting in a war.

    These are the conditions that historically brew revolutions. People take up arms typically when they see no hope for the future or feel they have nothing to lose. The young may not be able to outvote the old. But they certainly can outshoot the old.

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
      5·
      6 days ago

      As someone on the downswing of this seesaw, I welcome a rebalancing.

      I think a big issue for working class folks who can even afford to prep for retirement is we don’t know how much we’ll need. And basically the fewer rights and social safety nets you have, the more money you need to attempt to insulate yourself from the ravages of capitalism.

      If we had more socialist policies to keep everyone relatively comfortable even the poor, then working people wouldn’t have to be so mercenary about building their nest egg (which will never be big enough to be totally safe anyway).

    • MehBlah@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      That may be bold but the idea that there will be a thirty year wait for that to happen is simply childish.

  • JcbAzPx@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    6 days ago

    There used to be stories about grandma eating cat food to get by. So probably something like that.

  • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    7 days ago

    In 30 years? Its happening now to anyone that ever had a medical emergency or a layoff . I think the administration just made it easier for people to borrow against their already meager retirement

    • Pumasuedeblue@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      7 days ago

      I’ve been laid off four times in 30 years of trying to have a career. I will never live to see myself get out of debt, let alone save anything to retire.

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
    9·
    6 days ago

    I see a couple of possibilities:
    They’re not going to retire. As they age, if they don’t land on a lifelong career and progress the ladder at least a little bit, they’ll get to work in physically demanding jobs which will destroy their body and they’ll die before traditional retirement ages, or just at where older gens would retire. If they do land into some kind of lifelong career, they’ll just work till they die. Think: 85 year old programmers looking up how for loops work again…

    Another fun possibility is that they will retire after having started saving at a later date but having no children.

    Another one is having small savings and moving to poor countries, Africa may see an influx of such persons once South East Asian countries stop letting them in.

    Still time for revolutions and complete changes of systems following armed revolts or wars though…
    many possibilities ahead.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 days ago

      Yeah that first one is what it was like before social safety nets and pensions were a thing for those who didn’t have kids that could support them. It was enough of a problem to cause things to be changed

    • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
      1·
      6 days ago

      once South East Asian countries stop letting them in

      Why would SEA countries stop letting tourists in?

      If they don’t want people living long term on tourist visas, just copy Japan’s model and say no if someone is obviously doing visa runs.

  • Wilco@lemmy.zip
    12·
    7 days ago

    Im guessing prison would make a decent retirement plan for many. Make a game of it to see how many billionaire pedophiles you can take down before they catch you. The “retirees” may even luck out and get a jury that gives a “not guilty” verdict and can then make money off a book deal or something.