Millions of Americans retired early. Now they want to work again | Hacker News Reader

Millions of Americans retired early. Now they want to work again

thehustle.co

30 pointspaulpauper56 comments

A friend of mine just told me she had a doc for years that was kinda cool. But something was off with him, she just couldn't point out what.

One day he told her, he's 80 years old and it hit her like a bus. Today, you usually don't interact with such old people in a professional manner anymore. Most people retire after 65 and many don't even live until 80.

He got some extra money from the government if he kept working in the village, because no docs want to work there anymore. Since he was fit, he did it.

This year he became 90 and finally retired.

I want to love my job as much as that doctor does.

So did anyone realize that Fauci is EIGHTY ONE ? He's older than both Biden and Trump.

I found this out like 2 months ago, after years of the pandemic !!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci

I never gave it much thought, but if you had asked me, I'd probably say he was 65 or so

He's a former runner and apparently still walks 3-4 miles every evening.

https://www.prevention.com/health/a36533961/dr-fauci-health-...

Forget covid, he needs to tell us his skincare routine

Young infant blood

So he's friends with Peter Thiel?

Many super connected SV and DC folks routinely get placenta stem cell therapies.

He looks way older than 65 though.

> the federal government is on the verge of making retirement more appealing. The Secure Act 2.0 would boost employees’ 401(k) plans

While I think it’s probably a good move, a 401k fundamentally means relying on the stability of the market to protect your money. I think we’ve moved past market reliability. The market is stable over a long term, but that term has exceeded the average retiree’s age.

I’ve read your comment at least 5 times and don’t understand what you’re saying.

1) Everything relies on the market, so I’m not sure what alternative you’re suggesting that wouldn’t rely on the market. For example, cash or fixed income pensions are reliant on inflation remaining low.

2) “The market is stable over a long term, but that term has exceeded the average retiree’s age.”. I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Are you suggesting that depressions last more than 65 years (or whatever the average retirees age is)? Obviously they don’t, so not sure what you’re saying.

I would argue that a low cost broad market index fund like VOO is the most risk free and inflation resistant asset class to own for investment horizons beyond a few years.

I have full faith in the US government to pull out all the stops to make sure equity prices of publicly traded companies remains stable and increasing, and continuously lowering the purchasing power of the USD if need be.

As far as I can tell, all the state and local governments (and hence taxpayers) are invested in the publicly traded markets via pension fund investments, the older voters with retirement savings are invested, and political leaders are invested in maintaining and growing equity prices.

Short of revolution, I do not see how incentives for political leaders would change.

  > I have full faith in the US government to pull out all the stops to make sure equity prices of publicly traded companies remains stable and increasing, and continuously lowering the purchasing power of the USD if need be.

i don't know why, but this doesn't seem like a good idea to me...?

Maybe because it causes regular recessions, zombie companies, no hope for addressing climate change, and morally bankrupt megacorps...

Which part? Me assuming political leaders will sacrifice purchasing power to prop up asset prices, or the government propping up asset prices?

If the latter, then whether or not it is a good or bad idea depends if you are a beneficiary (typically older) or loser (typically younger).

the latter, and yes, i guess im a "loser"...

Because their main lever to do so is the federal reserve target rate and they are moving in the opposite direction.

The idea of gardening, playing golf, or travelling around looking at things is very unappealing to me.

I want to work. I have no plans to retire. If I do retire, it'll be because it became impossible for me to work anymore.

You have no interests you would pursue if you were free to spend your time as you wish? I enjoy my work, but there’s a dozen interests I can think of, off-hand, that I would happily enjoy before ever going back to work, given the option.

I like hotrodding cars, but not full time. I take a break from programming to work on my cars now and then.

Fair enough. I have lots of interests, and develop new ones all the time. I’d love to commit more time to my extended family. I have artist and athletic goals I’d spend more time on. I’d probably also go back to school and also do some community work. Programming is challenging and always provides a means of growth, so I could understand not wanting to walk away from it, if you have a way of avoiding burnout.

I haven't burned out from it for 45 years, so doubt that's much of a risk :-)

I could fill ten lifetimes with all the things I want to do other than work. The world is so interesting and there are so many joyous activities I'd like to master, music I want to really hear, books I want to take the time to read and understand properly, history I want to see then ruins of, cultures I'd like to experience, artistic works I want to create. I struggle to keep all these distractions at bay in order to be capable of keeping my job.

I don't want to discourage anyone who loves working and loves their job, but I also wouldn't want anyone to look back on their life and see an emptiness of the richness the world has to offer.

I see my work is an enabler of life experience, but I'm also aware others see their work as the meaning of their lives. Make sure you're happy with wherever you fit on the scale (which it sounds like you are, but maybe look a bit harder at things outside of golf, gardening and grey-haired tourism).

For me, the dopamine hit when I solve a difficult problem solved can be amazing. Though, I find that if I don’t balance it out with other stuff (like golf, travelling, etc.) I tend to burn out a bit. As someone who has solved some incredibly difficult problems, how do you maintain a balance?

Sometimes I just want to work with my hands rather than my head. Then I just go to my car with my tools and work on it.

But it's still creating things, just a different way.

I believe that people were made to work, struggle, and achieve. Idleness and purposelessness kills.

I retired very early. I still write apps and websites, because I have programmed since I was a kid and enjoy it.

I also sail and run and read. But still enjoy programming.

Ok, so you like work. Does that mean you only like work that other people tell you to do? Hobbies are work that you do because you want to, not because you have to.You can have an extremely busy and fulfilling life doing work in exactly the way you like to do it, with no taskmaster. There are plenty of people who 'retire' and do this.

It seems like you maybe took their personal preference as an attack or command?

Yes, sorry this is definitely not fully directed at parent post. I was in fact having an actual conversation with my real life parent recently in which they expressed a similar sentiment and it is baffling to me. Parent post, more politely - can you explain whether you would consider self-directed work to be valid 'work' or not? If not, why? Legitimately trying to understand.

“Want to work”. They don’t want to work, they want a life that they should be able to have at that age after working most of their lives. They are being pushed back into work because their savings disappeared in the financial crisis.

To the contrary, I know a lot of people who are financially secure and don't need to work, but nonetheless want to work because they're bored and/or working gives them as sense of purpose. Some of them fill their lives with volunteerism, but some people find that traditional volunteer activities aren't good matches for their skills -- if you retire from a career as a prison guard, it's hard to find a position as a volunteer prison guard six months later when you're bored, for example. (But you might find a contract job training prison guards -- indeed, someone with decades of experience as a prison guard is an ideal candidate for such a job.)

As the worker:retiree ratio goes from 5 to less than 2 in the coming decades, I hope people realize this will be more of a luxury to retire.

If your savings disappeared, I don't see how it's the system's fault. Houses and stocks skyrocketed over the past few years. Really the only way you'd have run out of money is:

1. you had all your retirement money in a checking account

2. you never bothered to look at your annual spend, total savings, and calculate a burn rate

Please. The stock market went up an incredible amount over the course of the pandemic. Most retirees with any degree of savings profited immensely. The financial crisis didn't kill people's savings either, if you look at a graph of the S&P500. On top of that, these people are likely to own their home which means monthly expenditures are very low as rent/mortgage comprises the largest source of spending for most people.

Even though this sounds crazy - a good number of people close to retirement age (I spoke to them about it) panic sold a lot of their stocks during the crisis.

Nah.

They want the life their parents had and deprived them of, and many were dumb enough to move from their homes which they purchased cheaply decades ago to buy new homes which are usually more expensive and carry a much higher property tax bill. Their folks are the ones who all worked and earned pensions and then revoked them for their kids because they were "too expensive" to maintain. The "Greatest Generation" lived high on the hog and many of the Boomers who were not fortunate enough to retire on a pension are the ones who ended up paying for it.

If you want to know why Boomers are so heartless when it comes to the plight of the generations that came after them, this is a big reason why. They just assume that life is going to suck regardless of what you do and would rather remain cogs fixed in the wheel than do anything to actually improve something for everyone else.

The way you use the word Boomer here is with such derision. What happened to you man, is this just you or is it a generational thing or what

Derision? Maybe read what I said.

I think I'm pretty accurately describing their generation, aka the generation of the people who raised me. Note that I am specifically NOT casting blame on them for the eradication of pension programs, because while you can accuse them of being against them to a degree in the public sector, it was their parents' generation who decided that private pensions were great for themselves but not sustainable for their kids.

The "greatest generation" gets whitewashed at the expense of their children, when they REALLY had it the easiest. Sure, they had a world war and that sucked. They also got the greatest economic advantage in American history along with a government eager to give free and subsidized stuff away, and decided that it was too expensive to continue.

I'm glad you removed the racialized remark from this post, it was cheap and in poor taste and not at all pertinent. Thank you. Unfortunately I cannot remove the comment where I quoted part of your remark to respond to it.

Nope. It was neither cheap or in poor taste. It was 100% accurate. I just removed it because I decided I didn't want to deal with kneejerk responses from the history-bereft.

During WWII, there was a moratorium on homebuilding because the resources were needed elsewhere. After the war, the GI bill "guaranteed" that veterans would be able to buy homes at zero percent interest and that they would be able to get college or technical educations. Everyone else got to buy homes at very low interest rates for the most part. If you were white, that is.

The reality was that the US government was completely fine with redlining and given that these companies that paired with the government programs weren't building new homes in minority-majority areas, there were 67000 or so families that got to take advantage of the GI bill's homebuying program, and less than 100 of them were people of color. Jim Crow, of course, took care of their ability to access educations, and of course they were still 20 years out from being able to even vote.

It was a gigantic giveaway to whites at the expense of the people of color who went to war and paid their taxes and got very little to show for it. That had a huge effect on future generations. The people who wanted to buy homes had to do it for higher costs while simultaneously not being able to enjoy the same level of education. The difference in opportunity costs and actual financial costs was staggering.

> If you were white, anyway.

And therrrrre it is.

You can go to Reddit on like the anti-work sub and read all about how all the worlds problems are from boomers. And boomers had it so easy and pulled the ladder up after them.

On the other hand, I know a lot of people that have way better lives than their parents, me included.

If you are not in tech, its not too common. Fuck even in tech, I make the same nominal amount as my father did when he was 5 years younger than I am now, working in the mid 90s with no degree.

Interesting, that is not my experience at all.

Yes, on Reddit, boomers and landlords have turned into huge Boogeymen.

divide and conquer, label with a broad brush it whitewashes the details. The concept there there needs to be an defined age gradient with distinct differentiation steps categorizing swaths of humanity that otherwise would just be "us" ... we the regular people, is just one more distraction.

Boomers are directly and almost solely responsible for the current partisan mechanics undermining American civics. They've also held on to power far too long, and impose way too much influence for people whose judgment and behavior over the last 5 decades have seriously endangered the continuity of anything resembling principled American government.

Some of us peons are a little pissed at the people who looted the system and kicked the can to future generations.

The pandemic response is a perfect example of the ineptitude and lackadaisical attitude those in power have towards their responsibility to maintain and preserve the things that make America good. Nobody will be held responsible for the negligence, corruption, or outright malicious injury.

EVERY generation blames the generation in power for the problems in the world. The Boomers today were the ones doing drugs, going to Woodstock, and blaming the guys in power for the worlds problems. There’s nothing special about Boomers and certainly nothing special about your generation. I mean, I was recently at Pompeii, there’s graffiti on the wall talking about how the politicians are screening everything up.

Absolutely, the pandemic showed that the elderly are in power, and a disease that overwhelmingly affected old people versus the young forced millions of person-years of youth to be wasted in the quixotic attempt to allow the old to live a few more years. I think it’s absolutely shameful what these grandparents have done to traumatize their children and grandchildren.

I don't think working class Boomers are to blame. As always, it's the ruling class, which is now a gerontocracy as well.

The working class Boomers are the ones who listened to Rush Limbaugh for 30+ years and internalized weaponized stupidity. It was this brash idiocy and disrespect for opposing voices that lead to the "tea party" Republicans largely taking over that party and ousting anyone who was even half conciliatory to the other side. It's gotten so bad that the corporatists in the party are worried about losing any semblance of representation, much less control. At least half the Republican caucus doesn't believe in any of the crap they're saying, but it plays good on TV and fills their pockets with money. Ted Cruz is not a moron, but he plays one on television because it keeps his campaign coffers full. Democrats in turn started to elect less moderate members.

If you could take the 1980s Congress who were still largely Greatest Generation types and transport them to today to view the insane nonsense going on, they would be disappointed by both the process and the Democrats but horrified by the Republicans.

I dont understand your paradoxical justification that Democrats may still be boomers, but they're "one of the good ones though". How does political belief have a relation to age? All healthy people get old eventually and young people can also be non democrat.

Perhaps you can tell us more about your biases regarding other protected classes who might have political beliefs that disagree with you.

Edit: the post you just made about your career of being a subreddit moderator answered my questions.

I didn't say "they were the good ones."

I said that if you took the people from the 1980 Congress and brought them to the present time and had them watch how modern Congress operate, that they would be horrified of the behavior of the Republicans and disappointed by the behavior of the Democrats. None of them, for example, would have ever even considered refusing to hold judicial confirmation hearings for a vacant Supreme Court seat for a year. Nor would they have found any of Trump's antics to be worthy of anything but scorn and derision, up to and including the southern Democrats of that era who would identify as Republicans today. Especially in the Senate where they used to be far more independent-minded than they currently are. There aren't any Madison Cawthorne / Marjorie Taylor Greene / Lauren Bobert / Matt Gaetzes on the Democratic side of the aisle. They have nothing at all of substance to offer in congressional hearings, always angling for the next soundbyte. As shrill as AOC is on the other side of the aisle, she still at least goes to those hearings prepared to ask relevant questions.

The ruling class is elected by working class boomers

LOL wait until they see what a show the modern corporate world has become.

Next title:

Re-working retires re-retire in droves from toxic work environments. "Its just not worth it"

Baby boomers are here to ruin the party again

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