83% of Americans will have to work into their 70s in order to afford to retire | Hacker News Reader

83% of Americans will have to work into their 70s in order to afford to retire

medium.com

14 pointsgrecy21 comments

This clickbait title does not follow from the references cited.

It's based on 2019 Pew Research polls on what Americans think the country will look like in 2050 and on their perception of Social Security.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/03/21/public-...

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/03/21/retirem...

Headline should say "83% of Americans predict that most people will have to work into their 70s in order to afford to retire."

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/03/21/public-...

Yeah, it really just reflects how much the public been sold on Social Security catastrophism.

Also incredible when life expectancy is falling, and currently at 77.

I guess everyone will be just like Boxer, the Clydesdale from Animal Farm - work until you die.

This is how they fix the problem of falling birthrates incapable of supporting pensions with infinite growth: retirement carrot on a stick, tiny percentage of people actually get to eat it.

Suicide will grow in popularity, mark my words.

Imagine all the money we will save. You don't want to be a burden on your children or society do you?

It's basically just an accelerated version of what we already have.

Canada is a avant-garde at that!

Canada, like many Developed countries, allows medically assisted suicide given very strictly checked criteria for terminally ill people.

After watching my Mum die slowly of lung cancer over almost three years, I find anything else to be extremely inhumane.

Very strict like 'not having a girlfriend' and 'can't get social hosing'. At that point Canada's euthanasia laws are less strict in the world I think.

> After watching my Mum die slowly of lung cancer

Did she express desire for the euthanasia ans was denied?

> At that point Canada's euthanasia laws are less strict in the world I think.

Canada's Euthanasia laws are very much in line with other Developed countries.

> Did she express desire for the euthanasia ans was denied?

Yes, but she was in a country that doesn't allow it.

> "the problem of falling birthrates"

Rhetoric moved from from 'depopulation' to 'aging population' to 'falling birthrates'

I mean, haven't deaths of despair been growing for around 20 years now?

Yep. Home Depot and Walmart are full of retirees working.

Only seven years of rest after half a century of work… how depressing.

IIRC life expectancy was 68 when they set the retirement age at 65 so that was only three years.

    You load 1,600 Amazon packages, what do you get?
    Another day older and deeper in debt
    St. Bezos, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
    I owe my soul to a counterfeit store

Refers to 2019 Pew poll which says:

"... a large majority of adults think that, in 30 years, most Americans will work into their 70s in order to have enough resources to retire. About a third of adults (34%) say this will definitely happen, and an additional 50% say this will probably happen."

Given that my pension age has already gone from 65 to 68 in the last 18 years, and I have another 27 years of work ahead, I'd say the trend line easily points to a mandated pension age over 70. It's not even a stretch.

The poll is about Social Security mainly, and Social Security was supposed to be insurance for the people unfortunate enough to outlive employment. It was specifically designed to kick in at your expiration date.

Whether you outlive employment depends very much on what kind of employment you have. People with very physical jobs often have their bodies give out well before official "retirement" age.

I have a theory that one of the reason infrastructure projects in the US cost so much is that the unions make sure every big project has a few do-nothing jobs for the old guys who can't really work anymore, because our actual safety net is so godawful.

With 45% tax rate in Canada situation is the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day Taxes just disappear somewhere while on paper everything is accounted. It's absolutely not possible to get the money back from the mandatory pension systems in the amount median person have paid over the lifetime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com