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Comment by palmotea | Hacker News Reader

> pensioned .gov retirees who want some escape from the pollution/crime/cramp of the city.

What is this stereotype? Government retirees aren't some elite wealthy class. IIRC government pensions haven't been anything to write home about since 1982 (or something), and are roughly equivalent to private sector retirement benefits.

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Might just be regional. An insanely high proportion of my rural neighbors are people who did 20 years in the military and started receiving benefits around age 40 and were able to use those benefits to supplement a homestead. How many private sector people drew a pension at 40 and then double dipped? I'm not damning them for it, it's not like many in the military didn't work hard for that money, but it's incredibly difficult for a working class 40 year old these days to fuck off into a rural area and buy a homestead with rural salaries without something functioning as a substitute to that backing it up.

In any case in my rural homestead region there are mainly three classes

1) .gov pensioners 2) successful professionals 3) inherited property

The key to government pensions here I think is that they get benefits early enough in life that they are young enough to build and live a homestead life. At age 65+ you might be able to maintain an established property but buying something affordable (read: rough or vacant land) out and getting it up and running would be pretty rough for most at that age.

> How many private sector people drew a pension at 40 and then double dipped?

Military is a unique subset of government, and IIRC most people who join don't stay long enough to draw a pension.

When you said "government retirees," that brings to mind the civil service, which I believe is larger.

But it isn't just the military. There are government civil servants that draw pension at 20/25 years as well such as FBI agents. Makes more sense to say .gov rather than just the military.

If I had to guess, it has more to do with the type of person who is willing to save diligently for decades. Government work (at least until the last few months) tended to be lower paying but steadier. The type of risk-averse person who takes a government job is also more likely to save over time, taking advantage of compounding. Just correlated, in other words.

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