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[quote=user_id;10228325]I find it funny that boomers always correlate retiring with things like "keeling over and dying"...that is exactly my point. For the boomers, retiring means they are "old" and they don't want to think they are old even when they are old.
I have posted in other threads that I do not have good role models for retirement. My in-laws, wonderful people, never did much. Home at 5:30 PM, ate dinner, sat around and watched PBS. To me, boring! I find that scary.
I am afraid of getting bored; I know I am a workaholic and I married one too. We find work invigorating and believe we offer a good service to people. My husband has clients of all ages but he has a few in their 80's - and the ones that work and are financially secure, they are very happy people plus you'd never know they were in their 80's. (Great role models)
I live in an area where we have a lot of elderly but I am not like the type that goes to the all you can eat buffet or goes shopping all day. Yuck! I'll save up for that luxury hotel, thanks!
So, to each their own. I had a lady who worked for me as a nanny/grandma for hire for 20 years - she was so fiercely independent and she taught me a lot. She looked 20 years younger, got up every morning, came to my house, took care of everything, went back home. When she passed away, she did it exactly like she wanted to - on her terms. What a sweetheart she was! We really miss her.
The misery index is what you get when you combine unemployment with inflation. That is true misery.
Oh geez.. That index is absolutely ridiculous, under this index the 1980's was worse than the Great Depression (Which depending on the year would rank 15 get or take). C'mon?! The index awards defaltion....that of course makes little sense. It also ignores that predictable inflation is no different than zero inflation, only unpredictable inflation is problematic.
Regardless, other than today, the period of stagflation was the worse seen during the boomers run (as I said before). But boomers were just starting their working lifes and/or not working yet during this period. In contract things have sucked for over 10 years now and most Gen-X and all of Gen-Y have never experienced a good and stable economy.
In your comments about inflation, you are ignoring the fact the wages were increasing too. Its simply a false to suggest they were not growing during that period, although wage growth lagged the increasing cost of goods (as it usually does). The situation from an employed person's point of view was much less dire than the picture you are painting.
You seem to believe that inflation just causes an increase in aggregate goods, but this makes little sense. If the prices of goods goes up but wages do not then people will consume less goods there by decreasing the demand and hence price of those goods. The two forces would act against each other. What made the events in the 70's/80's bad was that there was a supply shock of a critical commodity. And to say it again, this was a bad period of time, but it was not as bad as today's recession. Most economists agree that this is the worse post-WW2 recession.
Lastly, the govenrment would love it if they could produce true inflation right now. Just as the Japanese would have been delighted by inflation in the 90's and the US in the 30's. When you have a society that is overburdened with debt...inflation is a great thing!
By the way, look at how the debt levels of households increased when the boomers started going into the work force:
Its real hard not to blame the huge debt levels both by the government and households on the boomers.... Everything started to change when they were handed the ropes.
Yeah the economy was so unstable over the last years with 4% unemployment I don't know how you fed yourself. The reality that gets lost in your self-absorbed, self pitying whine, and that's all this thread is (did you get outsmarted, out worked and out strategized by one of us geezers again?) is that the decade from 1973 to 1983 was a mess you didn't have to deal with because you were in diapers. You had high, for the US, inflation, oil price shocks, declining productivity, the shutdown of basic industries, high unemployment and a whole refocusing of the economy from manufacturing to the phase we're in now of information. You make this big deal about "boomer deficits", go ahead and look how many times in 200+ years the US budget has been balanced, take advantage of the education your "neurotic" parents paid for, and I think you'll be surprised. Or not, you're so hell bent on blaming someone you probably won't be able to focus.
You need to wipe your ears, something brown is running out of them.
Yeah the economy was so unstable over the last years with 4% unemployment I don't know how you fed yourself.
The economy has been rather unstable this decade that is rather clear. There was a recession in the beginning of the decade, but its recovery was weak and it took awhile for employment to pick up. But, the reason for the pick up in employment was largely the housing bubble and most job growth was in real estate related industries. This decade has truly been a "lost decade" for the US. There has been very little real growth in the economy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by North Beach Person
The reality that gets lost in your self-absorbed, self pitying whine, and that's all this thread is (did you get outsmarted, out worked and out strategized by one of us geezers again?)
I have not "whined" about anything in this thread, I'm discussing the effects the aging boomers will have on the labor market and economy as a whole. To say it once again, my post has nothing to do with my particular employment situation. I'm self employed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by North Beach Person
You make this big deal about "boomer deficits", go ahead and look how many times in 200+ years the US budget has been balanced, take advantage of the education your "neurotic" parents paid for, and I think you'll be surprised.
I'm not sure why you think you know what my parents paid for, but in short they did not pay for much. And yes I'm making a big deal about boomer deficits because they are huge. Both government and household debt grew dramatically after around 1980, this growth as we see today was not stable. As the graph I posted previously shows, the growth in debt far outweighed the growth in the real economy.
Now, the boomers are not alone in their love affair with debt, Gen-X loaned up on debt too. But it is the boomers that started the love affair with debt. I hope that Gen-Y and Gen-Z learn to use debt wisely as those in the GI and Silent generation did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by North Beach Person
....you're so hell bent on blaming someone you probably won't be able to focus.
Like I said its pretty amazing to what degree things changed after the ropes were given to the Boomers.
Anyhow, I think these sorts of discussions are important for those of us younger than boomers. When time comes to raise taxes to fund state pensions, we can say "no". When government's start talking about two-tiered pension systems we can say "no". When time comes to raise FICA taxes we can say "No". When we are pushed to purchase stocks and real estate off boomers hands we can say "no". We collectively can prevent the boomers from lowering our standard of living to increase theirs.
Telling us that we are just "whining"...only fuels the fire. But boomers as usually think that "everything will be fine....my pension is perfectly secure".
Just to be clear, I'm not knocking anybody for not retiring at some particular age. I really have no set plans to retire, I largely enjoy what I do but I know that is not the case for the majority of people.
Regardless of the reason, I'm not upset that the boomers may not retire at 62, 65 or whatever(now, what they've done politically/economically is a different story) Rather, I'm curious what sort of effects this may have on the general economy. Its much more than just the employment issue. What is going to happen to the real estate market as the boomers need to sell their homes? What is going to happen to the equity markets as boomers stop contributing to their Roths, 401(k)s, etc and start extracting the funds? These are all important questions for us in Gen-X and Y. If the boomers retiring depress the equity markets...then perhaps we should shift our portfolios more towards bonds and commodities?
In short I don't want to be caught holding the bag for actions taken by the Boomers.
But I hope the younger generations don't start really doing things the boomer way, I hope they go back to basics...do things the GI generation way.
The GI generation? You mean the one that after the war was over and the men came back home the many women in the workforce doing not just "Rosie the Riveter" type jobs but many others as well, left those jobs and filled the new suburbs with baby after baby after baby? On a block with 23 families my mom was the only one who worked outside the home. A family could do OK with just one middle class or even working class income.
As we boomer girls became young women we faced incredible discrimination regarding the world of work - being told that you don't want to be a veterinarian (in my case) and should think about becoming a nurse or teacher and work for a few years before leaving the work force to be homemakers, if we aspired to a higher education.
There are probably stats out there about the percentage of women in the work force today compared to 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago and I'm sure it continues to grow and now includes many occupations that were once strictly the domain of men. I doubt that the vast majority of women from your age group would choose to permanently leave the work force even if finances made it possible.
Here is what I don't understand, why do you even have a mortgage? Even if you purchased your home when you were 30, it should be paid off right now. Lately, I've been finding that many boomers in their late 50's and 60's still have a sizable mortgage. Very different from the previous generation, my grandparents had no mortgage by the time they were 40.
There is no should about it. That's your preference. In the real world, having a mortgage or not having a mortgage at ANY age is a choice. In the grand scheme of things, it matters very little that the mortgage situation is different from the previous generations. Things change! Let go of the past and be here now.
Last edited by CosmicWizard; 08-12-2009 at 08:06 AM..
The GI generation? You mean the one that after the war was over and the men came back home the many women in the workforce doing not just "Rosie the Riveter" type jobs but many others as well, left those jobs and filled the new suburbs with baby after baby after baby? On a block with 23 families my mom was the only one who worked outside the home. A family could do OK with just one middle class or even working class income.
As we boomer girls became young women we faced incredible discrimination regarding the world of work - being told that you don't want to be a veterinarian (in my case) and should think about becoming a nurse or teacher and work for a few years before leaving the work force to be homemakers, if we aspired to a higher education.
There are probably stats out there about the percentage of women in the work force today compared to 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago and I'm sure it continues to grow and now includes many occupations that were once strictly the domain of men. I doubt that the vast majority of women from your age group would choose to permanently leave the work force even if finances made it possible.
You make a good point here. In many respects, the Boomer generation was responsible for social advances in a number of areas and especially increased equality of the sexes and minorities and an increased level of respect for individul differences.
Here's one of our problems and few want to talk about it - outsourcing to India, Malaysia, even Bulgaria.
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Where have all the good jobs gone?
