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Right payscales no longer increasing in accordance with the cost of living is irrelevant. I hate when people choose to eat their own...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Freddy
If people hadn't sold their souls to worship at the alter of consumption and acquisition, and had instead spent their lives learning how to live and appreciating what they had, they could retire anytime they wanted.
Good point. A man in my office worked his entire adult life for the same company and was the foreman in his shop. The company decided to 'lay off' its older experienced workers and hire youngsters at low starting wages. Frank lost his pension, got hired as a beginning office worker for the state, is surrounded with snippy young females who treat him like crap, is in poor health to boot...I am seeing a quite a bit of this. Frank did everything his generation was supposed to do. Unconscionable!
Frank did everything his generation was brainwashed into believing it should do by those who profited from the doing of it.
If he had done what he was "supposed to do" he would be living a happy, self sufficient life.
Gotta agree with that. I feel bad for Frank, but why did the company do this? Were they under financial pressure? Were they having to slash payroll to remain profitable?
The thing is, you simply cannot trust anybody with your retirement income. Nobody. That includes your company. That includes the Federal government. If your company has a matching IRA, that's great. That way, they can contribute to it and not be able to touch it later. But a big, fat pension fund makes a tempting target in any buyout, or in the case of a company staving off failure. It's sad. But it's also the way the world works. Ask all the employees who didn't lose their job at that same company. They were quite happy to see Frank and his pension get sacrificed to keep their living.
I just have never labored under the luxury of believing that a pension or Social Security was going to be there for me in my retirement. As I stated much earlier, I save 10% before I ever pay my mortgage, my groceries or my car note. It is a line-item expense on our monthly budget.
You guys have absolutely no sympathy for anyone but yourselves. You have this big, self-righteous attitude about how YOU can retire because YOU did the right thing.
Well, look around you a little bit, folks!! SOME people cannot retire comfortably. If you can, consider yourself "above" many of us, which I guess you do already. How dare you talk about your fellow citizens in such a condescending way?
(And, I'm NOT talking about me - I'm talking about our fellow citizens.)
Frank did everything his generation was brainwashed into believing it should do by those who profited from the doing of it.
If he had done what he was "supposed to do" he would be living a happy, self sufficient life.
I think that you need to take the long vision here, I kind of agree with Sal that it is a bit harsh to apply this point of view to a long career. In the post WWII period until the mid 1980's it was generally assumed that the way to have a nice life was to join a good company and advance up the career ladder. That philosophy was significantly altered about 20 years ago, but many folks were raised to believe this to be the correct process and included loyalty among their personal attributes.
That has significantly changed, for the better and worse, but folks who adhered to that philosophy certainly deserve to be respected. To bend this back to the thread topic, loss of anticipated pension benefits was among the items significantly altered in this relationship, making retirement much more difficult for some folks.
Yes. It is sad b/c it is better for both the employees and the corporations if loyalty was still a value that was embraced. But unfortunately today it is a thing of the past & decent people are often left in the fray having to adjust their personal moral compass.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewToCA
I think that you need to take the long vision here, I kind of agree with Sal that it is a bit harsh to apply this point of view to a long career. In the post WWII period until the mid 1980's it was generally assumed that the way to have a nice life was to join a good company and advance up the career ladder. That philosophy was significantly altered about 20 years ago, but many folks were raised to believe this to be the correct process and included loyalty among their personal attributes.
That has significantly changed, for the better and worse, but folks who adhered to that philosophy certainly deserve to be respected. To bend this back to the thread topic, loss of anticipated pension benefits was among the items significantly altered in this relationship, making retirement much more difficult for some folks.
Investing one's money means relying on the stock purchases or mutual fund companies. Maybe that's safer (or more in one's control) than government or pension, but it's still an outside agency.
Maybe the three-legged stool image is eyeing all three legs suspiciously, but working all three as much as possible, with eyes wide open.
Investing one's money means relying on the stock purchases or mutual fund companies. Maybe that's safer (or more in one's control) than government or pension, but it's still an outside agency.
Maybe the three-legged stool image is eyeing all three legs suspiciously, but working all three as much as possible, with eyes wide open.
Yes. It is sad b/c it is better for both the employees and the corporations if loyalty was still a value that was embraced. But unfortunately today it is a thing of the past & decent people are often left in the fray having to adjust their personal moral compass.
Yes, don't bother being loyal to your company. Of course, way back when, in my father's day, he worked for the same place for 30 years, and I remember that it was a "contract" between employer/employee that they would always do their best for each other - not one-sided, as it is today. There would have been a huge uproar if any jobs were outsourced or anything like that. That would be a big no-no - part of it had to do with patriotism, of which there is not much left as far as companies go. They no longer care about their own communities and their own citizens.
Some of you say that's ok - "that's inevitable globalism" - I say, NO - nothing is inevitable - it is manmade. And, most of it has to do with GREED.
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