🐱 Millennials aren’t saving for retirement because they don’t think capitalism will exist by then

CatParty
https://www.salon.com/2018/03/18/so...y-do-not-think-capitalism-will-exist-by-then/


CNN reported last week that 66 percent of millennials aged 21 to 32 have nothing saved for retirement. And while their writer chalks up this inequity to student loans, “stagnant wages” and “high unemployment,” there may yet be a deeper cause: many millennials honestly don’t see a future for our economic system.

The aforementioned CNN article about millennials’ (lack of) retirement savings went semi-viral, partly because many saw humor in how it missed how many truly felt. “RT if socialism is your retirement plan,” Holly Wood, 32, a political organizer, wrote on Twitter.

The idea that we millennials’ only hope for retirement is the end of capitalism or the end of the world is actually quite common sentiment among the millennial left. Jokes about being unable to retire or anticipating utter social change by retirement age were ricocheting around the internet long before CNN’s article was published.









Older generations, and even millennials who are better off and who have managed to achieve a sort of petit-bourgeois freedom, might find this sentiment unimaginable, even abhorrent. And yet, in studying the reaction to the CNN piece and reaching out to millennials who had responded to it, I was astounded not only at how many young people shared Wood’s feelings, but how frequently our expectations for the future aligned. Many millennials expressed to me their interest in creating self-sustaining communities as their only hope for survival in old age; a lack of faith that capitalism as we know it would exist by retirement age; and that alternating climate crises, concentrations of wealth, and privatization of social welfare programs would doom their chance at survival.

“In general, I regard the future as a multitude of possibilities, but most of them don't look good,” Elias Schwartzman, 29, a musician, told me. “When I'm at retirement age, around 2050, I think it's possible we'll have seen a breakdown of modern society.” Schwartzman said that he saw the future as encompassing one of two possibilities: an apocalyptic “total breakdown of industrial society,” or “capitalism morphing into a complete plutocracy.” “I think the argument can be made that we're well on the way to that reality,” he added.

Wood, 32, a political consultant, told me via Twitter that she felt similarly. “I don’t think the world can sustain capitalism for another decade,” she explained. “It’s socialism or bust. We will literally start having resource wars that will kill us all if we don’t accept that the free market will absolutely destroy us within our lifetime [if] we don’t start fighting its hegemony,” she added.

“Capitalism might still exist [in 2050], but I don’t expect people will be happy about it,” Jon Good, 34, a chocolatier and small business owner, said. “If [capitalism] is replaced [by then], my ideal economic model is one where all basic necessities are abundant and free, everyone works a few hours a week at the necessary chores of society like garbage collection and machine maintenance, then has the rest of their lives free to pursue whatever projects—be they art, leisure, or industry—that they desire.”

That utopian hope, that we could theoretically end up in a sort of fully-automated post-work social democracy à la “Star Trek,” was expressed by others too.

“I think a system with universal basic income is inevitable if we're going to survive the automation of jobs as a society,” Becca Cook, 30, told me over Facebook chat. “We need to shift our understanding and expectations to a world where not everyone has to have a job.”

Sarah Frasco, 26, a student, saw a gulf between her and the young people who even thought about things like retirement. “For the most part, the idea of retirement or how you plan for it is really the privilege of the few people my age who have access to that kind of security and stability,” Frasco told Salon. “I know a few people from school who are on that track right now and sometimes I compare myself to them and wonder how I'll ever catch up.”

Good agreed with Frasco that retirement savings plans were the domain of bourgeois millennials. “In the 12 years since graduating college, I’ve spent one year working a job with benefits,” Good told Salon. “The rest of the time I’ve been cobbling together gigs and part-time jobs and under-the-table work that hasn’t paid me enough to save anything.”

“The economic realities of my generation make the expectations for my parents’ generation seem ludicrous to me—having a job with benefits and that pays enough that I can make rent, and save for retirement and also maybe for a down payment on property seems like a lottery,” Good continued. “Maybe 15 percent of my peer group has this, and having it is a combination of luck and family connections rather than skill and work ethic.”

Most intriguing, many millennials said that their life plans, goals and careers had been affected by their expectations of the future and the dismal economic circumstances into which they were born. “I was someone who very much wanted to have children by age 35 and no longer think that [is] even a remote possibility, even with two parents,” Wood told Salon. “And having the role of parent so squarely removed from my trajectory of life possibility has made me take bigger risks and made me unlikely to take on any job just for the sake of my résumé.”

Of course, many millennials are not even in a position of considering retirement savings, much less having options when it comes to work or life decisions. More millennials live in poverty than any other generation, according to a recent Pew Research poll, which noted that "5.3 million of the nearly 17 million U.S. households living in poverty were headed by a Millennial."

But for millennials who had more economic agency, the expectation of an unstable future meant trying to find happiness in the present. “I just blew all my savings on a nine-month road trip on the assumption that something is going to change drastically in the next few years,” Cook said.

“Not only am I not saving for retirement, I have never had a serious job because I have thought capitalism would be fucked by [the time I retired] since I was a teenager,” Shannon Malloy, 31, a student, organizer and bartender, said.

They say every generation thinks that it will be the last, as alt-country crooner Jeff Tweedy of Wilco rhapsodized. And yet, for millennials, it is perhaps understandable given the environmental and political situation at hand. Our ecological survival on the planet seems incompatible with the ever-hungry maw of capitalism, which requires ever-accelerating industrial production and consumption. Just as pollution, carbon emissions, deforestation and planned obsolescence are “good” for capitalist economies, they are horrendous for the environment and seem to be driving us to extinction in ways that are now manifesting in extreme weather events. Meanwhile, the planet’s tilt toward authoritarian politics and privatization do not bode well for the young.

Interestingly, privileged millennials on the higher end of the economic spectrum had trouble comprehending these kinds of attitudes. John Hagensen, 35, founder and managing director of investment advisory firm Keystone Wealth Partners, couldn’t fathom his struggling coevals’ alternative visions of the future. “I guess my argument to [their points] would be whether [societal collapse] happens or not, where does that change the personal responsibility for you to prepare yourself to take care of yourself and be responsible for yourself?” Hagensen told Salon. “They may be right, so does that mean that for the next 25 years they should save nothing?” Despite Hagensen’s preconceptions that lack of retirement planning indicated a lack of personal responsibility, the millennials I interviewed had all planned thoughtfully and carefully for their retirement — just not in the “traditional” manner, via investment accounts, that Hagensen was accustomed to.

Indeed, there was a surprising congruity among what “planning for retirement” meant for most of those whom I interviewed. “If I don’t die in the revolution I imagine I’ll be living in an intentional community,” Malloy said. “Either because we have no other options or because we’re trying to have as much autonomy as possible so we can keep doing [political organizing] work. I don’t count on ‘the work’ being finished enough to chill out in our lifetime,” she added.

“I’m absolutely convinced over how quickly friends have lost their pensions, 401ks and IRAs to bubble crashes that there is no safe place to ‘save’ for retirement,” Wood said, “And the best way to plan for retirement is by building tribes of like-minded peers who have committed themselves to group survival.”

“I’m way more invested in the family I’m building now than any fake sense of security that some mutual fund may or may not provide for me 20 years from now,” she added.

“When I'm at retirement age, around 2050, I think it's possible we'll have seen a breakdown of modern society,” Schwartzman told Salon. “I do see it as a real possibility that nuclear holocaust or environmental apocalypse will make money completely meaningless, and that reinforces my approach of living in the now. If I can find my way to saving, or creating a lot of wealth, I’ll use it to buy land and build toward self-sufficiency as a way to hopefully protect myself against the various unpleasant futures that I can see ahead of us.”

The remarkable consensus suggests that us millennials lacking traditional retirement savings plans might still have a happy retirement outlook, just not in the conventional way that previous generations did. If political organizers and mass movements succeed, we'll have a post-work, post-scarcity future to look forward to; and if not, it seems that many are committed to building their own solidarity networks, intentional communities, and like-minded cooperatives to carry us through the darker years of the 21st century.
 
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“Man capitalism sucks and is on its way out. I better double down and spend all my cash on booze and material possessions to show everybody how having spending power is uncool.”
Solace in the fact that millennial money is ending up reinvested in baby boomer businesses so they can retire.
 
Amazing how these idiots still think communism = free stuff and money. If communism ever becomes America's main ideology, the look on their faces as their phones and tablets get taken away and are given to poorer people would be amazing :story:

I always remember this 4chan post when Western idiots gush about communism:

1xaxd.jpg
 
Reminds me of my grandmother's commie husband.

Story among the family is that, when he managed to actually visit the Soviet Union, reality bitch-slapped him so hard he burnt all of his socialist books and forbid anyone from speaking to him on the subject.

Redistribution of wealth may sound great, until you realize how tiny the piece you are getting actually is.

Communism, or the left's idea of what true communism is, can't work because it goes against human nature; It either collapses or becomes corrupted.

PS. If society does fall, guess who owns most of the guns, skills and equipment to survive. (Hint: They didn't vote for Hillary)
 
This is the guy who, upon hearing from his doctor that his smoking is killing him, smirks and says "We're all dyin' doc" while lighting up.

Denial so that he can still go through the rest of his day/week/life without having to self-reflect on his poor situation and his hand in causing it.

You aren't saving any money for retirement and Social Security in it's current form will NOT be there to save you! the advisors says "AIn't gonna BE no America by then anyway" the guy says, while gushing over the newest iphone.
 
I'm not sure if the title of "The Worst Generation" should be bestowed upon boomers or millennials, at this point. Boomers ruined the west with shitty policies, but millennials are such a dark pit of nihilistic nothingness. I feel like all of the justifications in the OP article are literally just excuses for their high time preference/lack of ability to defer gratification. I mean, I'm not one to talk because I spend a lot of my money on booze, but I don't make excuses for it.
 
“Not only am I not saving for retirement, I have never had a serious job because I have thought capitalism would be fucked by [the time I retired] since I was a teenager,” Shannon Malloy, 31, a student, organizer and bartender, said.

Have fun dying in a state run nursing home where they only change your diaper once a week.

What on Earth is an organizer? I wonder if that means she organizes protests at college.
 
I'm not sure if the title of "The Worst Generation" should be bestowed upon boomers or millennials, at this point. Boomers ruined the west with shitty policies, but millennials are such a dark pit of nihilistic nothingness. I feel like all of the justifications in the OP article are literally just excuses for their high time preference/lack of ability to defer gratification. I mean, I'm not one to talk because I spend a lot of my money on booze, but I don't make excuses for it.
The boomers expanded the economy a massive amount. They were a very productive generation. Should be Gen-Xers for spawning these morons.
 
I always remember this 4chan post when Western idiots gush about communism:

View attachment 406202

Replace "Importing Food" to "Re-distributing all Farmland to Party Cronies, Poors/Oppressed/Minorities who have no idea how to farm and do hard work".

Then replace "Trucking and Logistics" with "Corrupt Party Members, Poors/Oppressed/Minorities who have no idea how to manage anything".

Yeah, I'd be picking up a gun for this shit if there was an actual communist revolt and shooting the fucking hipsters. Or I'd be running to countries who would support people with higher education. Even if it was fucking Russia or China or some ruthless Capitalist place. I know that's internet tough-guy logic, but come the fuck on. We ALL know exactly what happens to people like us in an actual commie revolution. One of the first victims of the Bolsheviks was a clown who criticized the Czars. An NKVD officer walked up on stage, and blew the clown's brains out in front of the audience. I'm not LARPing or wishing for this to actually happen. You have to be insane to wish absolute destabilization and political revolution on a country. And if it got voted into office, I'd get the fuck out as soon as I could. The problem is that a 'peaceful' turnover of a socialist revolution would be worse than a violent one.

I'm going to imagine America voting in progressive Communism and do a little bit of fiction writing about what I think would actually happen. So if you don't want to read grandpa asshole's stories, you can skip this one. So, its not going to be Bernie. Bernie is basically what a democrat used to be. Its going to be a pure revolutionary ideologue with charisma and influence that doesn't yet exist. So, he gets voted in, somehow with massive amounts of powers to enact these policies. Because all the rich people aren't idiots, they'd have seen this coming. They would have already pulled every cent out ahead of time and the value of your money just collapses into the toilet. Every single job will ship over seas because nobody wants them price-set by the government. So unemployment skyrockets instantly. Abandonment by corporate farming leaves many fields to rot, so the only hope is the new socialist overlords promote the illegal Mexicans who work their to work the farms. But the problem is price and wage setting, which means prices and wages WORSE than in Mexico, because you're trying to set unknown market forces forcibly. So you get illegals fleeing back to Mexico.

Unpayable university debt suddenly explodes with all job loss with massive defaults across the board. With all colleges becoming free, banks refuse to hand out new loans. This becomes true in mortgage and finance sectors, because of massive loss of cash from said corporate pullout. This means a hostile takeover by the government of the banks. This lets the United States bankroll institutions with pitiable amounts of money and probably confiscates whatever endowments they have left in the states. Banks become nationalized and loan rates are fixed on what whatever the government wants. The debt bubble among Americans basically explodes into a nuclear economic fire in a few months, as the mass unemployment, combined with currency devaluation, leads to mortgage, student, credit card, car loan and medical debt all unpayable, all at once. That amounts to trillions of dollars. The banking system and treasury collapse under the weight of trillions of dollars in the negative, with no foreseeable way to pay it off, even with make-work jobs. This forces the United States to wipe out all debt as it controls the banking system as the logistics of controlling this disaster while maintaining as a functioning country is impossible. They could leverage it to hell and back, but its obvious that no one will be able to pay it back at its current market value. Even trying to mitigate by extending these loans to insane years (50-60 year loans), the reaction is the same. Lack of currency, employment, job growth makes it laughably obvious these debts won't be paid. The world responds by junking the US credit rating, making the dollar virtually worthless. This obliterates the Chinese economy and anyone with a substantial holding of US debt and dollars as reserve currency. If the Chinese were smart and came up with an alternate reserve currency with the Russians and Arabs, the damage is mitigated. If not, I have no doubt China would use military force to counter asset loss. Lets assume China is smart and saw which way the wind was blowing and there isn't a world war.

But the US is in complete tatters. The only thing, ironically, that it would still pay for is its military and policing forces to maintain some measure of control over the population. Confiscation of weapons would have to have been put on the back-burner due to the economic turmoil of converting from Socialism to Capitalism. As soon as the government turned, you'd have the majority of citizens hiding their weapons and bribing officials to overlook them. You'd have pockets of militia groups actively stalking and killing government and pro-communist groups. You'd have large sections of the military actively defecting as they don't want to turn their guns on American civilians. This leads to Civil War round 2 with many angry Americans with lots and lots of guns and a partially sympathetic military who doesn't want to drone their own population. Versus basically what would be private, foreign PMCs and corrupt local forces being paid to deal with it along with whatever Communist government forces you've got.

Any economy still alive at this point (Europe is completely shattered, as the US would have to shift any remaining soldiers abroad home for the complete turmoil, if they don't defect to their European counterparts directly). Russia has distanced itself with the American economy over the years, and with basically with the complete loss of NATO (Honestly, the US), it gives itself over to control of the region and allowing it to negotiate or re-capture old Soviet States. The EU would have to be completely hardline and push for an EU army at this point as the US can no longer defend it. This might see Poland and Hungary separating. But Poland would rather be a nuked out piece of Earth than a Russian protectorate. The South China Sea effectively becomes China as the US loses any mechanism by which to counter it. Corporations likely flee for rich European Nations or Nations least affected by the world economic collapse by the US switch to Communism. This is highly dependent, kind of impossible to predict where and will give major economic boons to those countries, allowing it to mitigate the financial collapse. The US also experiences a severe brain drain as prominent research universities and researchers flee the country, not wanting to get caught up in a civil war or socialist censorship of the sciences. Tech billionaires realize they don't want to give up their lattes and iPads. Scientific and technological advancement completely halts in the United States. The Second Civil War is extremely bloody, with most of the military defecting and basically reducing the 'legitimate government' to a communist insurgency.

The eventual outcome is probably the creation of a small Communist Rump state with any surviving members of the communist government to mitigate the loss of life, infrastructure damage and complete hell that the switch provided. This most likely would involve portions of California and the Northwest, as the renewed government wouldn't want to fight an eternal guerrilla war in forests and mountains, as well as giving these people some 'Homeland'. New York City is too important financially and strategically to give up on, so its a complete warzone with communist guerrillas and socialist terrorism for years, if not decades, until the renewed Capitalist government stamps it out. The result is massive poverty, inoperable economic damage and the complete loss of the United States as a major world player for at least the next half-century. The Communist rump states eventually de-evolve into who is the biggest, strongest Warlord, with communist ideology basically being an after-thought and being completely reliant on foreign aid. These places would most likely resemble failed states of the third world with massive corruption, crime and loss of life. At best, Venezuela and at worst, Somalia.

And you'd still have people going 'Not real communism'.
 
Many millennials expressed to me their interest in creating self-sustaining communities as their only hope for survival in old age

Lol, as if any of these tards know anything about farming or other vital skills you'd need to actually make a self sustaining community.

I also love how they either asked musicians or students that had their majors conveniently unmentioned about why they don't feel secure in any future savings plan. I mean I'm sure some fascist right wingers would argue that feminist theory, socialist literature, art degrees, and music degrees don't actually provide good paying (or any) jobs, but that's just alt-right nazi rhetoric. Obviously.

But for millennials who had more economic agency, the expectation of an unstable future meant trying to find happiness in the present. “I just blew all my savings on a nine-month road trip on the assumption that something is going to change drastically in the next few years,” Cook said.

“Not only am I not saving for retirement, I have never had a serious job because I have thought capitalism would be fucked by [the time I retired] since I was a teenager,” Shannon Malloy, 31, a student, organizer and bartender, said.

kizuna 1.jpg

They say every generation thinks that it will be the last, as alt-country crooner Jeff Tweedy of Wilco rhapsodized. And yet, for millennials, it is perhaps understandable given the environmental and political situation at hand. Our ecological survival on the planet seems incompatible with the ever-hungry maw of capitalism, which requires ever-accelerating industrial production and consumption. Just as pollution, carbon emissions, deforestation and planned obsolescence are “good” for capitalist economies, they are horrendous for the environment and seem to be driving us to extinction in ways that are now manifesting in extreme weather events. Meanwhile, the planet’s tilt toward authoritarian politics and privatization do not bode well for the young.

Translation: REEEE DRUMPF

And from there it just further devolves into commie fan-fic and excuses for their shitty lifestyle and lack of foresight and planning.

TL;DR version: :autism: (Like every other Salon article)
 
Have fun dying in a state run nursing home where they only change your diaper once a week.

Nah.

A lot of these people have drink/pill/otherwise kill yourself to death plans, but those don't make good copy. It's true of a lot of 50 and 60-something year olds today, as well. That or work until you literally die.

Fucking "retirement" is a laughably unattainable dream for... the kind of people that don't get to be on TV. Or written about in Salon, except as a "look at these ghastly flyovers." There are literally old people living in RVs that go from distribution center to distribution center, for seasonal work, and that is now. Not 2050. I come from super white trash. Mom's "plan" is "suicide if I'm not dead by 74." Has been since I was a teenager. My mother in law will drink herself to death. That's not a stated goal, but... it's pretty obvious that is the plan. MIL lost her ass in the 00's. Retirement went *poof.*

Suicide is up. Way up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/health/american-death-rate-rises-for-first-time-in-a-decade.html
 
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ITT coastal lefties go so far to the left they start sounding like their crazy right wing prepper uncle from Montana.

Horseshoe theory gets proven right once again.
At least the preppers in bumfuck nowhere with a shelter are more likely to survive if shit hits the fan than some pot smoker who thinks "man fuck saving and shit its gonna be free anyhow".
 
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