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Americans Can Now Expect to Live Three Years Less than Cubans (www.newsweek.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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[–] 1 point 3 years ago* (2 children)

If you want the government to pay for your “retirement” then the retirement age is 66. But you can retire literally whenever you want as soon as you have the resources. Which might be in your late 40s or early 50s depending on education, career, and personal goals.

Also keep in mind that “life expectancy” is an average that is reduced by men that die from car accidents, strokes, and whatever else much earlier than 66. The life expectancy of a 60 year old male in the US is 80.

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Average American has around 100k of debt, and over half the population can't afford an unexpected 1,000 expense. What that says is that people are barely making enough money to make ends meet, the chances of them saving enough resources to stop working are nil. Only a tiny percentage of the population is going to be retiring at all.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 years ago (1 child)
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  • [–] [S] 10 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Yes, the boomers got theirs, young people today don't have the same prospects. What part of that are you struggling with?

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  • [+] -7 points 3 years ago*

    Did you expect that younger generations would just inherit all their wealth? I’d have thought that this kind of landed gentry outlook wouldn’t be what a tankie like yourself would promote. Instead, due to the linear nature of time, young people of every country in every stage of human history generally have less wealth than their elders. Because they’ve had less time to accumulate it. What part of that are you struggling with?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    You're accidentally tapping into the problem here. Wealthy Americans can and often do retire very early, enjoying decades of comfortable retirement. That is made possible by the people who break their bodies for very little pay and who get little or no opportunity to retire at all.

    It's pretty bad everywhere. But in the US it is especially obscene, thanks to the lack of universal healthcare and the enormous disparity between pay at the top and bottom, and the leaky to non-existent safety nets.

    I don't know how you manage to grasp half of that picture without apparently even realising that the rest of it must exist.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 years ago*

    If you want to propose that the US should have better healthcare and other social safety nets, you’ll get no argument from me. If you’d like to propose that the wealthiest should pay for these things via taxes (or other lawful disincentives), I’ll agree with that too.

    But depending on how left or right you consider yourself then a significantly reduced, government sponsored, retirement age is a more complicated question. Someone on the right might tell you that an earlier retirement is a reward for the effort and ingenuity you expended through your life. Likewise, someone on the left might argue that you have a responsibility to be a productive member of society for as long as you are able. Even moreso if you are particularly talented. I, personally, believe that there is plenty of room for diversity of outcome without compromising equality of opportunity.

    My only point in my first couple comments was more than a decade of government retirement is not only possible but also likely for anyone in the US that makes it through their heart-attack years in their 50s, and that retirement earlier than that is possible based on education, career, choices, and luck. As illustrated by the fact that just over 50% of the US population is retired at 55. Everything after that was just antagonizing a troll. Which I find hilarious. YMMV.

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