Many of us won't be able to retire until our 80s ... You'll probably have to work much longer than you anticipated ... We all think it's a panacea. If you don't have enough money saved for retirement, you've got a few ways to close the gap between what you have and what you need in your nest egg: Save more, invest more aggressively, and/or work longer. Well, it turns out that working longer is indeed an option, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute latest study. The only problem is that the latest research shows that you'll have to work much longer than you anticipated. In fact, many Americans will have to keep on working well into their 70s and 80s to afford retirement, according to the study, titled "The Impact of Deferring Retirement Age on Retirement Income Adequacy." – MarketWatch
Dominant Social Theme: OK, we've had some setbacks. But planning for retirement still makes sense.
Free-Market Analysis: This article, posted to MarketWatch, is a good example of how a dominant social theme – retirement – is being repositioned because it hasn't proven out in reality. The new retirement, we learn, is work related. You'll retire, but you'll still work. From our point of view, this doesn't sound like much of a retirement. But, hey, if you believed you could invest your way to retirement, maybe the elites can gain your support for this latest retirement wrinkle.
And yes, probably numerous people will accept the "new reality" of retirement without questioning the validity of the larger system. Too bad. Questioning how the world works (when it obviously isn't working the way you thought it would) is a GOOD idea. In our humble view people need to be more skeptical of the underlying assumptions around which they structure their lives.
The retirement meme, for instance, was just that – a promotion – that was never supposed to work and could not work in a central bank environment. But it sounded good. And there were and are many reasons to promote it. The powers-that-be have structured society and Western economies in a certain way. But they need a "buy-in" to make their manipulations work.
One group that has bought in is the professional investment class. Retirement is a huge industry in the US, perhaps the nation's biggest. These days, an army of financial planners and brokers, along with mutual funds companies and private investment enterprises, have a big stake in continuing the promotion. But of course, the retirement meme has the backing of even more powerful figures.
Western economies are controlled via central banking by only a few shadowy families and their enablers and associates. The system itself is designed to self-destruct, causing endless recessions, depressions and ongoing centralization of industry and labor. It is a bad system, but one necessary to helping the powers-that-be consolidate world government. Thus, the power elite has done what it can to create buy-in.
The best way to create involvement by the masses is to make this system, bad as it is, an integral part of their existence, hopes and dreams. The stock market especially has been part of this promotion. People have been fooled into thinking that they can "invest" their money and receive appropriate retirement income in a rational way.
This is simply not true. The business cycle itself precludes the possibility that people – most anyway – will have the savvy, willpower and appropriate time (or luck) to walk away with the necessary profits from their invested earnings. Most, or at least many, will not. Here's some more from the article:
So what can be done to make sure you have enough income in retirement? Well, the sad truth is that not working is no longer an option and working past age 65 is fast becoming a fact of life, at least for those in the lowest three income quartiles. One bright spot, according to John Nelson, co-author of 'What Color is Your Parachute? For Retirement' is that working works: "For those in the lower half of the income spectrum, delaying retirement from 65 to 69 has a profound effect," he said. "It increases retirement income adequacy by 25% to 50%! That's a powerful incentive."
The new normal Now the reality about EBRI's findings is that many Americans — who are able to continue working and whose skills are still in demand — are already working past age 65. In 2009, 17.2% of Americans age 65 and older were in the labor force, according to recent AARP Public Policy Institute report, "Family Income Sources for Older People, 2009." And about 14.2 million older persons (36.7% of the older population) had family incomes from earnings in 2009 ...
"Those older Americans who are looking for a job, those who have already retired and those who are working but need additional income or want to start something that they can continue into their retirement years are all reading (the work-from-home) pages," Koff said. Making it work To be sure, many Americans haven't figured out how to make working later a real option, instead of just a fantasy. And for them, Nelson has this advice: "You need to pay attention to your career and your health."
As Baby Boomers are discovering now, it was all something of a dream. In fact, here at DB we refer to the 20th century these days as a "dreamtime." It was a century when what we call "directed history" was in its heyday. The elites entirely controlled the media and could relate whatever stories they chose.
Of course, as we've pointed out, they used fear-based dominant social themes to push Western middle classes into giving up wealth and power to a variety of international agencies set up to facilitate the emergence of global governance. The fantasy of stock market wealth was just that – a fantasy – for most people.
Yet no dominant social theme was much more successful than the investment meme. In the 20th century and even today the Anglosphere elites continue to push the idea of "investing." The buy-in of the middle class means a psychological endorsement of the world as it is, including central banking and fiat money.
There are other ways to deal with "retirement," of course. These have to do with creating a modest lifestyle that emphasizes self-sufficiency rather than consumerism. One also needs to try to find some level of self-sufficiency when it comes to employment. Large, white-collar "factories" are inevitably going to fire thousands, even tens of thousands, during economic downturns.
Of course, all this is more easily said than done. However, the reality is not what it seems and people best face it. The current Greater Recession, which is really a depression, is not really recoverable, or not in the near term. We would argue that it is the outcome of deliberate policies designed, quite possibly, to create first a new "great war" and then some sort of world government.
it is all becoming increasingly evident in the 21st century: the manipulations, the control, the larger elite agenda. Many white-collar jobs are make-work and a modern, "investment-enabled" retirement tends to work only in the "up" part of the business cycle when fiat money is in demand. This extended down-cycle is going to be an extended and brutal one because of all the past re-stimulations of the world's economy. Think of a heart patient who has been resuscitated one-time too many.
The power elite is racing against time in our view. The Internet Reformation has revealed to a great many what is really going on ... and yet, still, the vision of a leisurely retirement continues to be sold to the masses. One would hope that people won't continue to fall for this particular dominant social theme, as attractive as it is, as the 21st century unfolds.
Conclusion: In fact, one would like to believe that as people begin to realize the intense effort underway to press them to conform to the farcical "dreamtime" of Western retirement, they will re-think some of the other memes that they may have accepted unquestioningly in the past. Then something good would come out of the "bonfire of dreams" currently taking place.
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