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Retirement At The End Of A Rope
Submitted by Doug French via Mises Canada blog,
“They were people with great dignity,” Ivo Costamagna said of his neighbors who committed suicide in 2013. Romeo Dionisi, 62, and Anna Maria Sopranzi, 68, hanged themselves after Ms. Sopranzi’s pension evaporated.
“People like Romeo would not accept charity or social service aid,” Costamagna told CNN. “Romeo just wanted a job.” But no jobs were available in the dismal Italian economy.
In what may be another case of research confirming common sense, a new study by Lancet Psychiatry links suicide to unemployment. Carlos Nordt, Ingeborg Warnke, Erich Seifritz, and Wolfram Kawohl crunched data from all over the world and concluded, “Suicides associated with unemployment totaled a nine-fold higher number of deaths than excess suicides attributed to the most recent economic crisis.”
In all four regions of the world studied “unemployment was related to an increased relative risk of suicide by 20-30%. However the effect of suicide is stronger in countries with lower rates of rates of unemployment prior to the crisis. The researchers found “in countries where unemployment is uncommon, an expected increase in the unemployment rate might trigger greater fears and insecurity than in countries with higher precrisis unemployment rates.”
In the U.S., while the headline numbers reflect an improving employment picture, the dismal recovery has millions of people giving up. Gallup CEO Jim Clifton penned a piece for his company’s website entitled “The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment” where he points out, “Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast ‘falling’ unemployment.”
Clifton explains that if you’ve given up in frustration and stopped looking for employment you’re not counted in the 5.6%. If you’re working part-time while wishing you were employed full-time you’re not counted and “If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 — maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn — you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%,” writes Clifton.
Clifton says only 44% of jobs in America are “good,” meaning employment offering 30+ hours of steady work a week. He writes, “We need that to be 50% and a bare minimum of 10 million new, good jobs to replenish America’s middle class.”
What makes all of this important is highlighted in the book Falling Short: The Coming Retirement Crisis and What to Do About it. The average 401k and IRA for individuals nearing retirement only holds $111,000 according to the book’s authors.Charles D. Ellis, Alicia H. Munnell, and Andrew D. Eschtruth. This amount will only contribute $400 a month to a retiree’s living expenses beyond what social security will provide.
The authors say we have three choices, accept that we’ll be poor in old age, save more now, or work longer. A generation of people who have been generally well off will have a hard time accepting poverty. The same generation is accustomed to borrowing to live the lifestyle they desire, while saving rates have dropped over the past few decades. Working longer is really the only option–for those who can find work.
Retirement is recent development. The authors explain that until the end of the 19th century most people worked as farmers or shopkeepers until they could no longer manage it. “Well into the nineteenth century, about half of all 80-year-old men in America still worked.” If they did stop working it was because of poor health and they didn’t live long after retiring. My father is a good example, self-employed as a barber until the day he died.
However, few people are their own bosses anymore in this industrialized and urbanized world. Plus, a tiny percentage of the population has accumulated wealth through the family farm. Rank-and-file employees have no equipment and land to sell to finance their golden years. “Retirement saving did not seem necessary because penalties for not saving were not obvious.”
It was private business that began offering pensions in the 1930’s and then the federal government started social security. Industrial and union pensions took the form of defined benefit plans, which are lifetime annuities. Employees didn’t contribute and didn’t have to make investment decisions. Whatever percentage of final salary the plan called for is what the retiree received.
The Great Depression depleted many of these plans and they were nationalized. Along with wiping out pension plans, the Depression “undermined Americans’ confidence in the historic tradition of self-reliance and the virtue of individual thrift.”
While social security began with a resemblance to private insurance, in 1939 amendments were made transforming the program “into a family-based economic security program and significantly weakened the link between lifetime contributions and benefits.”
The authors of Falling Short say those who retired in the 1980’s and 1990’s enjoyed a “golden age” in retirement programs. Half of private sector workers had defined benefit programs and Social Security replaced 40% of pre-retirement income with full benefits available at age 65.
Now defined benefit plans, existing mostly in the government sector, are severely underfunded and going broke. The city of Detroit being a good example. Most workers have to save through a 401k plan or an IRA, absorbing the costs of investment management, while become money managers themselves whether they know anything about investments, or have the emotional discipline to manage money. Employees “have almost complete discretion over investment and savings choices, bear all the market risks, and face the risk of either overspending and outliving their retirement savings or spending too cautiously and consuming too little.”
It’s now estimated Social Security will replace an average of 36% of earnings (less for higher earners) with the fund only able to pay full benefits through 2033. After that payroll taxes will cover only 75% of commitments. It’s likely benefits will be reduced further.
At the same time people are living longer, healthcare costs are increasing, medicaid is only funded until 2030, while risk-free interest rates are nearly zero due to central bank policies. The average American only has $12,500 in financial assets outside of retirement plans with most wealth held in home equity. And an unfeeling taxman intends to take more from Social Security benefits in the future. “Today, about 37 percent of households pay taxes on their benefits, and by 2030 that will increase to more than 50 percent.”
Ivo Costamagna said he had no doubt his neighbors took their own lives because of their economic difficulties. Adding to the tragedy, Ms. Sopranzi’s brother killed himself by leaping into the Adriatic Sea after receiving the news about his sister.
Central bank interventions, which keep economies from properly healing, elongate recessions and high unemployment (whether measured by government statistics or not). While the tragic consequences of ZIRP, bailouts, and multiple QEs have so far been ignored, a tsunami of suicides are coming as the under-saved American baby boom generation faces the stark reality of having to work until they die to survive.
For the living, with no job and no savings, the only solution is, as Dionisi and Sopranzi demonstrated, a rope and the guts to use it.
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When a country dosen't even make light bulbs anymore... it's definitely lights out...
What does a housewife retire from?
I've always wondered.
vag pounding
Seriously, I am appalled that anyone can write an article about employment, and not point out that at least half the population has never worked at a real job, and have no intentions of ever working.
If there were any justice in the world...
Most of the "housewives" I know do a lot more social good than most of the "working" women that I know. They volunteer and take care of their relatives and neighbors, in very tangible ways.
I have a 67 y.o. "housewife" friend whose husband has a Down's syndrome granddaughter from his first marriage. The girl is the size of a teenager, but is so mentally incapacitated that she does not know not to fall down flights of stairs or out of windows. My friend spends entire days playing with and tending this girl. Please read this (part of an email from my friend) and tell me if you would do this, for no money, for another human being who is not even your biological grandchild:
"You'd asked about babyproofing for Zoe. Some examples - We can't open any window when she is here because she could push on the screen and fall out (upstairs unit). We also have to barricade the interior stairs to our studies because she could fall over the loft edge. I have to find ways to block off the front door as if she managed to open the door she could easily fall down our steep and unforgiving front stairs and has no concept of danger with cars, strangers, how to get home, etc. Our key bowl and all other breakables must be moved as she sometimes flails or just loses her grip when exploring items. Needless to say no kitchen knife or bathroom razors or scissors can be within each. Bob's endless supply of hand cream tubes must be located and hidden (pills aren't a problem as even I can't open them). The upholstered chair where she eats has to be covered by a towel as food flies and clean-up cloths must be handy. Her dishes have to be plastic and a covered sippy cup with straw is required. If I cook anything on the stove and/or oven (microwave is high up so okay) I have to do it before she arrives and make sure they have cooled off as she often puts her hand right on top of the stove and says, "No no Zoe, danger, hot" and then laughs. She really doesn't get it. When she sleeps here I sleep with her in the guest room (or else remove all lamps and lock her in which I won't do) and must put a king-size sheet on a queen-size bed so I can tuck it in on her side so she won't fall out. Remote controls are also off-limits but just because she might leave them somewhere we can't locate. And, yes, electrical outlets must have plugs in them as she might very easily get hurt (but I just leave them there all the time). I've probably left out about 20 things but you get the idea. All that said, once those things are done we have a great time. She and I like to sing and dance and listen to music and dress up and throw Bob's socks in the air and lay around and be lazy and make up sounds that make us laugh. I also try to find physical activities that we can do indoors (like indoor snowball fights) so she can have some exercise as it's too difficult to take her out anymore. She's also a very enthusiastic eater which is rewarding for me when I go to the effort of cooking. Bottom line...I love her but she's very tiring. She can sort of dress herself (if no buttons or snaps or zippers) and manage toilet business with just a little help. She can read a little and I toy a toy box with her books and fun stuff in it."
My friend also just spent a couple of days tending a neighbor who has terminal cancer, so that the woman's husband could go out and do crucial errands. Not even a neighbor who was a friend of hers: just a neighbor. And so on.
I know loads of women who "don't work" who do these things. I know very few "working" women, and no men, who do them. There are a lot of posters here on ZH who might, on reflection realize that the "good old days" that they so liked, were days when many more women were at home.
So unless you personally do these sorts of unpaid pro-social tending activities, in addition to paid work, please go fuck yourself.
For the living, with no job and no savings, the only solution is, as Dionisi and Sopranzi demonstrated, a rope and the guts to use it.
What the Author means by this is the guts to use the rope on a banker or politician.
Who could help but love a woman like that? And who would accuse her of being lazy? Sadly she doesn't represent the majority of women in this nation - who have too much time on their hands, time to sit, and feel sorry for themselves, or whatever situation they find themselves in.
There are more women like her than you realize. Since they aren't whining and making a fuss, no-one notices them. Also, what they are doing they are doing at home - no-one sees it but their closest relatives and friends. I had assumed that babysitting her step-grandkid was no big deal; I just happened to ask what it consisted of; if I hadn't I would have had no idea. I'm a fairly close friend of hers, but I found out by chance.
when kaiserhoff sneers at women who stay home, it is very destructive. That sort of scorn drives the sort of women who would naturally tend and nurture, away from home and out into the "work" world to do worthless crap.
(I'm not the person who downvoted you; I understand that it is hard to get a real sense of what people are like when it is the idiots who seek and get the attention)
I don't deny their existence, I just think they are rare. But it could be a generational thing too, since I am only 33.
Yes, it is heavily generational. Younger women are practically not allowed to live that way; they are expected to work outside the home, and they are told they are stupid and lazy if they don't. I know women in their 40s-50s who have regular jobs and try hard to do these things because they have grown up seeing them done, but they can't very much because of time. And women in their 20s have seen all tending activities turned into commodities. They have to resist social norms in a way that takes enormous personal strength to get past that.
Seriously, I am appalled that anyone can write an article about employment, and not point out that at least half the population has never worked at a real job, and have no intentions of ever working.
And in with that half are extremely wealthy people who have never done an honest day's work in their entire lives, and who benefit from most of the 'laws' and 'legislation' made by equally wealthy people who ensure the protection of that wealth unlike the average shlub who will either work until the day he/she dies...and if their pensions have to be confiscated, or their incentive to 'save' is nil thanks to ZIRP & NIRP, or their gold is confiscated, or 1/2 of their earnings are 'confiscated' through the magic of 'inflation', so be it.
I guess you really didn't hold you mom in high regard.
If a tsunami of suicides are coming then we shall buy Service Corporation International stocks.
It's like Ukrain's Dictator Poroshenko owns the largest funeral business in Ukroland and commands 100,000s to die in a perpetual war on Ukrainian people.
"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."
-Jay Gould
One year ago,after i quit my work-desk job , i’ve had some good luck to stumble upon following amazing freelance job on-line which saved me… They offer online home-based jobs. Last check after doing this job with them for four months was $10k… Awesome fact about the job is that the only thing required is simple typing skills and reliable internet… LEARN MORE HERE... www.globe-report.com
Hey Troll,
I've got your retirement package right here-- just go to this website and follow the simple instructions:
http://www.finalexitnetwork.org/
Sounds like you're whoring.
Part of me empathises with people who die by suicide, but killing oneself cannot be the an answer.
Despair is a horrible thing..
"...hanged themselves after Ms. Sopranzi’s pension evaporated." (kinda like "vaporized")
APB on Jon Corzine.
Sad story. RIP
Someone stole all their stuff (remaining livelihood), why not take it up with the thief?
You fucking dope. Have you ever been fucked over by the system and tried to get it right? I imagine not, because if you had ever tried you would soon realize its am impossibility.
However, it does eliminate all the questions.
homicide before suicide
SuicIRA
Central Banks kill...
Who knew?
I don't mind working till I kick off, but for manyI see the hopelessness of surviving, possibly depending on family for basics like food or shelter.
If I was in that situation I may save everyone a lot of grief and exit stage left as well, just to make it easier on them
No shit. Work till ya drop. So what. Beats hangin' with the doddering old fools in the Villages, driving around tricked out golf carts. Worse than death.
whatever happend to kids looking after their parents? Its not just for the elderly but for the children themselves. I think there is a serious role to play by grandparents in children's life. The adults should let their parents move in with them or move into their parents house and look after them. I think there is some value in children growing up with the ideas provided by 2 generations before them so they are more grounded and become less narcisstic.
Besides the obvious advantages of having babysitters who really care about the children's development, sometimes more so than their own parents.
One Positive impact of cost of living increasing so much is that it will force more generations to live together purely because of financial reasons.
Do you have kids?
We are raising our six kids to have this type of responsibility. It doesn't just happen.
one rears a child, and raises an animal.
The 1960’s experiment has run it’s course.
Wild guesses, what was the result and what are the consequences?
The first incarnation of this trend was in bolshevik Russia. Women were liberated to be able to work; sex was free; divorce was just one post card away (literally).
For some unknown reason this seems to be playing out in the US, Europe, and even Russia. Cant imagine who's responsible for this change in culture.
So, who was responsible? Or is it true that You cant really imagine who done it?
The primary goal of the so-called government safety nets had nothing to do with helping the poor. Rather, they were designed to break down the self-sufficient support systems of kith and kin, and replace them with a system in which all individuals are ultimately dependent upon the tender mercies of the state. And they have succeeded in their goal. Good luck with that.
They'vw put up toll booths at every point life, with a lawer fust to make it fair.
You're ahead of the curve in your thinking.
Most of mankind's history is 3 generations under a roof.
Only a tiny percentage of baby boomers send their elderly parents to nursing homes. Many actually incur expenses from their elderly parents who increasingly are being forced into reverse mortgages just to stay in their homes. Thus, Fed policy even is destroying what little inheritance boomers would have received from their parents.
And, now, "graduates have and are moving back home: 53% of 18-24 years olds live with their parents; 29% of 25-34 year olds live with their parents. In 1980, only 1 in 10 post-grads lived with their parents. Now, 4 in 10 move back home. 85% of College Seniors Plan to Move Back Home After Graduation." And many of those parents they're moving back in with are baby boomers, just turned 50.
And who do you think lost all that equity in their homes -- their most valuable asset -- when the Fed played fast and furious with the roofs over their head this past decade and ended up busting the value of their homes? Why, it was the boomers.
By 1983…a 30-year-old baby boomer needed to commit 44 percent of his income to meet the carrying charges on a median-priced house. That same year, 65 percent of all first-time baby boomer homebuyers needed two paychecks to meet their monthly payments…
By the end of the 1970s, Fortune magazine estimated that baby boomers had effectively lost ten years’ income when compared with the earnings of the generation just preceding them. Blame it on oligarch gobblelization, er, globalization, the Fed's new world order - the offshoring of America.
http://www.businessinsider.com/recent-graduates-heres-some-reasons-to-move-back-home-after-graduation-2012-9
Yep, working till I die. My wife thinks I am kidding but is the new reality. The upside is all the time I am working i can take satisfaction in the fact that I am paying taxes to pay the retirements for my age peers that retired in their mid-early 50's from government jobs with pension based on their overtime earnings. they deserve it though, hard jobs they had, extremely demanding, wracked with insecurity, never knew when that pink slip might show up. that makes it all worth while. Do I need to say sarc off now? there is a revoluion coming.
I cannot wait until the gov employees get what they deserve, which is what the rest of us have. Nothing!
What the heck makes the gov people think their sh*t dont stink and they deserve to be rewarded for having a cush do F-All job.
How about all businesses charge more to gov employees for every good or service since we know they have/will have the funds to pay for it.
I feel better now!
Yeah. Blame tbe gov't workers. They truly are the cause for total misfortune. Get a grip. Your government dick you over by bought and paid for evil sellouts.
fuck off
One thing we can be sure about: the government will lie about the true number of suicides. <<sad>>
I told this to my father Just this weekend. I also told him I believe this is the way it should be at a minimum will cut down on the ponzi fraud. A good honest hard working man , he looked at me, said you are crazy. The older generation just doesn't understand/see/believe it !!
My grandparent went through Great Depression #1 They were salt of the earth. Refused to accept "Relief" the 1930s word for welfare/food stamps-They got by and pospered, but lived intelligently and simply-They both died within the last 20 years-and they could see this, what we have today, coming. I dont know what they would have done today, but when they died, the had a fair amount to pass on to their children. IN a way I miss the wisdom of whats past that they showered on me-(my mother killed herself, so my dad dumped us on them quite a bit for stretches)-The old world VIBE of their self built house was something i could *sense* they didnt kowtow to the coming of the masses of hypnotized people; They saw the suburbs slowly encircle and eventually encroach their farm. Untill the had to sell IT. Their only concession to being "modern" was to own a TV (my GF called it an "idiot box") and buy a new Chevy every few years-but my GF worked to the end in building-custom or spec-until some idiot doctor kept misdiagnosing him with Hepatitus when he infact had a slow cancer of the pancreas. PRobably would have outlasted it, except the idiot doctor confused by what he saw sent him to surgery often enough-exploratory-that it weakened him and one day he died from it. My grandfather was ahead of his time-he saw all this and warned us-at the time we were to young to appreciate it all-but he was right. He was a stern, yet funny guy.
You know what? My mother spent every penny my father made and then some. She's the reason he can't retire. If mom wants help offing herself, I'm game any time.
My sympathy is with people who worked and saved hard for enough to live on in their old age and an inheritance for their children and are being cheated out of it by banksters. People who spent like drunken sailors, counting on a fat pension from their non-job with Uncle Sugar to pay for their "golden years," need to be encouraged to cull themselves before they cost their long-suffering children (who invariably hate the old buzzards) a thin dime more than it costs to toss dear old Mom and Dad into a pauper's grave.
I said it before I'll say it now. The lucky one's die fast. Can't see that for what it is. Oh well. Sure, live to be old as dried shit. But ask yourself. In this day and age, do you really, I mean really want these cock suckers looking over you.
Cheating lawbreakers to boot!
It’s illegal to commit suicide and/or knowingly assist in a suicide.
He forgot to mention stealing gold from an armored truck that stops at a very specific mile marker with "mechanical trouble" as a way to help with retirement planning. Worse case, you get free food, housing and medical care for a couple of decades.
expectations pumped and dumped. We are manipulated with promises of our future. We now know there is no future as we already spent it. So many promises, so many lies, so much disappointment. Reality kind of sucks which makes it so easy to believe the lies.
Seriously folks, I just dont give a shit anymore.
I know i'm up shits creek without a dollar.
But i wake up, enjoy my morning joe, pet the cat while reading about how the world is going down the crapper. I then go to my dishwashing job on weekends and enjoy the company of my younger coworkers, who havent got a clue about whats waiting for them. I enjoy hearing about their studies and vacation plans and love stories. I havent got a dîme to my name but married a man who has a low level government job, so at least i know one of us will have an income for the foreseable future.
My point? The Way i see it is that i live so close to ground level, that i dont have far to fall when the SHTF. I know now that even if i had made better choices in the past at school and job choices, that it would all have been for naught.
So I enjoy what i DO have and leave the future up to those that have the power to shape it. Does that make me a sheeple? Well, at least this sheep will go down without a fight. I would never give the fuckers at the top the satisfaction of making their NWO plans that much easier by offing myself.
I'm kind of a selfish fuck that way.
not just a selfish fuck, but a deluded fuck. You mention marrying into a govt worker and his pension. Then you speak about living at ground level. Woman, you don't know what ground level is. You with the govt beni's can enjoy health insurance from the first fart. Try that working for yourself or as millions of private enterprise empolyees do. Try going through older age without a pension check as those I just referenced have to do. When you think about these things, maybe you will realize just what a priveledged fucking cunt you really are.
How about referencing a more accurately dismal outlook? Projecting a $400 monthly income from a $111,000 retirement fund is a 4.3% annual return. Unrealistic for the average person in the current and longer term projected interest rate environment. ?
A 111,000 investment over 110 years at 4.3% should return about $401.32 a month.
For a period of 110 YEARS?
Now, 111.000 invested for twenty years at a 4.3% interest rate would pay out $690.31 a month.
690.31-401.32 = 288.99 more a month, which is 3,467.88 more per year, for twenty years.
Thats a little bit different than what you have stated.
Did you allow for the inflation or cost of living?
You know loss of purchasing power
Its all relative.
If your shit goes down then my shit goes down.
If your shit goes up my shit goes up.
Whats the difference?
Nuthin.
We all be in this shit together.
Again... Its all relative.
Did you turds forget that suicides are always false flag murders by American or Israeli operatives? I just heard that Pootin thinks the Americans killed these old folks so you know it's true.
just fuck off
May the common people of the world join us in showing no mercy to the bankers when the torches are lit.
Here is a another study on the topic which just came out; it is more relevant because it is specifically the U.S.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150227084724.htm ("Suicide rates for adults 40-64 years of age in the US have risen about 40 percent since 1999, with a sharp rise since 2007.")
A forty fucking percent increase. That is huge; it is just horrible.
ZIRP is like ZYKLON exterminates people. The FED gangsters and their mafia are committing war crime against US and world population. Those people were silent victims of genocide and they paid for this whole their lives.
EVERYONE murdered in death camp paid in gold from their own pockets for right to die, for transportation, poison gas and overhead. Few of them even paid train first class fare to the camp and walked to the gate. For more profit they cut hair, pull teeth from corpses and cooked them to produce soap and animal feed. Poor but able to work were exploited before allowed to die. Poor and sick were drowning naked in winter in mud and snow and stepped over like on steppingstones for hours until exhaustion and death.
They divided us to accomplish that.
We work whole our lives to be able to afford our death.
That's all. Like silent lambs waiting for slaughter.
About traders in violence:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/violence-of-the-lambs/
Well, that does cut the overhead.
This has to stop as the average consumer has no clue on how the algorithms are moving and making money, duping them right and left and when we see people committing suicide due to all of this, we need to take a step back and determine what is ethical and what is not. This is not fair as consumers only have a sword going into a battle that runs machine guns at the other side...killer algorithms videos do help explain, people smarter than me..
http://www.ducknet.net/attack-of-the-killer-algorithms/
People confuse virtual world values with the real world and can't tell the difference and this is marketed to do just that, irritates me no end as I see it all the time. It's just not fair and don't think the White House is beyond stupid, see what they put out a while back in being duped in to numbers that nobody can predict, so yeah we have a White House tied up in junk science on top of everything else.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.ca/2014/06/junk-science-appearing-everywhere-...
Cheating death by procrastination.
http://michaelekelley.com/2013/02/01/cheating-death-by-procrastination/