Lost Worklife
Most of us get 45-50 years to work and build wealth to live on in our last years. We can't roll back the clock or work until we're 80 to make up lost time or money. That's just the way it is.
Many of us lost 33% of everything in the depression that started in 2007. That works out to be 15 years or a third of our worklife. If you're about 60 years old, you can never recover the losses. There just isn't time.
Some lost everything. Those who leveraged their homes to put a child through college, moved up to a house they could barely afford or put off saving for old age then lost their job often lost it all.
Most companies don't want to hire workers near 60. They don't have the energy that companies want, they have health issues and most just are thinking about retiring soon. Why hire an old guy when you can get a vigorous, healthy young guy who will work for another decade or two if you need him?
My situation is fairly typical. My home value has lost 33% of it's value, my investments lost about a third of their value, one third of my pensions were lost when turned over to PBGC and the replacement job I was lucky to find pays a third less than I was making before. I'm back to where I was in 1995, losing 15 years of the fruits of my labor.
I went through another economic train wreck in the early 80s, damn near losing everything and set back a decade. But I was 30 years old and could retool myself and recover. Now that I'm 60 my options are limited. I feel vulnerable and exposed like never before in my life. At the same time, I don't have the trust in america that I once had.
Bad things happen to good people. But american leadership has wrecked the lives of a good portion of my generation. For 40 years we got up every morning, went to work, lived modest lifestyles and tried to do the right thing. Now that we are approaching old age, we find that we lost a third of the fruits of our labor that we can never make up.
Instead of being self-sustaining retirees we are old people competing with our children for jobs and resources. It won't be long until the young clamor for us to retire and die as we are just consuming more resources than we are worth. The resentment is there simmering just below the surface even in polite society.
The damage inflicted by american leadership elites cannot be undone. But we can put the blame where it belongs, on the business and government elites that have run this country for the last three decades. The same crew that lectures us that we shouldn't be angry. Fuck them all.
Many of us lost 33% of everything in the depression that started in 2007. That works out to be 15 years or a third of our worklife. If you're about 60 years old, you can never recover the losses. There just isn't time.
Some lost everything. Those who leveraged their homes to put a child through college, moved up to a house they could barely afford or put off saving for old age then lost their job often lost it all.
Most companies don't want to hire workers near 60. They don't have the energy that companies want, they have health issues and most just are thinking about retiring soon. Why hire an old guy when you can get a vigorous, healthy young guy who will work for another decade or two if you need him?
My situation is fairly typical. My home value has lost 33% of it's value, my investments lost about a third of their value, one third of my pensions were lost when turned over to PBGC and the replacement job I was lucky to find pays a third less than I was making before. I'm back to where I was in 1995, losing 15 years of the fruits of my labor.
I went through another economic train wreck in the early 80s, damn near losing everything and set back a decade. But I was 30 years old and could retool myself and recover. Now that I'm 60 my options are limited. I feel vulnerable and exposed like never before in my life. At the same time, I don't have the trust in america that I once had.
Bad things happen to good people. But american leadership has wrecked the lives of a good portion of my generation. For 40 years we got up every morning, went to work, lived modest lifestyles and tried to do the right thing. Now that we are approaching old age, we find that we lost a third of the fruits of our labor that we can never make up.
Instead of being self-sustaining retirees we are old people competing with our children for jobs and resources. It won't be long until the young clamor for us to retire and die as we are just consuming more resources than we are worth. The resentment is there simmering just below the surface even in polite society.
The damage inflicted by american leadership elites cannot be undone. But we can put the blame where it belongs, on the business and government elites that have run this country for the last three decades. The same crew that lectures us that we shouldn't be angry. Fuck them all.
posted by lugh lampfhota at 10:40 AM
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