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Monday, June 30, 2014

The Consequences of a World with Many Older People

The Shifting Shape of Age Around the World (Uri Friedman) from the Atlantic
"Age breakdowns used to resemble pyramids. Now they're rectangles."

It’s not hard to figure out what happens to all the baby boomers. Just take a look around and you’ll see them working lousy minimum wage service jobs everywhere. Many boomers dreams of retirement have become nightmares of financial insecurity. Boomers have been fleeced by their corporate masters, ruthlessly targeted by the parasitic “retirement planning” industry, and have undermined their own financial security through a life of excessive consumption. Many if not most of the corporate retirement plans boomers were counting on have been, or soon will be, transferred to the wealthy through bankruptcies, takeovers, mergers, and other forms of corporate legerdemain. Even municipal and state retirements are in jeopardy; it appears that Federal retirement is the only unassailable nest egg. Now the very same financial companies who engineered this colossal theft, have not missed the opportunity to profit from the fear and insecurity they themselves created, by selling fleeced boomers “retirement products”, parasitically managed little spoonful’s’ of money which provide nobody a decent retirement save the charlatans who created them. Add to all this the pathetic state of the average boomers personal spending and savings habits, and the result is a 70 something grandma or grandpa, earning minimum wage to stock shelves at Wal-Mart just to make the Medicare co-pay. It used to embarrass me to have an exhausted grandmother serving me cheeseburgers, but it has become so common that I hardly notice it anymore.
Posted by: hopeandespair

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