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They being Davos, they're a bit more mealy-mouthed than that but
- We need to be saving 10-15% of salaries for retirement and we're not
- Babies born after 2007 have a life expectancy of over 100
- Workers per retiree ratio will drop by 50%
- Low economic growth has permanently hindered interest accumulation for retirement plans
- There's a 70 trillion dollar gap between pension requirements and pension funds right now, which is going to go up to 400 trillion dollars by 2050 (the world's current GDP is 74 trillion)
Find a job you like. A lot. 'cuz you're going to be doing it. Forever.
user-inactivated · 2757 days ago · link ·
We need to start keeping a list of all the things that the Boomer Generation took full advantage of and then subsequently killed for their kids and grandkids. Environment. Science Literacy. Education. Politics. Retirement. If I was not in a mood full of snark I'd expand on this.
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WanderingEng · 2757 days ago · link ·
Home ownership. Car ownership. Education needs to be split into high school and university. Health care and employee benefits (related but not the same). Employment. My parents fit into the boomer category, though they're utterly unprepared for the retirement they're already in. Not all boomers came out on top at the end. I'm still cynical enough to blame boomers, though.
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Amusingly enough, Strauss and Howe argue that the 'boomers are "Prophets" (as opposed to Nomads, Heroes or Artists) and that Prophets are always dicks, blaming them for: - the Protestant Reformation - the Puritans - the Awakening - Muckraking on the one hand, Strauss and Howe's model has successfully predicted five of the last seven inflection points (if you ignore, you know, the Civil War). It's history as Kabbalah. On the other hand, Steve Bannon made a goddamn documentary about it so it's worth understanding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/where-did-steve-bannon-get-his-worldview-from-my-book/2017/02/24/16937f38-f84a-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html When you get into it it's... pretty hand-wavey. But it's an interesting view of history. I sure as fuck wouldn't live by it, any more than I'd be looking forward to a white bull born in Israel or whatever. but Steve Bannon (and therefore Donald Trump) are playing the cards as if not only is a war bigger than WWII inevitable, but the sooner we get it over with the sooner we can return to prosperity.
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user-inactivated · 2755 days ago · link ·
Hard times create strong men, Strong men create good times, Good times create weak men, Weak men create hard times. Still trying to find the real source of the poem this was pulled from. I originally saw this on the wall of the rental booth at a gun range when I moved to Kentucky a decade and a half ago. So it is probably older than that. I've seen people link it to the Stoics, but it probably takes inspiration from multiple sources. Reading that Wiki page I got momentarily excited that you pointed me at the source. Close enough though.
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Strauss and Howe based their cycle on the Saeculum, the interval of time coined by the Etruscans to describe the length of a human lifetime. The Romans adopted it but decided that 110 years was the magic number, rather than 80. The Stoics definitely picked stuff up from the Etruscans.
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user-inactivated · 2753 days ago · link ·
110 is not a magic number if you consider it three generations, each one being just shy of 30 years. Wealth never survives three generations is a saying that has been around since ancient china. Same thing with companies. The Founder generation pours their life into building the business. Then they retire and round two enters to take over; they remember the tough times and the bad stretches and have a loyalty to the founder's vision/name/legacy. Then the third group comes in and all they have every know is MegaCorp and don't give a shit. Ayn Rand talked about these people as the "looter generation" but she used another term for them. The Etruscans were interesting people. I need to get back to reading about them and their influence. Origen wrote on them back when I hated reading about the minutiae of Church history. When I went back with a secular mindset I was able to appreciate these guys much more than before.