Weekend Economists Tickle the Ivories September 20-22, 2013

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47. The Global Quest to Save Retirement

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-17/the-global-quest-to-save-retirement.html


If longer life is a financial threat, it is one that we can spot creeping toward us from decades away. Photograph by William Mebane/Getty Images

Spend enough time around retirement experts, and the prospect of living longer starts sounding more like a threat than an opportunity.

After all, increasing longevity is helping to bankrupt pension plans, erode Social Security's finances and make it so hard for individuals to choose a path toward a well-funded retirement that they may as well be playing pin the tail on the donkey.

Yet a long life can be a tremendous blessing. On July 4, my grandfather died after 90 action-packed years. He lived 14 years longer than the current U.S. male life expectancy and 34 years longer than the average man was living the year he was born. He used those years well. After teaching and coaching into his late sixties, he spent retirement volunteering, organizing dinner outings and golfing as if it was his job. Pensions and Social Security checks more than covered greens fees and early bird specials.

Contrast that with the retirement his two-year-old great-grandson might expect. Children born these days have a pretty good chance of living into the hundreds, according to some demographers. If my nephew outlives his peers as his great-grandfather did, he’ll pass 110, and he'll probably do so without the pensions and social safety net his great-grandfather enjoyed.


***tax the rich, tax corporations, expect corporations to provide well funded pensions instead of taking every one to the casino{stock market} and dropping them off.