Originally posted by Senduko
reply to post by kaylaluv
Hush you fool, do you think those fat politicians will work till 65?
Tell your statement to a metal worker or a woodworker...
Yes, actually, they do. Look at the number of politicians who are still working well past retirement age. Many are past 80. It doesn't matter if you
like what they do. They get up early. They go to the office. They come home late, and there are usually nightime meetings. It's not the kind of life
I would enjoy.
Now, about the age 65 as "retirement" age. Why did that happen? Because the Kaiser in Germany was up against labor unrest and invoked a pension for
workers at age 65. Why 65? Because that was the life expectancy. The idea was that if you just happened to live longer than expected, the pension was
designed to provide a bit of money to help with your upkeep, with the family expected to provide shelter for you. The pension at age 65 was intended
as "death insurance" in case you lived too long.
Nowdays we get completely upset if the government doesn't agree to provide you with a middle class lifestyle at retirement ages that are earlier than
65. Social security, as an example, was NEVER intended to provide your ENTIRE income at retirement.
Now, here's a fun exercise. If you took all the money you have PAID INTO social security during your working life, including both your personall
contribution of 7.X% and your employer's contribution of the same anount, and stuck that money in a typical long-term CD which protects the principle
entirely, and has historically paid slightly greater than inflation (over 10% during the Carter years, zilch today), then you would have had enough
money to live until your life expectancy.
All by yourself. All on your own. Nobody else helping. If you planned on living greater than your life expectancy, well, then, perhaps you needed to
save more than that 15%. But th egovernment decided they needed to save us from ourselves again, and now we face the result.
In the Kaiser's day you were expected to pay your own way until you were dead. There was no expectation of a few leisurely years of retirement when
you didn't have to do anything. Indeed, the entire structure of government payments would have been unthinkable in the 19th century.
Unemployment compensation? What???? You get paid for NOT working????
Welfare? You've got to be kidding me!
Social Security? A complete joke!
A pension? If you were in the right place, you might get a little bit.
Retirement? For the successful people who saved for it. Not for spendthrifts.