Retirement Age

Of course if you are self-employed, you are doing what you love, so retirement comes when you grasp your chest, wheeze, and drop dead mid-sentence.  Tag 'em and drag 'em.

California next year will owe 550% of its budget in pension payments.  At some point taxpayers will say no more.  Oregon has gone stagnant over two decades in taxpayers jobs, while doubling tax-paid jobs.  Ouch!  Private industry has been talking about this at least since 1982, as I recall unfunded pension liability being the "strike issue" of the longshoremen against us importers in the master contract negotiations that year.  The problem was a crisis that had to be solved immediately.  Ha! The can got kicked down the road for 30 years...  maybe finally it does not get solved, just society tears apart.

For people with a government pension, there is simply no way they will collect on it.  they may have the numbers they were promised on a pice of paper, but either those numbers no longer by what they did before, or what they want to buy is either worth less or unavailable.  Where you could afford meat, later it will be Alpo-ish.  Think of the Soviet health care system: single payer, no charge, heavily staffed.  The health care plan of every Soviet citizen was: don't get sick.  People stored their own bandages and syringes for fear of infection should they need help someday.

There will be no wipeout of any single party... there will just be general, relentless grinding down, ala the soviet union.  If true, what to do?

Well, there will be no living on a pension.  Work will be required to survive.  Govt work will be less and less be attractive.  So, pensioners will ned to find work.  If you have a govt job not done in the private sector, better quit now and get an education.  Start over.  Get ahead of the legions of unemployables that will be released from govt service.  Scary!

If you do work that is actually done in the private sector, start a business now.  The only way to defend yourself against the coming allocation of debts and losses (the assets have already been allocated away from us) is to be self employed so you can make the serial adjustments necessary to live an prosperous and healthy life.

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