Once again, and I’m gonna hammer this until I die, the idea there is a RETIREMENT CRISIS today relative to the old days is based on one of two things.
1. Complete ignorance of the past and laziness
2. a lie
As for #1, academics who study this stuff, economists, historians and the like have no excuse for such ignorance. If I can find this information on my laptop with two dogs sitting on my lap, these highly-esteemed academics should be more than able to as well.
As for #2, I won’t accuse anyone of anything but man ,you’ll have to work hard to convince me these people aren’t lying through their teeth.
Either way, it’s unacceptable to permeate the lie of a Retirement Crisis when millions of people’s lives are involved. How many men stayed at some crappy, old job because of the fear of running out of money and then, sadly, die literally ON THE JOB instead of spending time with their loved ones enjoying God’s abundance.
Yeah, this pisses me off. I hate liars. HATE being lied to. But i especially hate it when the lie comes from one in a position of authority, see Frances Collins and Fauci.
From the 1971 Senate Subcommittee investing the validity of pensions they report:
“The extremely high rate of benefit forfeiture can not be minimized. The indications that numerous workers have received NO RETIREMENT BENEFITS as a result of inadequate or lack of vesting provisions do call for a close examination of possible remedial measures.”(emphasis mine)
in 51 plans, for every one participant who received a pension 20, yup 20!, forfeited theirs. i.e., received NOTHING.
On the other hand in 36 plans it wasn’t’ as bad. But you still had no freedom to change companies in order to receive your benefit. These were not portable!
In another study, representing around 25% of total pension assets at that time the MEDIAN pension for normal retirement was $99 a month,( about $750 today) for early retirement it was $72 a month (about $500 today). If you were disabled, the median pension was $50 a month or $380 today.
Yeah, so great to retire back then, wasn’t it. Oh, and it just gets worse too. I’ll save that for another post.
