THE END OF RETIREMENT E-Book

Catherine Dumont

• Herausgeber: BookThug
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 26

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The forecasts about the collapse of the retirement systems worldwide are multiplying. In the United States, it seems that the tipping point has almost been reached, and that the system will tend to run out of funding (of course, if regulations and trends persist). Unless contributions increase or Social Security benefits are cut, the precise year of the crash would be 2035, according to trust fund analysts. Will most people live more than 100 years? And if so, how will the retirements be financed?

Leseprobe

Will the retirement system collapse in the next few years?

The alarms concerning retirement or social security systems have been sounding for years. In the United States, the forecast date for the collapse of the retirement system is 2035, precisely when it would be 100 years since the enactment of the Social Security Act during Roosevelt’s New Deal. Although each country has its own retirement laws, similar forecasts are repeated around the world. It is a system that is out of date, and this is due to many variables, including the increase in life expectancy, the aging of the population and changes within the working world. If 100 years ago the retirement fund was expected to reach the few who survived the retirement age, and during the short period of life that they could have left, today the life expectancy can mean twenty or thirty years of retirement. The ratio between salaried workers and retirees has shortened so much that the whole system has entered into crisis. In addition, if before workers could spend decades in the same job, and even reach retirement age within the same factory or company, at present the labor market is much more dynamic, and forecasts suggest that the freelance worker model will be increasingly popular. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this process with sudden implementations of remote work or home office, which many see as the first step towards greater independence between companies and workers. How will the universe of work be reconfigured and what are retirements expected to look like in the coming decades?

There are many ideas that underlie the concept of retirement. One of them is that after decades of paid work, contributions and tax payments, people deserve to spend the last years of their lives resting, spending their time on recreational activities and leisure. But there are other variables that come into play, and that have aroused controversy or discussion throughout the ages. One of these aspects is the age that is set as a limit: that is, up to what age men and women shall work in order to retire, or what is the age up to which people are considered useful in terms of labor productivity. This age has moved forward over the years, in parallel also with an increase in life expectancy and with the need to increase income from social security funds. In fact, most analysts propose raising the retirement age as the easiest way to make the system more solvent.