OH MY FUCKING GOD I THOUGHT THIS WAS A SHITPOST THIS IS A REAL ARTICLE
The Economist is truly awful. Just deep throating capitalism in every article.
It’s kinda funny watching neoliberal zealots try to rationalise how their economic system eating itself is actually a good thing.
Well, kinda funny in a you’d-cry-if-you-didn’t-laugh way, since we’re all in it
All we can hope is that China will be a better superpower than the US was 🤷♂️ the collapse of the west seems inevitable.
Is it? I found this page and nothing indicates it’s satirical at first glance (and no way I’m registering to read that).
“Thoughts on management and the world of work, in the spirit of the “scrivener” of Herman Melville’s 1853 novel” from https://www.economist.com/bartleby
When my Italian ancestor became a naturalized US citizen 5 years too late back in the late 1800s and now I can’t get an EU passport
solution: learn hungarian (that place is a shithole but it works to get eu citizenship)
Impossible fucking language though, isn’t it? One of my colleagues is natively Hungarian and even he says he doesn’t like speaking his language because of how hard it is.
I probably shouldn’t extrapolate from a single data point, but that’s all that I know about it
Bro I’m gonna retire next fucking year YEET THAT CAREER the whole idea of working to make someone else money is DUMB buh bye
Why don’t you mind yours and let them enjoy their retirement rather than taking on unnecessary debt and awful hours to compete in a market designed to benefit megacorps over small businesses regardless of all the empty rhetoric from both parties?
Lordy, say one thing that doesn’t toe the line, and people get uppity real fast.
Pleasure cruises, golf and tracing the family tree seem like cherry picked bad examples.
What my retirement is shaping up to look like:
- Steam backlog with over a thousand games
- Dozens of board games
- Card games
- Gigs worth of TTRPG PDFs
- Gigs of Audiobooks
- Terabytes of TV and Movies
- Snowboarding
- Skateboarding
- Mountain biking
- Off-Grid Van Life
- Learning guitar
- Learning electronic music production
I dunno. I suspect I won’t miss office politics, stressed clients and the rest much.
EDIT:
I forgot to add “painting table top miniatures” and “modding guitars” to the list. Here is a Washburn I modded into a rubber bridge.
Nope. For me it will be a retirement home Unreal Tournament LAN. Instagib!!
Unless you plan to retire very early, you should try to learn guitar long before retirement. Learning something, especially music, is much harder when you get older.
I get that you’re trying to be helpful, but playing the guitar well isn’t the goal. It’s ok that it is more difficult to learn as you get older, the point is to enjoy the learning. It’s unhelpful to discourage anyone at any stage of life from learning to play a new instrument or learn a new skill. Enjoy the process when you are free to take all the time you need.
I have a friend who is very happily spending his retirement wargaming- playing games, inventing games, painting models and writing and self-publishing books on wargaming. He seems extremely satisfied.
Not necessarily, those are all things lots of people get pleasure out of, I even like to research my family tree from time to time and I’m nowhere close to retirement yet lmao
Lots of, but not the majority. They could have picked many other things that would seem fun for much larger groups of people, but that would be counterproductive for trying to convince you to work forever.
edit: note that I live on a vacation destination for golf and cruises, and this is still my impression.
Ill be honest, I’ve seen people (mostly family) that work their ass off to retire and once retiring they basically give up. They don’t take care of themselves, exercise or do anything mentally stimulating. Just watching the news and tv then doing the bare minimum to stay alive.
Because of that their health is very poor and they physically cannot do much and honestly seem to live a pretty miserable life.
They also have lots of chronic pain from working so hard that affects them in retirement. My mom worked in a chair for 12 hours, 60 hours a week and has severe chronic pain from sitting. Being out of shape she can’t stand for very long and chronic pain means she can’t sit very long, she has to spend most of her life in bed.
Personally I believe it’s the best to live life now and have a “soft” retirement, reducing days and hours worked as you age. Human biology is made to work (physically and mentally) and the lack of it degrades our bodies and health.
So It’s technically “never retiring” but personally I think it’s the better option.
You can still have a very succesful retirement but just shift that working energy to yourself. Take up some hobbies and work on them often. Go hiking, cycling, skiing, or paddling. Spend more time with the family, maybe even moving in to help raise grandkids if space allows.
Retirement does not equal sitting on your ass the rest of your life, that sounds more like a mental illness.
I could be wrong, but I think the point that @weeeeum was making is that by the point you retire, your body and mind are so wrecked from having been overworked for 30+ years that ‘just go outside’ is an agonizing prospect. Yeah, if you make it to that point and can still go outside and do fun stuff then great. But if you retire at 65, are male, and American, then you’re retiring at the average healthy life expectancy for your group and on average have about a decade of declining health to ‘look forward to’. Chart
Yes, this is what I meant exactly. My mom has the aforementioned chronic pain from working 60 a week for like 20 years, and my dad had a stroke, partial blindness and high blood pressure after being so stressed at his work. My grandpa is nearly deaf from his time on an aircraft carrier in the Navy to get his GI bill. My great uncle died from asbestos exposure (from the Navy), for his GI bill and never saw retirement at all. Everyone aspired to retire early with tons of cash but ended up ruining their bodies or outright dying.
Instead of looking for a cutoff point to “finally live life”, we should work comfortably and progressively easier as we age, mind and body intact.
A lot of that can be attributed to poor lifestyle choices as well, like smoking, alcohol, drugs, or inactive lifestyles. Some of that can certainly be attributed to too much work, poor conditions and low wages, but humans can certainly be healthy past 65.
And even if people are too sick to enjoy themselves past 65, I don’t see how working longer is better than retiring in that state which is what the article ultimately wants.
I agree that human bodies need mental and physicial stimulation.
Work is often onesided by the end of a career one is burned out on one and uncomfortable with the other.
Your idea is an improvement but i see no reason why producing economic value should be the only way one can be actively healthy.
Many people struggle to staying fit, to make full healthy meals because of theid work/life balance, this is return has an effect on how normally is shaped around our children who lack healthy examples.
Its been shown that when provided with more free time, extra cash. Most people will spend it on improving their health, balance and start builidnf new active habbits based on their own aspirations that can last long into elderhood. Like gardening.