Work till you dorp

November 10, 2004 4:00 PM

Retirement Reality Check Lazy days for the current generation, mostly, but not for current working stiffs says Allstate. Since more and more states and cities are making homelessness illegal don't ever expect to get off the grind.
posted by billsaysthis (13 comments total)

Or perhaps the title should have been Work till you drop...
posted by billsaysthis at 4:02 PM on November 10, 2004

I'm 37, and barring a miracle (or completing that best-selling novel [a miracle in itself]) don't ever expect to be able to quit working for good.

Thanks a lot, "Greatest Generation".
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:18 PM on November 10, 2004

Don't worry. Trusting social security money to the pyramid scheme market will take care of it.
posted by NewBornHippy at 4:41 PM on November 10, 2004

I'm not worried. I'm one of the wealthy elite. Nyah-nyah!
posted by monju_bosatsu at 4:49 PM on November 10, 2004

I would happily retire today and take a nice fat pension on my solemn honor that come 72 I will head back to the work force with great vim and vigor.
posted by caddis at 5:08 PM on November 10, 2004

I'm an artist. I'll work until I drop dead, because the likelihood of my getting rich, or even putting enough money away to retire on comfortably, is pretty small.

I'm certainly assuming that Social Security will disappear before I'm 67. Which is only 28 years away. Be nice if there's still something left there, but I ain't holding my breath.
posted by zoogleplex at 5:11 PM on November 10, 2004

I've already dorped over here, can I stop working?
posted by kenko at 5:29 PM on November 10, 2004

Kenko, you have my permission for all the good it'll do ya.
posted by billsaysthis at 8:29 PM on November 10, 2004

I'm not worried. I'm one of the wealthy elite. Nyah-nyah! -- monju_bosatsu

Woo Hoo! Let's all retire to Monju's place. I get dibs on the clandestine affair with the gardener! (Ya know, assuming I don't get dorped by the security team.)
posted by dejah420 at 8:37 PM on November 10, 2004

For most of the history of the human race, all people were homeless. Is this the completion of our social evolution begun several thousand years ago with the invention of cities and land rights?

Q. How many people here think they'll never own their own home and will be renting for life?

What then will happen when you are too old to work, and social security has disappeared and you can no longer afford the rent? Can no longer afford healthcare? Can no longer afford to eat? Will poverty become a crime?

Could such a future come about?
posted by Meridian at 2:38 AM on November 11, 2004

I expect we will see some version of the "Work House" laws just as they had in merry old Victorian England. A place where husband was separated from wife and each sent to live in drafty, prison-like structures to starve to death on gruel. Of course they will be expected to work in order to pay for this munificence. In Victorian England, they were forced to walk on treadmills and unpick rope, but in modern America it will be some sort of factory work.

And coming hard on the tails of the Work House will be: Debtors prisons!
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:30 AM on November 11, 2004

If poverty and homelessness are criminalized, aren't we telling poor people that they have no right to exist, and that suicide is the only way to be legally compliant ??

Will the baby boomers be the first generation that accepts off-ing themselves as the normal end stage of life after they can no longer work and their savings run out ??

Shouldn't Pro-Lifers be standing up and shouting about the criminalization of poverty and the looting of social security ?? Me-Fi Pro-Lifers, what say you ??
posted by marsha56 at 8:28 AM on November 11, 2004

I'm guessing Debtor's Prison will be combined with Work House and appear at the same time. Can't pay your bills? Go to prison to work them off!

Good times, good times.

Meridian, I hope someday to own a house, but it will probably be a small one, and to buy it I'll have to move far away from anywhere I can make a decent salary. Good thing I'm handy with fixing stuff and working with my hands... because I'll probably spend my last years doing just that.
posted by zoogleplex at 10:15 AM on November 11, 2004