Is retiring early unpatriotic?
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http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/RetirementandWills/RetireEarly/IsRetiringEarlyUnpatriotic.aspx
Type of Content: Article By Bankrate.com August 6, 2008/ By staying on the job longer, boomers could help spur the economy and ease America's worker shortages, the Social Security mess and the national debt. Want to do something truly patriotic to help preserve the American way of life? Don't retire. At least not yet. That's the advice of Andrew Yarrow, a vice president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization Public Agenda and the director of its Washington, D.C., office. Yarrow urges the nation's 78 million baby boomers to forgo traditional or early retirement and work for a few more years, for their own sake and the good of the country. * Talk back: Does delaying retirement make sense to you? If boomers all turn in their keys at age 55, 62 or 65 and head for the Tuscan hills, that great sucking sound you'll hear is untold amounts of taxpayer dollars being leached from the economy. That is money heirs will have to replace or do without. It's an act Yarrow calls "profoundly selfish and unpatriotic." "The argument for working longer is not just about people working to pay more taxes. It's about people working to have more income and wealth themselves, to save for their own lives and their children and grandchildren," says Yarrow, who is also a professor of U.S. history at American University in Washington and the author of "Forgive Us Our Debts: The Intergenerational Dangers of Fiscal Irresponsibility." * Strategies for your retirement plan "This is an intergenerational issue," he says. "This idea of 'getting what's mine as soon as possible' really doesn't think about future generations." Yarrow says that when people work longer, they not only continue to pay taxes and produce additional goods and services to spur the economy, but also slow the growth of the national debt. The debt currently stands at $9.3 trillion and is largely driven by rising Medicare and Social Security costs. Working longer would also be a gracious way to begin to deal with the elephant in our collective living room: the Social Security mess. "If you retire at 62, you may live another third of your life in retirement," Yarrow says. "Maybe that's right for some people, but a lot of able-bodied Americans could contribute to their employer, their society, the economy, themselves and their children for at least a few more years." Although the 1983 reforms by the Greenspan Commission gradually nudged up the age for full Social Security benefits by a year or two, our increasing longevity continues to dog the program. Economist and actor Ben Stein says a change is going to come. "That retirement date is for sure going to be pushed way, way later," says Stein, the author of "Yes, You Can Still Retire Comfortably!" "I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years that date were 70 years old, given the fact that people are more vigorous in their old age, generally speaking." Stein also expects the cap on Social Security taxes to disappear. "Wealthy people are going to pay much, much, much more tax," he says. "The 6% tax is not just going to stop at $90,000 (income). It's going to go up to $1 million or several million. That's going to affect this whole situation quite a lot." As for wealthy folks collecting Social Security, Stein says that's headed for extinction, too. "I would guess that in 20 years, there simply is not going to be any Social Security for wealthy people. That will be thoroughly means-tested, and probably should be," Stein says. "I mean, why should very rich people get Social Security? More and more, the whole program will be skewed toward helping poor and close-to-poor people and ignoring people who are already well-to-do." Continued: Not retiring Read »
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Joined the Navy. Invested my bonuses in MSFT, CSCO, INTC. Bailed out of those just before Y2K.
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The auto companies were I worked have been cutting jobs for years. They're happy to see people retire, because they're going broke and shipping all the jobs overseas for cheaper labor.
Retiring, in theory opens, up a job for a young person just entering the job market. I say "in theory" because the jobs are just leaving the country anyway.
"If millions of Americans worked five more years and retired at 67, the added income would provide about $800 billion in additional tax revenue and reduce benefit costs by at least $100 billion in 2045, according to a 2006 Urban Institute study." Sounds like the author wants us to be enslaved for 5 more years to support a corrupt social security system. Let him work another 50 years if he wants but let others quit when they think its time.
It wont matter, for there wont be ANY jobs for anyone to retire from. Unless of course things change.