Today I opened my first retirement account, a Roth IRA with $250 in an index fund. It feels great! It's been a goal of mine to start one before I turn 24. But it's having me thinking really long and really hard about how things will be like when I retire. For some reason, it feels like the investment I made is under qualitatively different circumstances than what previous generations were under. Now, I don't mean to sound arrogant, I know that a generation or two before me faced an existential threat of nuclear holocaust in an upfront and immediate way that maybe we aren't dealing with similarly. Though I'd argue that potential is still very much on the table. But everyone agrees the there will be some calamity regarding all the climate change. The population growth. Dwindling resources. Do you think that in 40 years we will still be operating under the same economic system we operate with today? Will my piddly investment have grown any? Will there be a recognizable society to retire into?
Every generation has it's challenges. I congratulate you on the IRA, it's good to plan ahead using the information we have rather than speculation. I wish I would have started mine at 24 and not 32.Will there be a recognizable society to retire into?
Yes. "Every generation thinks it's the last, thinks it's the end of the world".
Thank you tng. A very small start. :) I agree that every generation has its challenges, unique to them and seemingly greater than the last's. And I would even say that the next generation may feel the climate change crisis more acutely than we feel it now (for many today it's still too abstract). But if I'm not mistaken, my index fund only grows if the market grows overall. And wouldn't this ever increasing growth be the first thing that had to go to address climate change?
I think that we are near a tipping point where renewable energy is going to have a better cost/utility ratio than fossil fuels. While the infrastructure and the industries that run on fossil fuels still represents the majority, we can see that north european countries (think : Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland) finds a way with renewable. With the development of competitive companies like Tesla and Solar City, it's going to be a slow change, but I think it's going to move in the right direction. In the long run, sustainable growth should be the norm.
I hope! I recall hearing somewhere that Solar City's wildest estimates of solar cell technology penetration didn't predict how popular the service is today.
Sometime in the next 10 to 20 years there will be another 60's I guarantee it. After that probably a return to normalcy. http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/insight-overview.html
Like The Handmaid's Tale and with looser restriction on labor. I base this on the ridiculous internet bullshit that has grown both SJWs and the Red Pill, who will inevitably win and the inexplicable popularity of the free market and Libertarianism among not just Internet young people but the likes of NPR contributors. I hope I'm wrong but I will guarantee the solvency of your 401k in any dystopic patriarchy because fucking with your money is far worse than fucking with who you can fuck.
I would agree with you in the sense that what the market has going for it is that everyone with power has a stake in maintaining the status quo. What unites the different political parties, the Koch brothers and the Clintons, the 0.01% with the 1% (and I'd argue the top 80% even) is maintaining the current capitalistic political economy. Although everyone seems to be at odds with one another, it would be a sight to behold all them united together to preserve a system recognizable to everyone who bought into it.
I think we're swinging towards a willful ignorance of why market restrictions and unions became necessary because of the success of those programs and also a focus on the rights of the consumer since we all consume so damn much. It's a new gilded age that has no respect for workers rights and a strange bottom up defense of companies like Amazon who are shitty to their workers but seem to provide an invaluable service to the consumer