Getting Old is Serious Business

By SAM URETSKY

“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” — Psalm 90:10 King James Version

On April 13, Gail Collins, in the New York Times, published a column under the heading “How 90 Became the New 60.” Ms. Collins is a wonderfully funny writer when she wants to be, but this was serious. “Today we’re not going to discuss the social-support angle; obviously, many of these folks will need a lot of care. Or the fact that while the old are getting older, overall life expectancy in America has actually been dropping, thanks to guns, drugs and COVID.”

But the social support angle is critically important. The US Census Bureau estimates that by 2060, the number of people 85-plus will have tripled compared with 2017 and the country will have half a million centenarians. Only a week before, the Washington Post reported “Assisted-living homes are rejecting Medicaid and evicting seniors.”

This is hardly a new problem. Joe Glazer wrote his great protest song “Too Old To Work and Too Young To Die” in 1953. Times change. There was a time, and it lasted a long time, when there was a family business and the children followed a trade, as reflected by their surnames. There were farmers, masons, coopers, barbers, and tailors. Smith is still the most common surname in the United States. Now there are many occupations than there were in the past, and more options for choice of occupation. The challenge is that economic conditions are less certain.

On March 27, the Times published a series of charts to help with the choice of college, including one that listed the top universities by income 10 years after graduation. The top two were the California Institute of Technology and MIT. The trouble was that on the 14th, the paper reported “Meta to Lay Off Another 10,000 Workers” and on the 20th “Amazon Plans to Lay Off Another 9,000 Employees” which began “… adding to the 18,000 roles it already cut late last year and this January.” Microsoft, Zoom and other technology companies were also announcing cuts.

While this was going on, the Wall Street Journal (March 31) reported that a reasonably comfortable retirement required a retirement fund of at least $1,000,000 and the Federal Reserve reported that “One-quarter of the non-retired indicate that they have no retirement savings or pension whatsoever. Of the non-retired age 60 and older, 13% have no retirement savings or pension.”

While it’s estimated that the average over-65 family has less than $400k put aside for retirement, the traditional rule of thumb is that you can/should spend no more than 4% of your savings each year. That was the rule as long as you could expect an equal amount of growth in your investments. It lacks something when the inflation rate is hanging around 8%.

Also, while some people might opt to work longer, it can be difficult to find a job after the age of 60, or even 50.

The current proposal for changes in the pension system in France, which has caused riots, is really not that different from the system in the United States except that in France contribution is compulsory – there is no option to start saving later. It is also more generous than Social Security. The riots are over the government’s effort to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, although the US went quietly from 65 to 67. The average duration of unemployment for job seekers ages 55 to 64 was 20.9 weeks in March 2020, compared with an average of 17.5 weeks of unemployment among all workers.

The simple fact is that we need more and better social programs ranging from affordable advanced education to healthcare and retirement. When the Times rated colleges they included a note on economic mobility, “ More students start low-income and end up high-income.” Of the top 10, four were part of the CUNY (City University of New York) system, two were state schools from Texas and two others were state schools from California. Message: stay in school (if you can afford it) and get a good job.

Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sdu01@outlook.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2023

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