Re:Dow plunges 1000 points
by graeme on Monday February 05, 2018 @11:06PM
(#16314381)
The earnings of the assets are generally like the assets: digital or paper currency, or their equivalents.
You can trade those for things, now. In saving for retirement, you're planning to trade the earnings from those assets for future things made by future workers.
Assuming the economy continues relatively normally, we'll be able to do that when we retire. (I don't think retirement is a ponzi scheme).
But, I do think it's worth considering things from that angle. For example, could everyone do FIRE (financial independence, early retirement)? No. At least, not unless in their efforts they created perpetually working robots to replace everyone who retired.
To put this in other terms, you could say I'm saying "if there aren't enough future workers, the future value of investments will decline, causing retirement shortfalls". Which, again, doesn't make retirement a ponzie scheme. I'm just providing another frame: money can be confusing. It doesn't work in the aggregate the way it does for an individual.
You can trade those for things, now. In saving for retirement, you're planning to trade the earnings from those assets for future things made by future workers.
Assuming the economy continues relatively normally, we'll be able to do that when we retire. (I don't think retirement is a ponzi scheme).
But, I do think it's worth considering things from that angle. For example, could everyone do FIRE (financial independence, early retirement)? No. At least, not unless in their efforts they created perpetually working robots to replace everyone who retired.
To put this in other terms, you could say I'm saying "if there aren't enough future workers, the future value of investments will decline, causing retirement shortfalls". Which, again, doesn't make retirement a ponzie scheme. I'm just providing another frame: money can be confusing. It doesn't work in the aggregate the way it does for an individual.