From: Fast Company - Thursday Sep 06, 2018 01:33 pm
Why work has failed us: Because no one can afford to retire anymore 
Good morning!
How’s your retirement savings going? If you’re like . . . well, most people, then the answer is probably not great. A depressing 66% of millennials have no money saved for retirement; households close to the end of their working lives have an average of only $21,000 saved. But this is not to blame you: Most people are struggling to afford even their day-to-day expenses, so the idea that anyone would be saving for retirement is largely laughable.
How did we get here? This story—the latest in our series Why Work Has Failed Us, about why jobs aren’t providing people with enough to survive—looks at what happened when companies stopped giving their employees pensions, told everyone to deal with their own savings with 401(k)s, and then stopped paying them enough to save (and stopped matching their contributions). It’s resulted in a top-heavy system where the wealthiest 20% control 75% of the wealth in those retirement accounts and most people don’t have anything beyond their Social Security income (which often puts you at about the poverty line) to live on.
There are some smart solutions to make sure everyone at least has access to a retirement account, but getting enough money in them will require companies to start being far more generous—or we’re going to have to rethink how we, as a society, take care of people once they’ve given their lives to their work.
—Morgan Clendaniel |
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