Many articles about retirement in the WSJ don’t resonate because the retirees tend to have careers like being a CFO of a small company or some kind of consultant. This article is interesting because it has plenty of actual data from a 34-year survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
NYT: What’s the matter with Ohio?
These East coast elitist dickheads can’t be very bright because they keep trying to win us over with these articles about why we are so dim.
If you aren’t familiar with him, Paul Krugman is the George Costanza of Nobel prize winning economists. Krugman could take the opinion that was the exact opposite of everything he thinks, and he would be more correct and respected.
For many years, Ohio has been thought of as a bellwether state: With rare exceptions, whoever won Ohio in a presidential election won the nation as a whole. But in 2020, Donald Trump won Ohio by about eight points even as Joe Biden led the national popular vote by more than four points and, of course, won the Electoral College vote.
This Financial Times article on 10 trends in 2024 is worth reading because FT is pretty balanced and insightful. To summarize:
Some of these are continuations of trends that have been ongoing for a few years, but eventually, some of them will hit big.
Biden putting $10 billion into high speed passenger trains.
This is another bad idea that we will have to spend a trillion dollars on before we give up.
I’ve ridden the Shinkansen in Japan and the LGV in France, and enjoyed both. The US is not Japan or France. America has a well developed rail system, and we use it to carry freight.
There is a high speed passenger rail project in California. The cost is estimated to be a quarter-billion dollars per mile. Biden could spend our money to put down 40 miles of high speed rail or he could have one nuclear power plant built.
WSJ: What Friends Can Teach About Money
WSJ: What Friends Can Teach About Money
Interesting article about how Gen Z and Millennials learn about managing money. The author does seem to have missed a few things.
A friend offered to pick up the whole tab on her credit card, “for the points.” At the time, six years ago, “for the points” meant nothing to Saint-Vil, now a 30-year-old planning manager in Brooklyn, so he pressed for more details. They lingered over the dim sum meal as a larger conversation unfolded about annual percentage rates, credit-card debt, payment schedules and more.
This website posts the results of an interesting poll conducted by Harris of 2000 adults.
This chart shows at what age a generation feels that a person can retire given the current economic environment. The site compares the retirement age from the poll know compared to the retirement age from a poll taken a year ago. Clearly, every generation feels the economic environment now is significantly worse than it was a year ago. I’d be curious if this information exists for the year before the Covid shut down.
Gen Z (1996 to 2012) are very early in their careers, so may be in college or unsure about careers. The survey was only people over 18, so kids in school didn’t count. Perhaps they expect that in decades, the general trend is favorable. I, and probably they, don’t know anyone who has retired at 49 or 54 years old. It’s interesting that the year slipped 5 years. That indicates a lack of confidence in the long-term trend.
As the generations get older, the change from a year ago is smaller. That makes sense in that there are fewer uncertainties with few decades to go to retirement.
According to Gallup, in 2022, the average age to retire was 61 years old. Boomers (1946 to 1964) are 59 to 77 years old. Almost all of the Boomers should be retired. It’s not at all clear why the expected year of retirement is so far off. The survey doesn’t say, but perhaps only working people responded. Any Boomer not currently retired may feel that retirement isn’t likely in the near future.
This website posts the results of an interesting poll conducted by Harris of 2000 adults.
It’s interesting that the generations agree on the required annual salary to be happy, with the exception of the Millennials. Boomers (1946 to 1964) are at or nearing retirement, so may be making that much or stable in retirement. Gen Z (1996 to 2012) are very early in their careers, so may be in college or unsure about careers. The survey was only people over 18, so kids in school didn’t count. Gen Z has an amazingly realistic annual salary requirement for people who may still be on their parent’s health insurance and cell phone plan.
What went wrong with the Millennials (1981 to 1996)? They aren’t making anywhere near the salary they require to be happy. Way off. The oldest, at 42 years old are mid-career, and should have a good idea what is realistic. The youngest, at 27 years old, should be early in a career, but haven’t bought a house. They should be developing some sense of what’s coming up, but apparently not. At that age, it’s difficult to imagine that something amazing will happen to significantly increase their financial situation. Are they all resigned to never being happy?
That website has many other interesting results.
WaPo: What We Know About Aliens
It came from space, hurtling at tremendous speed: a mystery object, reddish, rocky, shaped like a cigar. Its velocity was so extreme it had to have come from somewhere far away, in the interstellar realm. The astronomers in Hawaii who spotted it in 2017 named it ‘Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.”
Don’t forget the unexplainable Wow! signal detected by Ohio State in 1977.
WSJ: Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs
WSJ: Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs
EUGENE, Ore.—Soon after Oregon became the first state to decriminalize all drugs in 2020, Officer Jose Alvarez stopped arresting people for possession and began giving out tickets with the number for a rehab helpline.
People sprawled on sidewalks and using fentanyl with no fear of consequence have become a common sight in cities such as Eugene and Portland. Business owners and local leaders are upset, but so are liberal voters who hoped decriminalization would lead to more people getting help. In reality, few drug users are taking advantage of new state-funded rehabilitation programs.
Anybody could have seen this coming, but somehow, they still think they are smarter than the rest of us. In Econ 100, you learn that people respond to incentives. Remove disincentives to take hard drugs, and more people take hard drugs.
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