OK, we know that property, sales and income tax revenues are dropping faster than a stone tossed off the leaning Tower of Pisa; cutbacks in towns and states are expected except for the glimmer of a maybe from Mr. Obama’s bailout package. We know that individual private retirement plans – like the wonderful 401(k)s – are tumbling off the cliff like that car at the end of the movie Thelma and Louise, if you remember that far back. We see our lifestyle deteriorating, taste the smell of hot dogs-in-lieu-of-a-NY-steak and see the value of the dirt beneath our homes descend deeper that a cry of Hades far below… but what are we missing?
Long term inflation as the dollar tanks (maybe with a few dozen other major currencies) in the distant future, a permanent downward reset in our standard of living and our life expectations? We’re getting’ universal health care, one way or the other, so there’s something out there for the those who have to carry their own health insurance policies, but what about our sons, daughters and grandchildren? What have we left them?
I was thinking, as my self-funded pension plan registered lower than a thermometer jammed into a snow bank on a frigid day, that I probably would never retire, that they would have to pry my decomposing body from my office chair before I would relinquish my legal career… and then I thought about what that meant, multiplied across the vast desert of the self-employed, those whose pension plans sank even lower than mine and those in a dwindling universe of un-unionized, unprotected by civil service laws and otherwise hardworking (assuming they still have a job) body of Americans… and their children.
If coots remain at their desks longer, and whole job sectors disappear from view (like who’s going to hire a derivatives trader anyway?!), doesn’t it strike you that, even after this economy starts growing again, promotions will be harder to get, entry level jobs will need to push harder from below, all through the hierarchy of workers above, to dislodge that aging lump of desperation at the top of the structure unwilling to leave, because there ain’t no pension to fall back on!
The young have an even stronger reason to create technology that makes constant retraining a survival skill, one that will pry the wrinkle-cream set from their tenured roosts. Can you teach elderly hounds new tricks? Are there going to be real structures that address this need, and are the “walker ain’t a Texas Ranger” set willing to embrace this reality?
So let me get this straight… we’ve allowed our educational standards to plummet making it hard to get the education to compete with the rest of the world, allowed education costs to push post-secondary education beyond the affordability of oh-so-many, we have incurred and will continue to incur massive governmental deficits that generations to come will have to pay off through higher taxes and reduced standards of living, and we have tanked the very retirement system that allows limping decrepits to move on (and out) and open up job opportunities for the coming generations.
We really can’t have this intergenerational job war going on; we do need to figure out how to use training to move our willing and able population through the work force of the future and prepare our workers for the inevitable phasing out at the legitimate end of a career. Are we just assuming that the future will create new technologies that the next generation will simply take over? But does that make the old world of prunes obsolete so that while they can’t retire, they are now unable to earn money except by slinging hash at the local diner? But maybe the terror of where we are is just too damned powerful to let us think about the “next”… we have to deal with a horrific “now” first. But someday…
I’m Peter Dekom, and I actually am this message… and so are all of you, one way or another!
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