22% average country wide Overall growth in the 65 and older population, higher cost of living, and various social factors have led to a growing share of older adults in the American workforce.
New Jersey, North Dakota, & Maryland over 30% of seniors working.
About a quarter of working retirement-age adults are self-employed, according to census data.
Some older workers choose to remain employed for a sense of purpose, identity, or to keep their routine intact. Additionally, older adults today tend to be healthier overall compared to the past, allowing them to remain in the workforce longer.
For others, this decision came out of financial necessity. According to the Federal Reserve, in 2022 only 51% of American adults 65 to 74 had a retirement account. For adults 75 and older, this figure was even lower, at 42%.
Itâs is the economy, Stupid, of the blue collar working class folk.
Globalization in the 1990âs and early 2000âs destroyed the economic situation of blue collar workers as factories were shipped to China. That caused the voter revolt in 2016. The resulting regime provided little in relieve to the blue collar working class, though elites were rewarded with good stock market returns. That regime was kicked to the curb in 2020. The new regime had significant inflation when compared to previous low inflation climate. That regime was kicked to the curb.
I doubt there is much faith in the new regime. The election results now are just an expression of âtossing the bums out of officeâ.
I can foresee a future where no president will last more than 1 term if the âdeplorable pieces of garbage sitting at home clutching their Bibles and gunsâ are not appeased economically somehow as they make up enough votes to decide an election.
And a lot of people whose employer stayed in the US saw their retirement benefits simply taken away. Even the union shop at Boeing saw their defined benefit pension taken away ten years ago.
âPlan Steveâ to limit SS benefits to only people too feeble and broken up to continue working, regardless of age, would be making official what is currently reality for some people.
Some twenty years ago, people observed what was happening in the US, and said â1984 was not intended as a how to manualâ.
Several years before that, a luminary on Bubblevision, or was it FNN, said âin a perfect world, you would die the day you receive your last paycheckâ. There is definitely a cohort out there that thinks Proles should work until they drop. The various iterations of âPlan Steveâ, show how such ideology could be structured so draconian policies can be made to sound reasonable, and the advance warning of âPlan Steveâ helps us recognize it when it comes.
You might suspect the end of pension plans is one reason many continue to work. Defined benefit pensions made employer responsible for finances. Pension was an issue in the Boeing strike.
Defined contribution, ie 401k plans, put financing in the hands of the individual. And in reality feeds them to various financial agents who seem more interested in their profits than doing what is best for clients.
Hence, rather than generous pension plans that reward length of service, now employees are on their own and often donâ t have enough to retire.
And, when Congress tried to hold those financial agents to a fiduciary standard, the agents howled about being so burdened in how they handled their clientâs money, so the legislation failed. Some years ago, employees of Honda America sued, contending their 401k was abusive, as the skim taken by the managers was so high, and the performance of the funds were so low. iirc, the suit failed. iirc, while the fundâs performance was poor, and costs high, the funds were run by the same company that managed the 401k, so the 401k manager was self dealing, to increase the skim.
No question that Wall Street and the financial community have a powerful lobby. Voters should ask for better. But the issue is rarely mentioned at election time.
And where do those campaign contributions come from?
That is secret. In the several cases of proxy proposals requiring management to disclose who they bribe, why, and how big the bribe was, managementâs response is always that that information is none of the shareholderâs business.
Also another reason: Basically, voters said they distrust Democrats. And they are correct. Wages dropped in 2022-2023, food prices increased at historically large rates, borrowing costs jumped, large swaths of the safety net were cut, and none of these were reflected in the inflation statistics that economists use to judge how the economy is. Itâs a difficult for most Democrats to hear this reality, because theyâve been told endlessly by economists and experts how great things are. So one conclusion I heard all over the place is that doing good things doesnât bring political support, when the real conclusion is that a lot of busywork that doesnât affect reality on the ground doesnât bring political support.
GDP and unemployment figures continue to say the economy is doing well.
But the consumer/voter sees high grocery and gas prices and thinks otherwise.
Voters seem not to appreciate what it would be like if unemployment hit 8%.
We have successfully made it through the Covid crisis. Voters should appreciate that accomplishment. But griping is much more fun.
Media could do a better job letting people know how bad it could have been. The econ news is too boring. And apparently does not play on social media where many get their ânews.â
Why should they? Going from 4% to 8% unemployment would directly affect only 4% of the country. High inflation affects everyone. Itâs no surprise which thing voters dislike more.
Democrats counted on voters being happier about high growth/low UP than they were upset about higher inflation. They were wrong. They tried to convince voters that the way they prioritized the good and bad aspects of the economy was wrongâŚwhich I think made things worse.
They overlearned the lessons of the Obama-era stimulus package - which might have been too small to kick the economy into the highest gear, but also didnât kickstart inflation.
I would argue that the additional 4% unemployed ripples through the economy with reduced spending, etc. Hence the effect is much larger. Economists probably know how much more. I would guess 5x.
Yes, the 2008 stimulus was inadequate. So this time they were more generous and set off inflation. Next time the experts will have better ideas. When to stop. How to trim or limit the impact. Perhaps targets somewhere in the middle.
In some areas they have not yet decided how to spend govt recovery funds.
Still less than 100%, though. There may not have been an alternative Goldilocks landing that had a combination of growth, UP, and inflation that voters liked. They might have been mad at Biden no matter what he did. But a âless badâ economy still isnât as good as an economy with solid growth, low UP, and low inflation - which is what voters remembered from the Before Time in the PrePandemic Long Long Ago.
A big structural problem that Democrats need to internalize. Weâre not in the 1930âs any more. Congress canât pass a big public works spending package and expect groundbreakings six months later. A big public works/infrastructure bill isnât going to result in actual job sites for a few years (or longer) after its adopted. They didnât learn that from Obamaâs âshovel-readyâ list back in the day, and if Biden expected to get a boost from the infrastructure bill he was mistaken.
I didnât say no one would notice - of course they would. Just like people noticed inflation. The question is which scenario would upset people more.
The Administration chose to go with a larger stimulus than after the Great Recession, which was expected to bring unemployment down much faster - but faced warnings from economists that it was so large as to create significant inflationary pressures. After the fact, the SF Federal Reserve analysis found that the ARP stimulus package added about 3 percentage points to inflation - which opened up the Administration to a lot of criticism and undercut some of their defensive messaging. Which was echoed when the BBB was coming around later that year.
Neither did Bidenâs, unless you think the stimulus package in the US was responsible for the inflation in Israel, Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Russia, Latvia, Sweden, Netherlands, Turkey, Slovenia, and South Korea.
Maybe, just maybe it was âsupply chainsâ which gave corporations an excuse to goose prices to the point where they reported record profits for quarter after quarter for extracting more dollars from consumers than their costs went up?
I know itâs fruitless to try to explain this to people, But whenever I ask someone to explain how Bidenâs policies caused inflation in England, Canada, Germany, France, and nearly every other country on the planet they just look at me with a blank stare.
The San Francisco Fed begs to differ with you. They found that the ARP was responsible for about 3 points of the elevated inflation:
(discussed here):
At the time, there was still some debate about the size of the increase in inflation due to the ARP - but general consensus that the ARP caused inflation to be higher than it otherwise would be.
It was not an either/or situation; there were both supply chain issues (which the Fed characterized as transitory) and fiscal stimulus pressure.
Looking at the chart posted, it shows Greece at much higher inflation increases than the US. However, the time periods compared are the first quarters of 2020 and 2022, both of which had massive distortions â the covid crash and the Ukraine invasion.
Instead, letâs compare the CPIs for December 2019 and December 2021.
