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OH MY FUCKING GOD I THOUGHT THIS WAS A SHITPOST THIS IS A REAL ARTICLE
The Economist is truly awful. Just deep throating capitalism in every article.
It’s kinda funny watching neoliberal zealots try to rationalise how their economic system eating itself is actually a good thing.
Well, kinda funny in a you’d-cry-if-you-didn’t-laugh way, since we’re all in it
My favorite was watching Chris Matthew’s lose his shit when Bernie won California. Literally cried on air and for some reason was also antisemetic?? Anywho would love to see more of the former from them.
All we can hope is that China will be a better superpower than the US was 🤷♂️ the collapse of the west seems inevitable.
What makes you think china won’t collapse along with them? Our economies are tied at the hip and they are sitting on a massive debt bomb with their real estate woes.
They already resolved the real estate issue, without any crisis. And you might not know cause this isn’t news in the US, but China has been massively offloading all its US debt and dollar reserves. They are preparing to decouple, the US has been threatening to do it for so long. But the fact is, the US and the West will suffer much more than China. They are pivoting to a service and tech economy, and will become the new US of a new “global south” pole.
The image that China is a “manufacturing” hub for the west is super outdated.
Tankies gonna tankie.
They already resolved the real estate issue, without any crisis
Nope. Most definitely not. Never heard of Evergrande have you?
This is bait
Tbf I wouldn’t really expect much from a newspaper going by “the economist”
Bartleby is satirical
Oh thank god
Is it? I found this page and nothing indicates it’s satirical at first glance (and no way I’m registering to read that).
“Thoughts on management and the world of work, in the spirit of the “scrivener” of Herman Melville’s 1853 novel” from https://www.economist.com/bartleby
Even there, though, nothing explicitly states it’s satire. I found the column’s introduction and even there it doesn’t seem ironic at all.
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When my Italian ancestor became a naturalized US citizen 5 years too late back in the late 1800s and now I can’t get an EU passport
I’m fine! I can get citizenship elsewhere! My father was a naturalized American citizen! He came from… England. Fuck.
solution: learn hungarian (that place is a shithole but it works to get eu citizenship)
Impossible fucking language though, isn’t it? One of my colleagues is natively Hungarian and even he says he doesn’t like speaking his language because of how hard it is.
I probably shouldn’t extrapolate from a single data point, but that’s all that I know about it
At least you’re aware you’re extrapolating from single data point. That’s more than most.
Thank god my great-great-great-father lived in bumfuck nowhere and never bothered naturalising. Living in Europe while it lasts really is nice…
What is that cutoff?
Bro I’m gonna retire next fucking year YEET THAT CAREER the whole idea of working to make someone else money is DUMB buh bye
uh oh, sounds like someone’s got a case of the Mondays
I believe you’d get you’d get your ass kicked for saying something like that, man.
Start your own business then…
Have you considered just being born rich?
Why don’t you mind yours and let them enjoy their retirement rather than taking on unnecessary debt and awful hours to compete in a market designed to benefit megacorps over small businesses regardless of all the empty rhetoric from both parties?
Lordy, say one thing that doesn’t toe the line, and people get uppity real fast.
Maybe it’s less a line to be toed and more your utter tonedeafness. Also, “uppity” is perhaps not the best word choice since that’s usually used as a racist and/or classist dog whistle…
Aaaaangry people angry.
On a lighter note, how do you make your coffee?
And following up on that tangent, how do you like your coffee?
Or, you know, enjoy retirement.
Maybe you want to work your ass off until you die. Not everyone does.
Pleasure cruises, golf and tracing the family tree seem like cherry picked bad examples.
What my retirement is shaping up to look like:
- Steam backlog with over a thousand games
- Dozens of board games
- Card games
- Gigs worth of TTRPG PDFs
- Gigs of Audiobooks
- Terabytes of TV and Movies
- Snowboarding
- Skateboarding
- Mountain biking
- Off-Grid Van Life
- Learning guitar
- Learning electronic music production
I dunno. I suspect I won’t miss office politics, stressed clients and the rest much.
EDIT:
I forgot to add “painting table top miniatures” and “modding guitars” to the list. Here is a Washburn I modded into a rubber bridge.
Retirement home Halo 3 LAN
Nope. For me it will be a retirement home Unreal Tournament LAN. Instagib!!
I don’t know if my old ass will have the reflexes for 90’s shooters
Dont sell yourself short. I (50) joined a lobby a few months back and I didn’t fully suck.
I’m already bad now, lol.
Unless you plan to retire very early, you should try to learn guitar long before retirement. Learning something, especially music, is much harder when you get older.
I get that you’re trying to be helpful, but playing the guitar well isn’t the goal. It’s ok that it is more difficult to learn as you get older, the point is to enjoy the learning. It’s unhelpful to discourage anyone at any stage of life from learning to play a new instrument or learn a new skill. Enjoy the process when you are free to take all the time you need.
I agree. I have taught myself to play many instruments in my life. I can’t play any of them well, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to learn how to play a new musical instrument. Sure, I can’t pick up a saxophone right now and sound like John Coltrane, but I know all the essentials of how to play a saxophone, and if I spent a couple of weeks at it, I could probably do some basic, but listenable, jazz on it. With a guitar, I can’t pick it up and play like Jimi Hendrix, but I can play chords and sing along with them. I’ve learned a lot of other instruments at a very amateur level because the joy wasn’t in learning to play them well, it was in learning to play them.
Load of bullshit. You can learn guitar at any age.
I have a friend who is very happily spending his retirement wargaming- playing games, inventing games, painting models and writing and self-publishing books on wargaming. He seems extremely satisfied.
Yep. I forgot to add “painting miniatures” to the list.
Some of his miniatures are super miniature too. Like a quarter the size of Warhammer miniatures. And he does a very good job of painting their little Napoleonic uniforms or whatever.
Not necessarily, those are all things lots of people get pleasure out of, I even like to research my family tree from time to time and I’m nowhere close to retirement yet lmao
Lots of, but not the majority. They could have picked many other things that would seem fun for much larger groups of people, but that would be counterproductive for trying to convince you to work forever.
edit: note that I live on a vacation destination for golf and cruises, and this is still my impression.
Yeah guys, everyone knows that not being sleep deprived, burnt out, and on the verge of mental and/or physical collapse is super boring
You can do all of those things when retired as well.
How do you know your living if you are not wishing to die every second?
Guys be careful! You don’t want to be bored instead of burnt out, frustrated, taken advantage of, and bored.
I got a taste of early “retirement” thanks to Covid. Being unemployed can be stressful, and having less money is also not great, but god it was amazing.
It hurt my finances a bunch, but it changed something in me for the better, and it changed my perspective on my career. Work is still important to support myself and my family, but it is not part of my identity and self worth.
Going months without my family, pets, and hobbies is simply not an option. But going months without work would be great to do again, if the money were not an issue. And I really like my new position and the company!
The more practical version of that is: fuck long hours, stress, and fighting for a promotion to managing or whatever. I’d get a bit more money but enjoy my life less.
I would never trust a publication that doesn’t use the Oxford comma.
Ill be honest, I’ve seen people (mostly family) that work their ass off to retire and once retiring they basically give up. They don’t take care of themselves, exercise or do anything mentally stimulating. Just watching the news and tv then doing the bare minimum to stay alive.
Because of that their health is very poor and they physically cannot do much and honestly seem to live a pretty miserable life.
They also have lots of chronic pain from working so hard that affects them in retirement. My mom worked in a chair for 12 hours, 60 hours a week and has severe chronic pain from sitting. Being out of shape she can’t stand for very long and chronic pain means she can’t sit very long, she has to spend most of her life in bed.
Personally I believe it’s the best to live life now and have a “soft” retirement, reducing days and hours worked as you age. Human biology is made to work (physically and mentally) and the lack of it degrades our bodies and health.
So It’s technically “never retiring” but personally I think it’s the better option.
Hobbies volunteering, travel, or whatever else you feel like doing other than grinding 9-5 for Mr. Johnson is a better option.
You can still have a very succesful retirement but just shift that working energy to yourself. Take up some hobbies and work on them often. Go hiking, cycling, skiing, or paddling. Spend more time with the family, maybe even moving in to help raise grandkids if space allows.
Retirement does not equal sitting on your ass the rest of your life, that sounds more like a mental illness.
I could be wrong, but I think the point that @weeeeum was making is that by the point you retire, your body and mind are so wrecked from having been overworked for 30+ years that ‘just go outside’ is an agonizing prospect. Yeah, if you make it to that point and can still go outside and do fun stuff then great. But if you retire at 65, are male, and American, then you’re retiring at the average healthy life expectancy for your group and on average have about a decade of declining health to ‘look forward to’. Chart
Yes, this is what I meant exactly. My mom has the aforementioned chronic pain from working 60 a week for like 20 years, and my dad had a stroke, partial blindness and high blood pressure after being so stressed at his work. My grandpa is nearly deaf from his time on an aircraft carrier in the Navy to get his GI bill. My great uncle died from asbestos exposure (from the Navy), for his GI bill and never saw retirement at all. Everyone aspired to retire early with tons of cash but ended up ruining their bodies or outright dying.
Instead of looking for a cutoff point to “finally live life”, we should work comfortably and progressively easier as we age, mind and body intact.
A lot of that can be attributed to poor lifestyle choices as well, like smoking, alcohol, drugs, or inactive lifestyles. Some of that can certainly be attributed to too much work, poor conditions and low wages, but humans can certainly be healthy past 65.
And even if people are too sick to enjoy themselves past 65, I don’t see how working longer is better than retiring in that state which is what the article ultimately wants.
I agree that human bodies need mental and physicial stimulation.
Work is often onesided by the end of a career one is burned out on one and uncomfortable with the other.
Your idea is an improvement but i see no reason why producing economic value should be the only way one can be actively healthy.
Many people struggle to staying fit, to make full healthy meals because of theid work/life balance, this is return has an effect on how normally is shaped around our children who lack healthy examples.
Its been shown that when provided with more free time, extra cash. Most people will spend it on improving their health, balance and start builidnf new active habbits based on their own aspirations that can last long into elderhood. Like gardening.
I’m going to try to swallow some shotgun shells if I have to see one more article telling me to work until I die.
Are you currently working? Because if you are, then swallowing shotgun shells now, means that you have technically worked until you died.
The best thing to do is to quit and then go live in a van down by the river. If you can afford a van in this economy.
Convenient, I already own a van. Time to put in my resignation.
I propose a counter article:
Why billionaires should not exist: “Mansions, supercars, megayachts and tax avoidance are not that fulfilling”
Get rid of excess money ? Turns out being extremely rich isn’t that rewarding, especially once everyone knows.
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There are two things I cannot imagine.
1: Ever running out of interesting things to do, hobbies to try, books to read, people to meet, or places to visit.
2: Ever having enough money to be able to not work.
I’ve had the ”if you had infinite money" discussion with tons of people and am absolutely floored at the number of people that say they would get a job just to have something to do or to keep from getting bored. I’m like dude I have .003% of the time I want to do all the dumb shit I want to do. I could never in a million years imagine myself being like “yooo I am soooo bored having unlimited free time and money. I’m gonna go apply at the gas station”
I get the argument for getting a job, though. Here is my perspective: I would find something I could do part te, and that I felt was really useful. I have consideredany times working in a nursing home with elderly people - being able to help them and hopefully even bring them some joy would benefit me, because my personal sense of purpose is tied to collaborating and giving back to the community around me. Plus, it’s the type of job no one wants to do; if money weren’t an issue, and I didn’t have to put in 40+ hours a week, I would be happy to pick it up.
Exactly. I wouldn’t be working in some office job; I’d be volunteering my time to give back to the community, keep me active, and maybe make some friends. All part of keeping from becoming a weird hermit, which is my natural instinct.
I already own more books, movies, music, and video games than I will ever complete before I die, based on current trajectories. Now if I didn’t have to work…
This makes me sad… mostly because it describes me perfectly.
I know right! I’m working part time at my university and I really like my job, but I didn’t realize the best part until December came along and I had a whole month off. I’m sure it’d be even more appreciated by someone who was working full time or had kids at home.
Self-fulfillment is for suckers!
If I get bored of that then I’ll just make my own business which doesn’t have to be profitable, since it will just be enjoyable and a way to waste my time, rather than work for rich assholes.
Amen. Make bank and then check out to putter.
This makes the most sense to me. I need something. My field is in dire need of more people so I’m not terribly concerned about taking someone’s job, but I’m also a long way from retiring, and who knows maybe the world won’t exist in 30 years.
Anyway, when I have periods of slow work (independent contractor), I feel like my motivation suffers. When I have regular work, I’m also more on at home, cooking, cleaning, etc. When I don’t have my work to keep my focus, I lose focus totally. Definitely a me problem, but my solution is to just do my job and things work out. Maybe it’s a stress thing.
Have a nice day!
One poll this year found that almost one in three Americans say they may never retire. The majority of the nevers said they could not afford to give up a full-time job, especially when inflation was eating into an already measly Social Security cheque. But suppose you are one of the lucky ones who can choose to step aside. Should you do it? …
But can anything truly replace the framework and buzz of being part of the action? You can have a packed diary devoid of deadlines, meetings and spreadsheets and flourish as a consumer of theatre matinees, art exhibitions and badminton lessons. Hobbies are all well and good for many. But for the extremely driven, they can feel pointless and even slightly embarrassing.
That is because there is depth in being useful. And excitement, even in significantly lower doses than are typical earlier in a career, can act as an anti-ageing serum. Whenever Mr Armani is told to retire and enjoy the fruits of his labour, he replies “absolutely not”. Instead he is clearly energised by being involved in the running of the business day to day, signing off on every design, document and figure.
Who exactly is this article being written for?
Clearly, it’s not written towards anyone working the average job. It presupposes that your job must be the most fulfilling and useful thing you could do.
It even calls out tech professionals as retiring early. But how many programmers can’t think of a more useful or fulfilling open source project to work on than what they do at their day job?
I feel like I would probably spend much of my time contributing to existing open source code or try making games if I did not have to work for a living. I do like what I am doing but when it becomes the only thing I am doing, its not so great.
Have you tried alternating that with a run in the park
I don’t like running, I go to the gym once a week or so mostly for health benefits
