It's almost Mother's Day, so here's some more radical goodness from Mother Jones.
Two articles about retirement security. One about how young folks don't know the difference between a pension and a 401(k) that encourages us to get together and demand better.
And another that uses a sad personal narrative to show us how we got where we are. (And in case you're unaware of where we are, for most people, it's a place where they can't afford to retire.)
I am one of those few people who does actually have a defined benefit pension. But from the looks of a report I got from them the other day, it's clearly not going to be enough to support me in retirement anyway. If that's true for me, what about all the people who don't have pensions?
Great tag line on the second article, by the way: What starts with "f," ends with "k," and means "screw your workers"? That's right--401(k).
By the way, did you know that the song "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" is about Mother Mary Harris Jones? "We'll all have chicken and dumplings when she comes!" Happy Mother's Day!
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It has long amused and chagrined me that the majority of people are more likely to be divided by trivial differences with each other than they are to seize on the obvious commonalities. They could band together and demand a better distribution of the fruits of society in a variety of ways, such as government funded retirement plans; nothing about our form of government would prevent them. But they seldom do unless a crisis occurs, and even then, the results are tepid and never prevent the problems from returning. People seem to prefer to be told, ultimately, why things that would alleviate economic hardship won't work.
I'm a little surprised the articles didn't mention IRAs, in which the government gives tax breaks to anyone who wants to plan for retirement themselves. When given the chance to do so, though, many people won't.
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