Work is the new retirement

[Mr._johngalt]

It would be a "big" seller. I firmly believe that.
No stiff competition and you don't need to blow your wad on inventory. Everyone...........insert your ideas.


I am ready to get back on topic. How about y'all?



JG

 

[laurence]

Well after that "punneling" we better!

Being too young to know, was there a time that people really just worked and spent everything they earned, safe in the knowledge their company would provide a pension? I know there were particular jobs out there like that, but was that an all ecompassing mentality back in the day? I know people can paint a rosier picture of things than really existed. Several of you hit it on the head, we Gen X'ers think we are on our own, no safety net but the one we make. It seems among my peers we have a slow stratification as the "winners" pull away and the "losers" fall back. I have had some friends say they plan to work until they die, resigned to their fate at 30!

 

[charlie]

Laurence, there use to be a time when long
loyalty between employer and employee was
more the norm, but I don't believe that long
pensions were normal simply because of
shorter life spans. Maybe for a few years after
WWII your premise was true for a few but certainly
not the many. Only a few generations ago we
were an agrarian society and depended on family
to support us when we were old and worn out.
We had bigger families then and were not nearly
as mobile.

Cheers,

Charlie

 

[laurence]

You know, I was just thinking about that. How people use to measure wealth by landowning, you were secure if you had plenty of farmland to grow food on and trade with. Thoughts are floating in my mind of the average Joe going from serf to sharecropper, to farmowner, to industrial revolution wage slave, wealth being less tangible now than ever. I'm just babbling, but I feel on the edge of an epiphany on our relationship with the world around us. In fact the only reason I'm writing this semi-nonsensical post is I'm hoping someone throw out there own thoughts that might trigger my brain, I feel like I have a splinter in my mind (Matrix reference).

 

[unclemick]

There was a dude(Kelso?) a long while back(1940's ) wanted to make everybody a capitalist - shareholder in the business - not just a wage slave. People's Capitalism or something was the name of his book.

 

[Michael]

...wage slave...

The first factories in the US had a hard time getting farmers to work in them, so they obtained children who were wards of the state (orphanages) to man the machines. Of course, once the machines took over farming, they had no choice but to move to the big city and work in the factories.

 

[unclemick]

Louis O. Kelso: 1913 - 1991, "father of the ESOP" , according to one review of his stuff on Amazon, pretty turgid as a writer. ESOP the world including public employee's - ??make everybody a capitalist??

I'll stick with the Norwegian widow! Heh, heh, heh.

Of course if you are young - to the baricades! Shares in hand or something like that.

 

[laurence]

Well it's a place for me to start. You ever get that though, it's like a word on the tip of your tongue, only it's an idea on the edge of your mind. Maybe it's just the salsa I had last night.

But it all just circles around to why we want to (or have) ER'd. Self determination. Others read westerns or play video games to pretend they are bold individuals who are in control of their destiny. We prefer the real thing!

 

[ESRBob]

Laurencewill,
I'll take a jab at the splinter in your brain --

It's all about people having enough imagination to think about what they really want to do in their lives. Work becomes like an addiction, a crutch, a choice unconsciously or consciously made because it's too hard to peer through the fog and figure out what you'd actually do with your life if you had it back. Or too scary to contemplate.

Of course people who have figured out the ER way of life, and are just needing some more years to work the plan, are exempted from this description.

THere is another point, though, too. Work isn't always dreadful, in fact sometiimes it can make you feel like you are accomplishing something useful and satisfying. So some people hang in there working looking for that feeling. I think even ERs can have some of that feeling with a carefully chosen paid or unpaid avocation.

One other point -- I used to be aware that I would overspend on vacation and come back to work feeling, "at least I know why I'm here this month -- to pay for all that vacation", and it somehow seemed to take my mind off what I didn't like about being at work. Sort of like a co-dependency or something -- more and more I think of the work-and-overspend thing as a national addiction.

ER's have looked the beast in the eye and said, 'no thanks'.