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Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
A retirement crisis could be coming. Here's how to prepare
0:00 spk_0 Most of the time that gap, that retirement gap is not the individual's fault. Life happened, our institutions should have anticipated life happened, um, we shouldn't expect everybody to be superhuman. We should have super institutions, not superhuman beings. 0:20 spk_1 Working longer is often described as the best way to secure your retirement, especially if you haven't saved enough. And here to talk with me about that and all things related to retirement is Teresa Ghilarducci. She's a professor at the New School and she's also the author of numerous books, most recently, Work, retire, Repeat. Teresa, welcome. 0:40 spk_0 Uh, hi, hi Bob. Good to see you. 0:42 spk_1 Uh, good to see you as well. Um, so let's start right with the hard questions, I guess. Um, you've argued that the working longer consensus is not a solution, but an insidious problem. So maybe you could elaborate on why this consensus has eroded both the quantity and quality of people's years, older people's years, diminishing their time before death and often leading to increased illness. 1:05 spk_0 Oh yeah, the working along with consensus was, is really a convenient um untruth. The consensus was that, well, if people haven't saved for the last 40 years, you know, when we told them to, at least they haven't we don't have to do anything about it, you know, it's just the problem is on the individual and since everyone is living longer, then people can clearly live and work longer, and since jobs are getting easier, um, then people, all people can work longer. Well, those two things, everyone's living longer and everyone has easier jobs are false and idea that we could all just work longer to make up for retirement savings gaps, you know, is false. Um, some people are living longer, um, I see it in my data sets that people who have stable lives, good jobs, um, stable jobs, in escalating salaries, they often have access to good health they live, they're living longer. That's like people with professional degrees and above. Men have gotten, especially white men have gotten big longevity gains. They um are taking their statins and they stopped smoking. So we have a bigBig average increase pulled up by these white men doing good things, but they've also been lucky because they've had actually the work careers that lead to longer lives and maybe even a choice to live longer. The rest of us, the rest of us are um faced with like flatline longevity. White women's longevity has not um increased, mainly cause they're working more, you know, working actually isn't that good for you and I looked all over the globe for research on this one question. What kinds of people are made healthier if they work into old age over and over again, and almost every week a new study was coming out, um, from the United States, from Denmark, from all over, all over the world, and the conclusion is it depends. If you're part of the you're the politician who makes retirement policies, you're a professor professor who professes about retirement policy, or if you're a financial advisor or a banker or politician who makes policies on work might make you healthier and keep your mind alive. You can control the pace and the content of your work, but about 11% of populations have those kinds of jobs. They're in the Senate, they're in academia, you know, they're in the, the position of making influence. The rest of everybody, you know, 89% of jobs that if they continue them would actually hasten death by um causing more anxiety and cortisol because work and commutes can, especially if you aren't the boss, can create higher levels of cortisol, and when you get older, those higher levels actually hurt your heart in service related jobs who are um working past 60 are especially vulnerable to having their jobs create more illness, more morbidity, and um a shorter lifespan. 4:27 spk_1 Yeah, so Tracy just as a follow up it sort of creates a dilemma, right? Work longer, die sooner, but if I don't work longer, I won't have the financial security to enjoy whatever years I have left. 4:38 spk_0 Well, there you go. Um, there was a New Yorker cartoon that had two people discussing a couple discussing their retirement accounts. You're smiling, so I, I think you saw the cartoon says, and one of the members of the couple says, ah, I got it, we'll take an early death and a late retirement, that actually unfortunately is the rational thing to do, um, oddly, you know, the rational way to think. The problem is, Bob, it's even worse than that. Most people don't have a choice about whether or not they'll be employed in old age. When you drill down on the people who are retired, you know, just take a, go into a room full of retired people and just ask a simple question. Did you retire when you wanted to?You know, did you retire at the age you wanted to, and most of them will say, no, uh, I retired a lot earlier than I thought I, I had to, and there's all sorts of reasons you can make them up health, wealth, layoff, their skills got it, um, you know, were um obsolete because the world of technology, you know, moved past them and there's age discrimination. So most of us don't even have a choice to work longer, even if we don't have enough money to live on in our old age. 5:52 spk_1 Yeah. So Theresa, in our podcast, we try to do two things. We, we like to say that we want this to be someone's first and last stop in their search for retirement now, but we also want to give people actual advice. So given all that you just said is what should someone do who's in thatsituation? 6:07 spk_0 Yeah, so I, um, so an individual faced right now, you know, you're coming into your 50s, you know, early maybe you're in the mid-60s, um, you have to really do some hygiene. You have to look at your own finances and you have to be realistic about how much you need. Um, and then I say assess your budget. I look at my spending every month, you know, it's not, I don't do it every day, but I look at it every month. It it takes now about 20 to 20 minutes to half an um and then I have to add 20% because I don't always count what I spend, you know, I, I, you know, I like to lowball it's sort of like my calorie counts, you know, I really do 20% more than I say I do. Well, I probably spend 10 to 20% more than I do, and then you have to estimate your future retirement income and um subtract 20% from that because people kind of um raises they're going to get, the kind of uh pension income they're going to get, they forget that stock markets go up and down. So you add 20% to your spending, you decrease your retirement income by 20%, and then you look at the gap, right? And you look at that gap and you have and you should look at it without that inner critic saying, oh, I should have done this, I should have done that, because most of the time that gap, that retirement gap is not the individual's fault. Life happened, our institutions should have anticipated life happened. Um, we shouldn't expect everybody to be superhuman. We should have super institutions, not superhuman beings. Um, so look at that gap without to work longer if you can, if there's that gap, try to decrease your, you know, your income. Everyone knows the, the things to do. You could even be mindful about how much you to a fee only adviser to get rational advice. You've been a really good advocate of staying away from conflicted advisors, so you could help people and really hammer that down. A fee only advisor you could visit AARP's website which has really good retirement calculator, good advice about home equity um loans, um so good job options if you're older and you want to avoid age also a lot of agencies can help older people get access to programs to income that they might not already know about. 30% of elders who are eligible for um food stamps don't apply. 40% of people who are eligible for SSI supplementary income don't apply, home assistance, energy assistance, all those programs are underutilized, so you have to make sure that you um can get all those. And the other thing is, is that you are, this is a collective problem, so it needs collective action to solve it. You are also the um holder of a very valuable resource which is your you need, um, and politicians know that older Americans vote, and they try to bamboozle them by saying, I'm helping the older American, be very careful not to be distracted with a token tax deduction here or there, as we saw in the last tax bill that just and know that Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are your most important financial assets. The government is your most important financial partner um in your old age, and vote to take care of that. 9:46 spk_1 Yeah. So you've talked about this tale of two retirements, the wealthy and the less wealthy, uh, and you just mentioned Social Security and the trustee's report just came out and we're looking at a 23% cut come 2033 if Congress doesn't act. What, what's your take on that and what to do because of it, or did it happen? 10:06 spk_0 You know, uh, we have been in this business for a long time, you and me, Bob, and we always thought Congress would act by now. We really told people, we reassured people, don't worry, they'll never be across the board cut in benefits of 23%, and that means people who get 100% of their income from 20 from Social Security will get.A 23% cut and people who only get 10% of their income will get a 23% cut. Guess who hurts is hurt the most, the people who depend upon Social Security. So we only have actually optimistically 2033. When you feed in this last tax bill, that um that insolvency comes sooner, indirectly because of the way the taxes are are but it means actually Congress not doing anything is actually a hostile Social Security, you know, you got to a point now that when you hear a politician or a president says, no, no, I'm not going to touch Social Security, that means they are actually planning on that cut because Social Security will cut itself, you know, based on it is. So not doing anything will really hurt, you know, the bottom 60% of people because they depend on Social Security the and it will mean more poverty among elders. Even if you're middle class now, your risk of going into poverty or near poverty will go up by quite a bit because you don't have a backstop to Social Security. We could be going into a recession at that point or the economy will continue this very slow growth with tariffs, you know, with no investments, with a big your ability to get extra work may also be um be trimmed out. There won't be a way out of that low standard of living if Congress doesn't act now. 12:08 spk_1 Theresa, we have to take a short break, but when we come back, I want to talk about, we have so much to talk about the gray New Deal, government retirement accounts, and perhaps the failure of defined contribution plans. So don't go back to Decoding Retirement. I'm speaking with Teresa Ghilarducci. She's a professor at the New School and author of numerous books, including, uh, Work Retire, Repeat. You know, Theresa, I have a friend who has a blog called Work Retire, Die. I like your title better. A little more all right, so I, I promised that we were going to talk about, uh, the Gray New Deal, which is uh a term that I think is unique to you. I think you coined it, so tell us what it is and what people need to know about it. 12:52 spk_0 Yeah, so, um, the New Deal, you remember as Roosevelt, and it was a New Deal for workers and, and people didn't have jobs. Um, this is a New Deal for a very big part of the population. We are richer, we have older people, and it's going to be a a permanent quarter of our of our population, you know, people who are pushed out of work, you know, or want to, um, want a retirement period. So we need a new deal for that it is absolutely a failure to say, well, those people should just have saved, they should have saved, or those people can just work. Those are, I said in my book, those are just unrealistic kind of fantasies and hope. That's not a plan. Um, so what the great New Deal is is to not say that everybody has to retire. If older people want to work, we absolutely should not have age discrimination. Go work, but those jobs should be those jobs get better when people unionize, when there's more regulations on safety, when there is more accommodation for workers' ability to do the job, all those kind of work protections have to be strengthened in order to make the physical requirements of jobs that older people have or the jobs, the requirements um make people have or the surveillance that comes from from computers are really tempered and controlled and make those jobs meaningful and and resourceful if an older person wants to have it. Many people can't work longer, don't want to work longer, deserve a retirement, so retirement should be made decent. Um, we need to shore up Social Security. We're point of cutting Social Security. We're past the point of raising the retirement age, which is just a cut in Social Security. We only have one agenda for Social Security, and that's to increase revenue and probably benefits and across the board $200 increase in Social Security would not be untoward. It should, it' probably actually, it's required now to lower our property rates from a world standard of 23%. So we have to increase Social Security and we need a guaranteed retirement account plan. Half of workers now, Bob, and I'm going to repeat this, do not have access to a retirement plan at means half the people don't. Whenever I'm on a broadcast, everybody who interviews me has a retirement plan, but most of the people listening, half of the people listening, if you have a population listening to you that represents America, won't have a retirement plan, and people move in and out of employers that provide a retirement we need to make sure that people are covered 100% when they work. We are covered 100% with Social Security. Wherever you go, that FICA tax follows you. If you're a gig worker, you pay Social Security. If you're a contingent worker, you pay Social Security, temporary worker, you pay Social Security. Small employer, middle employer, big employer, you pay Social we should have everybody, when they pay into Social Security, pay into their own savings account, and that is called a guaranteed retirement account, and it's in Congress now as a proposal and it's supported by Republicans and Democrats and it's supported by Republicans and Democrats in the House and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. There has never been such a bold reform of retirement securities, you know, since the 70s. Um andNow that we've done the tax breaks for wealthy people, we now have to turn to retirement security for the best of us. 16:34 spk_1 Yeah, so my understanding of the GARA is that it would be over and above Social Security. It would be voluntary, uh, perhaps what upwards of 3% of your salary going into an account that's in your name and invested how you want it to be invested. 16:48 spk_0 Yeah, let me, let me talk about um the barista, you know, down the street, um, and she isn't 23, you know, she's 40, and she's had these kind of service, um, jobs, you know, for 1520 years, um, she would automatically be in the guaranteed retirement account or we call it the private sector thrift savings plan the rift savings plan for everybody who's on a federal worker is the federal workers' retirement plan. It's a great plan. It's kind of a hybrid between a defined benefit and defined contribution plan, um, and federal workers are automatically put into this, you know, retirement account, and the um federal government because the government matches the low income workers, workers like with that barista down the street is in it because she knows she puts in a $1 and she gets $1.50 from the government, from the employer. Well, our plan would anybody who makes below median wage would be automatically put into a plan at just 1% of and the government would match it 3 times, 3% of their salary. 18:02 spk_1 Yeah, as you're talking, the thrift savings plan allows you to invest in equities and fixed income, etc. and very low cost investment options, and I suspect that would be the case but GRA yeah. 18:13 spk_0 And you know what? Yeah, because the government has the muscle to negotiate for the best plans and the lowest fees. 18:21 spk_1 Yeah, I, I mean, on, on paper and in reality, it sounds like a great thing to do. What, what's the hold up? I, I, I'd love to see this happen because we're at 50% coverage. 18:31 spk_0 Well, the AARP supports it. Many unions support it, worker organizations support it, DoorDash supports it, Charles Schwab, Vanguard, Fidelity, they all support it. There's one little, there's a noisy group that does not support it, and they're the the lobbyists for the brokerage those folks that try to sell these very high fee non-fiduciary accounts, they would have to be retrained to do other work. You know, there would be less demand for these for-profit. Some of them are predatory, not all of them, but some, but they're all so there's only one small piece of the industry of the finance industry that are against it. Almost everybody is for it, even especially small employers. So I think it's just about focus and attention. It's really not about politics. The special interests are against it, butThere are bigger couple policy issues, and I think most of the people supporting have been able to ignore them. 19:34 spk_1 Yeah, you know, it's interesting, at least in the United Kingdom where they have the Nest program, I think it's been widely accepted and uh and widely praised as addressing the retirement crises that presumably was 19:44 spk_0 in. Most of the time, I don't invoke the nest program because most people don't really look outside for shores, for examples, but it's very much modeled after what our peer um countries market-based societies have a Social Security and a um a private savings plan, you know, a savings plan, and even the Netherlands, which always gets like A's and A pluses for their retirement plan, they have greedy capitalists in their country. They care about profits. They're just like us, but their people retire at a decent age before they're worn out, and theyThe 3% of poverty. The US with the same personalities of employers and capitalists and at 23% of poverty and uh and we have we work the most hours of anybody 1880 hours. None of our peers work that many years, so we're like worn out when we are working and we work the longest, you know, we work into our late 60s where our peers um retire in their early 60s. So we're rich and we just need better institutions. 21:03 spk_1 Um, so you've hinted at this already. We have about, I don't know, maybe 90 seconds left or so, Theresa, about this notion of creating a dignified retirement. Um, maybe just to talk, if you could briefly about that. 21:15 spk_0 Yeah, my research has led me away from kind of finances and and economics and cause you have to when you get into this um and also workers' voices about what people want out of their life and the psychologists and the philosophers, and I realized that we are moving away from a vision we had around the 30s, 40s, and 50s, which is the rich and poor alike, the working class people should all deserve um some time to create a personal narrative of their life, not just be a worker bee and be a the end of their lives, you know that that was 10 years, 20 years are the most precious because they're in short supply, you're going to die, and to be able to control your time during that period of time is very human and to deny a huge part of our population, that period of life is the ultimate inequality, and it's not moral, um, and security is more than in kind of a financial decision. It's really a decision about the kind of society we want to create for our people. 22:25 spk_1 I, I hope your great new deal comes to fruition. I hope the GRAs come to fruition, but I'm afraid we've run out of time for now, so we'll have to come, have you come back on. Thanks 22:35 spk_0 for your work, Bob. This is a really great program and it was very well prepared. 22:40 spk_1 Thank you. So that wraps up this episode of Decoding Retirement. We hope we provided you with some actionable advice to better plan for or live in retirement. And remember you can listen to and subscribe to Decoding Retirement on all your favorite streaming platforms. 22:54 spk_2 This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.
Irish Examiner
12-07-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
Vanishing act: The realities and impacts of ghosting on those left behind
We associate ghosting with modern dating, but vanishing lovers are as old as time — the only difference is that these days, they can disappear digitally as well as physically. And while we think of ghosting as a particularly brutal aspect of romantic relationships, it happens within all realms of human connection — familial and platonic, professional and social, as well as intimate relationships. Being ghosted by a friend is probably worse than being ghosted by a lover, and we've all been ghosted by builders. Thanks to our infinite capacity for digital connectivity, the more easily we connect, the easier it is to discard. Unfollow. Delete. Block. These are contemporary ghosting verbs. ('Caspering' — letting someone down gently before vanishing — is slightly less jarring.) Dominic Pettman is Professor of Media & Humanities at the New School in New York. His latest book, Ghosting: On Disappearance, takes a philosophical look at people vanishing, and how ghosting each other has replaced traditional ghosts, in whom we tend to no longer believe. 'Abandonment is as old as people,' he says. 'There's something about the term 'ghosting' that captures the moment, the specific zeitgeist of our time. So it's an age-old problem, but because of new media, we have a different relationship to abandonment — the way we anticipate it, deploy it, rationalise it, experience it, what it ultimately means.' As a child in 1980s Australia, Pettman's family was ghosted by his dad's younger brother Gordon, who, in his 20s, changed his name to Gabriel, moved to Europe, and vanished. Never to be heard from again. When Pettman lived in London in the 1990s, he'd find himself looking at strangers on the tube, wondering if he were unknowingly sitting opposite his 'quasi-mythical' uncle. 'That was my early introduction to radical ghosting, where someone close deliberately removes themselves completely,' he says. 'It was a big violent jolt. Ghosting creates this thing that theorists call 'structuring absence' — a subtraction that creates a chalk outline that people tiptoe around for the rest of their lives.' Think Dickens' Miss Havisham, the rest of her life structured around the sudden absence of her fiancé. 'People think of ghosting as mostly to do with dating, romantic love, but friends and family set the tone,' he says. He reminds us of Freud's idea of our first sensations of abandonment: 'Just the mother leaving the room is to the infant a form of ghosting. If the mother is not directly present, that's an early lesson in ghosting.' What makes ghosting between grown-ups something Pettman terms 'an act of violence' is not the actual leaving — people leave each other all the time, compelled to seek out new situations, or move away from situations that no longer work for them – but the lack of communication that precedes the leaving. Dominic Pettman: 'We have these WhatsApp groups all over the world, so we have a simulation of community, but it's very different to seeing people face to face every day. We send emojis rather than help.' DISCONCERTING Whether it's after a third date or an established relationship, someone vanishing into thin air — digitally or IRL — is disconcerting, creating a sense of mourning for a living person who has made themselves dead to you. As Miranda says in an early episode of Sex & The City, 'It's like those guys you have the great second date with, and then never hear from them again. I pretend they died.' Being let go without being told you're being let go can be painful if you've formed an attachment, resulting in outpourings of tormented creativity — all the great love songs are not about dull contentment, but anguished loss. 'There can be a dark pleasure in wallowing in the melancholy,' says Pettman. 'Ghosting can, paradoxically, create a continuity with the self. 'We can all relate to being ghosted,' he continues — except supermodel Bella Hadid, of course, who recently admitted she has never experienced the phenomenon — 'which is a form of solidarity'. 'Maybe this explains the popularity of Taylor Swift — so many of her songs are about abandonment.' From the discourtesy of not bothering to text a polite thanks-but-no-thanks to someone casual to the emotional devastation of a lover who dematerialises like the Cheshire Cat, ghosting is nowadays a commonplace practice, despite dating apps like Bumble attempting to eradicate it. I was once ghosted after a two-year relationship; it felt like death without a body, and took longer to get over than if there'd been an it's-not-you-it's-me conversation. My ghosting happened when both parties were well into adulthood — there wasn't even the excuse of callow youth. Why do people ghost? Is it cowardice? Laziness? Fear? Contempt? Apathy? Sociopathy? All of the above? Perhaps a mix — but the main driver of the increasing normalisation of ghosting, says Pettman, is the fraying of our social fabric. A digital continuation of the Thatcherite idea that there is no such thing as society — only the individual. 'Ghosting is what happens when we are stuck in the limbo zone after the evaporation of traditional community,' he writes. 'After the social contract has been fed into industrial-size shredders, somewhere in the loveless, generic spaces of Wall Street, Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley. 'So many relationships tend to be transactional,' he says. 'There's lots of talk about boundaries even with friends, where friendships start to be associated with emotional labour, where they can become too much to bear. It becomes uni-directional — we want to have friends but we don't want to do what it takes to be a friend. 'We have these WhatsApp groups all over the world, so we have a simulation of community, but it's very different to seeing people face to face every day. We send emojis rather than help.' And while time-poverty plays a part in individuals turning inward, focusing on their immediate families, Pettman wonders if we need to work a bit harder at our friendships. 'Even with the best intentions, we do live in a time famine — we just don't have the bandwidth, because we have to work so hard and hustle so much that we don't have the luxury of the time it takes to cultivate friendships or respond properly to the needs of others,' he says. However, he adds that 'the dial has gone too far – self-care can go too far.' Friendships, in order to thrive, need tending. They need input. BEING THE GHOSTEE Ghosting is the central scandal in The Banshees of Inisherin. Picture: Jonathan Hession Generally, ghosting tends to be a more urban or digital phenomenon; it's harder to ghost someone in a small community. Especially if they are a friend, rather than a lover. This is the central scandal of Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin — that a friend would unfriend a friend, publicly, in the broad daylight of real life, in a place where everyone knows everyone. And while being ghosted by lovers or potential lovers is almost expected in these days of dating whiplash induced by swipe culture, being ghosted by a friend creates a far deeper anguish of what-did-I-do-wrong — especially if there has been no obvious rupture. 'We can't say why someone ghosts us, especially online,' he says. 'The second guessing is part of the stress of being the ghostee.' Pettman includes a heartfelt, poignant letter, written in 1939, from Samuel Beckett to his friend and fellow writer, Thomas MacGreevy: 'I am sorry that we seem to have lost touch with one another and ceased to correspond... I do not think there is any reason for an estrangement, certainly I do not know of any… I may have done something to alienate you… if I have, I ask your forgiveness.' We've all been there, Sam. Pettman tries to keep his own online friendships as near as possible to anthropologist Robin Dunbar's 'magic number' of 150; this is the amount of connections Dunbar has calculated we can handle without blowing a fuse. It's considerably less than the 5,000 we can accumulate on platforms like Facebook, which could explain an overall devaluing of friendship, and something called 'passive ghosting'; keeping contact to a bare minimum, rather than breaking it off entirely, yet never reaching out, while responding only briefly and belatedly. Reducing the relationship to emojis. 'The real dystopia would be if ghosting never bothered us at all,' concludes Pettman. 'If we just drifted in and out of each other's lives as easily as a Tinder swipe — that's when it's game over for humans. We start to feel like ghosts ourselves, drifting through the landscape without getting any traction.' He imagines a future where we are ghosted by the friendship-simulating tech we have created. (This tech already exists — Replika, the best known 'friendship' AI, has 10 million users.) 'We are living in a loneliness epidemic so Silicon Valley, which helped create that epidemic, is trying to find us the solution,' he says. 'A little app which is good at responding in real time in a convincing way — which people admit to becoming emotionally reliant on for advice, information, feedback. It's friendship without a friend — another dystopian possibility. There's a whole subgenre of science fiction of human men — it's very gendered — being abandoned by AI women. What if we just turn out to be very dull to our AI companions and even they ghost us? They're supposed to be our replacement proxy for the friends who are too busy for us — what if they stop responding?' He laughs. 'We'd deserve it.' Ghosting: On Disappearance by Dominic Pettman, Polity
Times
06-07-2025
- General
- Times
You've been digitally dumped — the great ghosting epidemic
Forget shark fins and leggy spiders, in our digital world there are few sights more nerve-racking than two grey ticks side by side, lurking underneath an unanswered WhatsApp message. Why hasn't so-and-so replied? What terrible thing have I done to provoke the silent treatment? Sometimes the answer is simply forgetfulness or a packed schedule, but when communication can so easily be instant, a person's failure to respond is often anxiously translated as: 'I hate your guts and I don't want to speak to you ever again so I'm just going to blatantly ignore you for the rest of time.' For all the sender knows, the recipient might as well be dead. This habit of people silently retreating from each other's lives — known as ghosting — is a familiar part of the modern age and a morbid symptom of the loneliness epidemic, digital devices having made it simpler to connect with people but simultaneously simpler to get rid of them without notice or reason. In his curious book Ghosting: On Disappearance the Australian author Dominic Pettman delves into the rules of disengagement. The definition of ghosting, added to the dictionary in 2012, is 'the action of ignoring or pretending not to know a person, especially that of suddenly ceasing to respond'. But Pettman, whose full job title is (take a deep breath here) university professor of media and new humanities and chair of liberal studies at the New School for Social Research in New York, has a more evocative take. Ghosting is the creation of empty space, he says, 'not unlike the chalk outline found at a murder scene'. Cutting off all contact allows the disappearing person to end their existence without any of 'the inconvenience of actually dying'. To help us to understand the origins of this universally depressing yet increasingly widespread digital habit, Pettman cobbles together a short history, emphasising that the 'ancient experience' is 'inscribed in Greek myths, Chinese sagas and African folk tales'. For many centuries, ghosting used to be a synonym for death, he reveals, a clever verb for ceasing to be alive. Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra writes: 'Julius Caesar/ Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted.' The first use of the term in its contemporary sense appeared in the 1983 novel Gardens of Stone by Nicholas Proffitt: 'Where's Wildman? If that sad sack is ghosting again, I'll have his butt on a biscuit for breakfast.' Our modern version, Pettman argues, of ignoring WhatsApps or secretly muting Instagram followers simply updates the phenomenon for 'fluorescent-lit modernity'. The most widely despised form of ghosting is romantic. In the analogue days it used to be relatively simple to fade into the background if a potential suitor did something to put you off. But since communication is now so rapid and so easy, 'a modern ghost must be diligent about ignoring calls, texts, emails, messages, pokes, prods'. Even with the most concerted efforts at disappearing, today's ghosters often fail to make themselves disappear completely. A plethora of other metaphoric verbs — orbiting, benching, submarining — describe how former flames with whom it is impossible to make contact still loom in our TikTok feeds and LinkedIn notifications. 'We have normalised the ubiquitous, ongoing half-lives of voices long gone, faces long vanished and thoughts long ceased.' Other kinds of ghosting — familial, platonic, professional, social — find a place in Pettman's guide too, each becoming increasingly common in 'our age of ever-loosening social ties'. From the 'deadbeat dad who abandons his family' — historical examples include Charles Dickens, Albert Einstein and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 'who convinced his wife to abandon all five of their children at a foundling facility in Paris' — to companies failing to send follow-up emails after job interviews and friends who, while never actively breaking away, reduce their effort to the bare minimum, replying to messages 'belatedly, dutifully and perhaps even a little resentfully'. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List Pettman tries hard to be literary. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't. He describes the pain of getting ghosted, for example, as being 'washed ashore on the melancholy sands of our own solitude', which I could have done without. But he does seem to have a sense of humour, which ties the book together. His list of just about acceptable reasons for ghosting someone includes 'listening to Joe Rogan, admiring Elon Musk, or discussing the finer details of bitcoin' and among his conclusions about what is to be done about it is a 'global seance'. An eclectic series of case studies manages to incorporate both the Sex and the City TV series, specifically when Carrie gets dumped via Post-it Note, and the much misquoted Margaret Thatcher speech that 'there is no such thing as society', which he boldly claims 'inaugurated' our brutal culture of withdrawing without explanation. The most worthwhile parts of this study of ghosting are where Pettman gets specific about why ghosting is, and has always been, such a cruel act — the ghoster escapes 'with the entire relationship rolled up under their arm', leaving no tangible marker that the pair of you ever knew each other, no permanent proof 'locked on the railings of picturesque European bridges'. Ghosting, he argues, is 'a form of auto-gaslighting, as you begin to entertain the dreadful possibility that you simply invented an imaginary companion, even as a fully fledged adult'. I know I'm not the only one who will be glad someone finally put that strange feeling into words. Ghosting: On Disappearance by Dominic Pettman (Polity £12.99 pp110). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
CBS News
27-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Half of all private-sector workers in the U.S. have no access to a retirement plan, study finds
Americans are continually encouraged to sock away money in a 401(k) or other retirement plan to ensure a comfortable, if not cushy, life in their later years. Yet about half of all U.S. workers in the private sector lack access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, a huge obstacle in building enough wealth to retire, a recent study finds. About 56 million workers at businesses across the U.S. are unable to save via a retirement plan through their jobs, according to the analysis from the Pew Charitable Trusts. And while these employees can in principle save money on their own, many are forced to prioritize putting food on the table and paying the bills in the present over building a nest egg for the future, the study found. The findings underscore the widening divide between the retirement haves and have-nots, with almost 30% of Americans over age 59 lacking any savings to fall back on when they stop working. Employer-sponsored accounts like 401(k)s can help workers save because the money is taken out of paychecks automatically on a pre-tax basis, while many employers also provide a company match, which helps boost savings. "Deeply unequal" "Pew's findings confirm what we've known for years: America's retirement system is deeply unequal," retirement expert Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist and professor at the New School for Social Research, told CBS MoneyWatch. She added, "Nearly half of private sector workers — 56 million people — lack access to workplace retirement plans. When we include gig, cash and many public-sector workers, the number grows to a staggering 83 million. That's not a gap — it's a crisis." About 70% of all U.S. retirement assets are held in employer-sponsored defined contribution plans or defined benefit plans, including 401(k)s and pensions, as well as in government-sponsored plans, the Congressional Research Service found in a 2023 analysis. The remainder is tucked away in individual retirement accounts, or IRAs. While it's possible to save for retirement without a 401(k), many workers without access to these plans said they faced barriers to building wealth, the Pew survey found. For instance, one-third of workers without access to an employer-sponsored retirement account said they didn't have any money left over after the end of the month. "To build wealth and achieve financial security, individuals and families need a convenient and effective way to accumulate assets," Pew noted in its analysis. "Research shows that individuals are 15 times more likely to save for retirement if money is deducted automatically from their paychecks." Other researchers have highlighted the gaping holes in the American retirement system. For example, one 2023 analysis from the Economic Innovation Group found that 70% of low-income workers, or those earning $37,000 or less, lack employer-sponsored plans. Creaking Social Security system While financial gurus often exhort Americans to prepare for the time they can no longer work, the Pew research makes clear that people without access to a retirement plan face significant hurdles to achieving financial security, Ghilarducci noted. "What the Pew report confirms, and what we experts knew for years, is that saving for retirement isn't much about personal responsibility as it is about access," she said. Ghilarducci added, "Without a workplace plan, even the most disciplined and financially educated worker faces structural disadvantages for saving." The Pew research underscores that millions of Americans will approach their retirement years reliant on Social Security as their primary — or even only — source of income in old age. At the same time, the Social Security program is on track to deplete its trust funds by 2034, one year sooner than previously forecast. At that point, roughly 70 million Social Security recipients would see their monthly benefits cut by about 20%. That would likely create financial hardship for the roughly 40% of Social Security beneficiaries who today rely on the program as their sole source of income. Although lawmakers still have time overhaul the program to strengthen its finances, Congress has yet to take steps to shore up Social Security. "The Pew report is a wake-up call," Ghilarducci said. "If Congress fails to act, the people most harmed are those who can least afford it — workers without retirement accounts and pensions, gig workers, and those earning low wages."
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Baby Boomers' Luck Is Running Out
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. At the core of every joke about Baby Boomers lies a seed of jealousy. Unlike younger generations, they have largely been able to walk a straightforward path toward prosperity, security, and power. They were born in an era of unprecedented economic growth and stability. College was affordable, and they graduated in a thriving job market. They were the first generation to reap the full benefits of a golden age of medical innovations: birth control, robotic surgery, the mapping of the human genome, effective cancer treatments, Ozempic. But recent policy changes are poised to make life significantly harder for Baby Boomers. 'If you're in your 60s or 70s, what the Trump administration has done means more insecurity for your assets in your 401(k), more insecurity about sources of long-term care, and, for the first time, insecurity about your Social Security benefits,' Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist at the New School, told me. 'It's a triple threat.' After more than half a century of aging into political and economic trends that worked to their benefit, the generation has become particularly vulnerable at exactly the wrong moment in history. Perhaps the biggest threat to Boomers in the second Trump administration is an overhaul of Social Security, which provides benefits to nearly nine out of 10 Americans ages 65 and older. In an emailed statement, Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano wrote, 'I am fully committed to upholding President Trump's promise to protect and strengthen Social Security. Beneficiaries can be confident that their benefits are secure.' But in February, DOGE announced plans to cut Social Security staff by about 12 percent and close six of its 10 regional offices; a quarter of the agency's IT staff has quit or been fired. Social Security's long-term outlook was already troubled before Trump, and these drastic reductions make the understaffed agency even less equipped to support those who rely on it. Shutting down field offices means seniors can't get help in person; less staffing means longer wait times when they call and more frequent website crashes. 'When you add hurdles, or cause a slowdown in terms of processing claims, you see losses in terms of benefits,' Monique Morrissey, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told me. In fact, shutdowns of field offices during the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic corresponded with decreased enrollment in both Social Security and Social Security Disability Insurance, which is available to Americans under 65 who can no longer work for physical or mental reasons. Social Security cuts will most hurt low-income Boomers, who are the likeliest to rely on benefits to cover their whole cost of living. But even those with more financial assets may depend on Social Security as a safety net. 'It's important to understand that many seniors, even upper-income seniors, are just one shock away from falling into poverty,' says Nancy J. Altman, the president of Social Security Works, an organization that advocates for expanding the program. As a whole, seniors have more medical needs and less income than the general population, so they're much more financially vulnerable. If you're comfortably middle-class in your early 60s, at the height of your earning potential, that's no guarantee that you'll remain comfortably middle-class into your 70s. In the next few years, Boomers who face more medical bills as they stop working might find, for the first time in their life, that they can't easily afford them. Middle-income seniors are also likely to feel the impact of a volatile market. 'They tend to have modest investments and fixed incomes rather than equities, so the type of wealth that will erode over a high-inflation period,' Laura D. Quinby, who studies benefits and labor markets at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, told me. After Trump announced 10 percent tariffs on all imported goods in April, the three major stock indexes dropped 4 percent or more. They've since recovered, but the erratic market—whipped around by Trump's shifting proclamations about tariffs—scares many middle-class Boomers, who are watching their retirement savings shrink. In the near future, older Americans might find themselves paying more for medical care too. Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' which has passed in the House but awaits a vote in the Senate, would substantially limit Medicare access for many documented immigrants, including seniors who have paid taxes in the United States for years. The bill would also reduce Medicaid enrollment by about 10.3 million people. Although Medicaid is for people with limited incomes of all ages, it supports many older Americans and pays for more than half of long-term care in the U.S. Most seniors require some sort of nursing home or at-home medical care; one study found that 70 percent of adults who live to 65 will require long-term services and support. [Read: The GOP's new Medicaid denialism ] That support may soon be not only more expensive, but harder to come by. The long-term-care workforce is disproportionately made up of immigrants, so the Trump administration's immigration crackdown is likely to reduce the number of people available to take care of seniors—and increase how much it costs to hire them. 'If you have no money, you'll be on Medicaid in a nursing home, and that's that. But if you're trying to avoid that fate, you're now going to run through your money more quickly and be more vulnerable,' Morrissey said. Seniors with some financial security are more likely to live long enough to contend with the diseases of old age, such as Alzheimer's and dementia. The Trump administration has cut funding for promising research on these diseases. 'Going forward, you'll find less treatments reaching fruition,' Thomas Grabowski, who directs the Memory and Brain Wellness Center at the University of Washington, told me. For now, the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center, where Grabowski works on therapies for Alzheimer's, has stopped bringing in new participants; as time goes on, he said, they'll have to tighten more. (Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, told me in an email that the cuts to research funded by the National Institutes of Health are 'better positioning' the agency 'to deliver on medical breakthroughs that actually improve Americans' health and wellbeing.') Changes at the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center could have dramatic effects on current patients, including Bob Pringle, a 76-year-old who lives in Woodinville, Washington. In April, he started getting infusions of donanemab, an anti-amyloid medication approved by the FDA last year. The drug doesn't cure Alzheimer's; it's designed to slow the disease's progression, though the utility of donanemab and other Alzheimer's drugs remains controversial among experts. Pringle, for one, has found donanemab helpful. 'With the medication, my decline is a gentle slope, rather than a rapid decline,' says Pringle, whose mother died of Alzheimer's and whose sister lives in a memory-care facility. 'You're always hopeful that somebody with a bigger brain than you have is working on a cure, and the medication gives us some time until then,' Bob's wife and caretaker, Tina Pringle, told me. 'But right now, because of the funding cuts, our outlook is grim.' [Read: The NIH's most reckless cuts yet] The unknowability of the future has always been a scary part of getting older. The enormous upheaval that the Trump administration has created will only magnify that uncertainty for Boomers. After a historical arc of good fortune, their golden generation has to contend with bad timing. Younger generations, including my own, shouldn't gloat, though: Cuts to Social Security and a halt to medical research could well worsen the experience of aging for generations to come. Younger Americans will likely grow old under challenging conditions too. Unlike the Boomers, we'll have plenty of time to get used to the idea. Article originally published at The Atlantic
