r/memes 4h ago

*cries in worker*

Post image
606 Upvotes

59 comments sorted by

66

u/Swarles_Jr 3h ago

Then there's Germany, with our "solidarity", where workers pay horrendous sums each month to fund pensions of current old folks. Thanks to the age structure in the country, everyone knows this system will collabs before any of us gets anything out of it. Yet politicians to fuck all to fix that.

It's fun, seeing 15% of your paycheck go into "retirement funds" each month, knowing full well you won't ever see a single cent out of it.

17

u/stern_m007 2h ago

Thats not true, you will see a cent or two out of it, but it will really be such a small sum that it will be so sad that its funny again

7

u/AtaracticGoat 56m ago

Pretty much the same situation with social security in USA

4

u/Serious_Much 25m ago

Exactly same in UK.

Huge tax on every payday called "national insurance" here which pays for the state pension. Even if it exists in 30+ years time when I'm allowed by the ruling class to retire, I have no doubt it will be means tested and I won't qualify.

96

u/hoefco80 3h ago

What pension?!

15

u/Darhhaall 50m ago

That thing in magical land called Europe.

3

u/Nerdlors13 Knight In Shining Armor 28m ago

Or in some cases the cult of union membership.

95

u/ShigyDiggy 4h ago

At least the AI bubble popping won’t wipe out their pensions like it will my 401k

4

u/AtaracticGoat 56m ago

I feel like this is the plan, they want to wipe out everyone's 401k

11

u/princemark 3h ago

Oh my sweet summer child. No one will escape the coming collapse. We'll be lucky if it doesn't turn into Mad Max.

5

u/Volkmek 3h ago

We said this about Y2K and the housing bubble too. Total sociatal collapse keeps getting predicted every 10 years or less, and it's always pushed to the next big thing.

Global warming back in the 1990s was suppose to make the world so hot by 2015 that all of the population of the US was suppose to be pushed up against canada and florida was suppose to look like Arizona by now.

We also predicted that California would be an island by now because of tectonic plates.

2

u/rogueleader32 2h ago

We also predicted that California would be an island by now because of tectonic plates.

Wait, wasn't that the real estate scheme from the 1978 Superman?

https://giphy.com/gifs/xThtax5rLn9JWYZ1vy

1

u/Volkmek 2h ago

It's been a running prediction for several decades. It's also where the song "Arizona Bay" comes from.

Every generation has their own wild ass doomer predictions that will not come true.

1

u/rogueleader32 2h ago

Oh absolutely, it's just kinda fun to poke at this doomer heralding as something that is so comic booky that it has no basis in reality.

Besides that, south west California would be rendered uninhabitable due to gentrification long before anything else.

0

u/ROU_Misophist 1h ago

You mean Aenema by Tool? If somebody named a song "Arizona Bay" that's just a pathetic ripoff of a better song.

1

u/Volkmek 2h ago

Seems the parent comment I was replying to got deleted so I will drop this here:

Green house gas production is higher now than it was when the hole in the Ozone was discovered. For every bit of carbon emission the west stopped china doubled down on.

Mind you, what we do as private citizens is largely irrelavent regardless. 22% of green house gasses come from normal people. 9% of emissions come from the top 0.1% of economic earners globally. The rest comes from their companies.

4

u/ROU_Misophist 3h ago

I've been hearing this shit for 30 years. It never collapses.

5

u/KearasBear 2h ago

Except that it has. Obviously the mad Max part is hyperbole, but did you guys not live through 2008?

4

u/ShigyDiggy 2h ago

Most of them did not. The rest of us were teenagers and little kids

-7

u/ROU_Misophist 2h ago

I did. We did not collapse. I don't know why you would think that counts as a collapse. It wasn't even a depression.

4

u/XxRocky88xX 2h ago

It sounds like you don’t think the depression should be considered an economic collapse in which case your opinion on whether a collapse will or even can happen or not is irrelevant

-1

u/ROU_Misophist 1h ago

The great depression wasn't a collapse either. Society did not unravel. You have a very low bar for "collapse".

-1

u/XxRocky88xX 1h ago

K so I was right. Thanks

2

u/ROU_Misophist 1h ago

What is your bar for "collapse" then?

0

u/mavetgrigori 1h ago

I guess the fucking Great Depression never fucking happened. That was a collapse. People literally fucking starved to death

-1

u/ROU_Misophist 1h ago

Not in the U.S.

2

u/mavetgrigori 1h ago

The Great Depression is a US thing buddy. It is a US event. It is a collapse

1

u/Cyrotronix 3h ago

Same. Been through ups, been through downs. Seen things shift and change. Not saying a collapse couldn't happen. It could. But what use is there in worrying about it? I do what I can, prepare where I can. But I'm not going to let the worry of what the future may bring destroy my enjoyment of the present.

2

u/marklar_sf 31m ago

Um, have you heard of CalPERS? The largest institutional investor? We're fucked

1

u/bacon205 35m ago

Be greedy when others are suicidal. Buy the dip.

13

u/TonUpRockerBoy 2h ago

Wasn’t the retirement age set to 65 because that was life expectancy at the time? They literally want to work us to death.

10

u/Funky-Guy 2h ago

It was, but that was because of infant mortality dragging the rate down. If you instead look at “if someone made it to 30, how long would they live” that number sat around 80 at the time.

4

u/TonUpRockerBoy 2h ago

I remember vaguely reading something about this and spewed what I could remember. Makes more sense and thanks for the additional context.

5

u/Funky-Guy 2h ago

Absolutely! Important to note, even though life expectancy has increased 10 years or so, that doesn’t necessarily mean those 10 years are actually, imo, any form of quality. Many spend those additional years in nursing homes or battling dimentia or other diseases. So not work till you die, but work until you are no longer useful, at which point you no longer can enjoy life

1

u/415thebayarea 36m ago

When i was younger, I worked in an MC unit overnight. The amount of elderly they tossed out when the money ran dry and they didnt have anyone to help pay, was crazy. The first time they asked me to help move their shit out and the lady was like 95 and bed riddled, no cognitive function, etc. Was the last shift I worked there. Mind you 90% of the rooms were empty, they're cutting THAT much into the bottom line you just throw em out? Absolutely fucking disgusting.

2

u/turlockmike 1h ago

It's not retirement age because it's not a retirement program it's old age insurance intended for people who live too long

13

u/Joyful_Jet 3h ago

Then there is me, without a pension, paying over 50% of my salary in taxes so government workers can have one.

10

u/ASaGHost 3h ago

Which country charges you 50% in taxes?

2

u/AggressiveTopper 2h ago

Maybe he’s thinking of capital gains.

-1

u/Joyful_Jet 1h ago

My marginal income-tax rate is 50.21% (so if I get a bonus for example, I get less than half the money).

The actual average income-tax rate is closer to 36%, but it becomes 39% after mandatory deductions. If you add in sales taxes, special taxes, property taxes (for a single house), then it goes back to above 50% when I do my budget.

This is in Canada.

-3

u/yeetyman8 1h ago

Yeah bud relative statistics can easily confuse. Let's see these same percentages expressed in dollars. Owning stolen land yet still a coward

2

u/ManSharkBear 2h ago

As a government trades worker, thanks bud, I am spending your tax dollars on frivolous purchases of expensive whisky. Don't worry though, cancer rates in industrial environments are so common I won't live long enough to collect much of it 🥳

4

u/ROU_Misophist 3h ago

This is why I save and invest on my own. I get to pick my retirement date instead of letting some bureaucrat pick it.

1

u/InsideChard1927 1h ago

Who is copying our government?

1

u/UnluckiestScrub 1h ago

Happened to my dad aswell. If not for his herniated disk he wouldn't have been able to retire.

1

u/userjack6880 1h ago

I’m glad my pension is age/service-gated based on when you’re hired. Can’t snatch that retirement date from me!

1

u/TheThirdStrike 1h ago

What's a pension. What is retirement?

These are concepts that I will never have to be familiar with.

1

u/Darhhaall 50m ago

It is necessary. We live longer and don't have enough kids, so we have to also work longer.

1

u/MotanulScotishFold 42m ago

Not only that, but also a tax when it's your time to retire, considered extra profit so must be extra taxed your own money already.

1

u/PickleNicks 3h ago

Looks at age for full social security

Looks at average male life expectancy for US

😭

0

u/Scalermann 2h ago

I have many decades until retirement, raising the retirement age only benefits me.

-1

u/srgonzo75 2h ago

Pension? 🤣 You mean 401K.