Indeed, new? I went to the US 15 years ago and it was normal to have this walking fossil greet you at walmart.

My 65 year old dad worked till he died 15 years ago. This is nothing new for the lower middle class. Social security imhasnt been enough in many parts of the country for decades. Especially if you lose a job and are forced to take it early, which loweres your payments.

Same and I'm not even in the US.

Yeah, I think my greatest fear in life is (and has been since a very young age) falling out of society due to some unforseeable life event and getting trapped in homelessness.

make it a crime to have wealth over ＄500M. Anything over that and the government gets to seize assets until total wealth is ＄50M.

I say we just give them a medal and say "you won capitalism!", give them a fancy card with a $5m a year stipend, and forbid them from ever touching money again

Let's make it a status symbol, the interest on the money we take from them will pay for the program and more. Hell, we can give them a point system for whatever they don't spend for cool prizes to compete with each other for

We need to change the incentives... Instead of letting their net worth act like a point total among their peers, we need to give them pro-social activities to compete through to keep them occupied

I wouldn't set it at $500M. I would set it at 1000x the median household income. Once you've hoarded enough wealth to last ten long lifetimes, we're cutting you off. This would be about $80M in today's money.

This is also roughly my best estimate for the largest possible "honest fortune," one that can be obtained through wage labor and investment. This is the kind of money a married pair of neurosurgeons could amass if they both worked long careers, never had kids, lived like monks, and invested everything. To get more money than this, you have to own a company, be an executive, or otherwise exploit the labor of others.

A pipe dream that will never happen 😮‍💨

I also like the tax wealth not work approach, but taxing earnings would be like taxing work, wouldn't it? With the wealth tax, if profit is re-invested, wouldn't the stock price go up, hence getting the owners closer to the wealth gap? (Asking from a place of ignorance)

Ah the Smith & Wesson retirement plan

We all are. There's no hope. I talked to a guy today that retired 15 years ago and travels 6 months out of the year. The generational disparities are staggering.

Pffft, lucky. I expect I'll die in extreme poverty some time after I age out of work and can't find another job.

The problem is obviously struggling social security systems. In US it's worse because the corporations are taking bigger and bigger part of the profits while wages stagnated decades ago so people are not able to save for retirement and social security is not enough. In Europe retirement gets delayed but couple of years because people live longer and there are EU wide rules as to how much countries can spend on it. They could be rising taxes on the wealthiest people instead but those are the people that actually have power so... Still, in most of the EU you will still be able to retire. Social security is mostly well funded and stable. Here's some data:

source: https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/retraite

So for example in Spain current estimates are that I will get 77% of my last salary when I retire. In most countries it's closer to 50%. So assuming you will own your home/apartment and you don't have to pay rent you should be fine but in some countries people may need some extra savings.

If you can live off what you get. Granted I think they are a bit off not only because its not a new fear but anyone who knows older folks knows people go down at various ages and 50's is uncommon but not unheard of. So to me its the fear of working till you have no capcity to work and then living in poverty in a society thats only concerned with making sure you don't die.

Did you make a shit tone of money by working for top evil corporation so you can retire early on your savings with no connection to financial markets?

long sleeves or short sleeves?