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    PopChipsHamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:21pm

    I've seen too many of my relatives live into their late 80s and early 90s. But the last 5 - 10 years were plagued with mobility issues and cognitive deterioration.

    No thanks. I'd rather go like my uncle did at 70. He was still active. He still had all his mental capabilities. Went to an SEC football game like he did most Saturdays in the fall and dropped dead from a heart attack. Quick. Boom. Over. I should be so lucky.

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      Bones of a HarePopChips
      10/28/14 1:23pm

      Amen. Great-uncle dropped dead at 80 while doing his favourite hobby: gardening. His roses were in bloom. The grass had just been mowed. The last thing he probably saw was water falling on his new camellia shrubs. It sounds corny, but that's how good a death he had - quick, surrounded by things he loved, and (doctors say) painless.

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      Cam/ronPopChips
      10/28/14 1:25pm

      My retired parents are pretty much under house arrest in providing 24/7 care to my 95-year-old grandmother. It makes me wonder about other 95-year-olds who lack the money for senior homes and lack relatives who are willing to take care of them.

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    김치전!Hamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:17pm

    We just need to change the dialogue. Smoking and drinking excessively? Good work, citizen! Jogging? Get back to the couch, you selfish fuck.

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      Setzer777김치전!
      10/28/14 1:18pm

      That is a plan I can get behind. I'm already doing my civic duty.

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      Bones of a Hare김치전!
      10/28/14 1:19pm

      We'll also have to convince people to find those traits attractive. "Oooh, James is pasty, fat, and never wants to do anything but Netflix and eat tubs of Cookie Dough ice cream with cheap bourbon on the side? What a dreamboat!"

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    Sean BrodyHamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:17pm

    Corporations have roughly $3 trillion in current retirement liabilities.

    Incredibly naive question here, but when I put my 12% away every week and my company throws in their match, that money is in the Fidelity account. It's not part of anyone's 'liabilities'?
    Like if the company goes bang, I still have that money, yes?

    Christ, I shouldn't be this ignorant.

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      TheDataSean Brody
      10/28/14 1:25pm

      They're talking more about pension liabilities- Many employers continue paying retirees until they're dead.

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      Dirty KafirSean Brody
      10/28/14 1:28pm

      your plan is a defined contribution plan, where you put money in, and what you get later on depends on your net investment earnings and contribution rates. The underfunded plans are defined benefit plans, which provide for a stated retirement benefit, say $100 per month for each year you've worked at the company. This requires companies to put away money ahead of time. There are numerous rules as to the minimum and maximum annual $amounts a company can contribute to its fund.

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    ardenatworkHamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:39pm

    Typical fucking Baby Boomer behavior: setting up an entire economic systems designed to maximize their own self-potential and profit while simultaneously being rigged to collapse the instant they all start dying so that no one else gets to benefit from it.

    The Generation that had it better than their parents, AND their kids, and is giddy with glee because of it.

    I hope all your hips break during your Old People Pool-aerobics and you drown.

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      N.G.ardenatwork
      10/28/14 2:24pm

      May it happen to you.

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      ardenatworkN.G.
      10/28/14 2:34pm

      Which part? The part where myself and everyone else in my generation spent our entire lives crafting the economic lanscape and gaming our pensions in order to retire with monthly paychecks fat enough to make a 30 year-old drool, and spend our days leisurely exercising in the pool, or the hip-breaking part?

      If it's the hip part, don't worry, that's going to happen, but it'll happen at some office job I will have to take under the table because the Baby Boomers drained the Social Security system, and took the last of all the pension money forcing me and my generation to literally never stop working until the day we die.

      Don't you worry none, that will absolutely happen.

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    TheDataHamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:25pm

    If pension plans were responsibly planned and managed in the first place, they could have foreseen an increase in life expectancy... as it's... you know... been increasing since the dawn of civilization...

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      fromedamsaughtoxTheData
      10/28/14 1:52pm

      Yes, but pension promises were made by politicians, who received contributions from the same people they made the promises to. They were based on fantasy math and the fact that the bills wouldn't come due for a long time, which is now arriving.

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      TheDatafromedamsaughtox
      10/28/14 1:54pm

      That's not true at all. The article plainly says

      The new estimates released Monday—based on data from corporate pension plans—could eventually increase retirement liabilities by roughly 7% for most corporate plans, according to Aon Hewitt....

      Corporations have roughly $3 trillion in current retirement liabilities.

      This is not a government-only problem. Pension fund managers in the private sector are the ones who are the guilty parties, here. They knew the programs would become insolvent eventually, and would have to be eliminated.

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    burnernumberfourHamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:18pm

    Get rid of capitalism. Problem solved.

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      Setzer777burnernumberfour
      10/28/14 1:22pm

      Wouldn't any system be concerned with a growing non-working population? No matter what the setup, you still have to worry about resource input vs output, as well as societal impacts.

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      Skipping along to our shared destructionburnernumberfour
      10/28/14 1:46pm

      Capitalism is just the corny facade of the fixed-game we have for markets. We tell each other that the most successful will win, that data drives the market, that it's not a bunch of insider deals and back-room bargains. And yet me know it happens and continues and isn't really interested in stopping. We know it's corrupted our politics, our sciences, our philosophy and out understanding of ourselves, and we still keep going along.

      We probably would be OK if it were capitalism. But it's not. It's a rigged game with a set of rules and transactions that secure it and maintain the facade. And we don't even really get to play.

      Just so many land-serfs with mortgages and needing salaries and incomes to just make it day to day. No forests left to retreat to and no unclaimed lands to sail for. Stuck in a system and still pretending it's a different beast.

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    DolemiteHamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:27pm

    You need to make it worth my while. How about you give me 100k now, and I'll continue eating steak, fried chicken, chocolate and soda like I've been doing. Oh, don't want to pay up? I'm going to start exercising and drinking more water. That 100k is going to look pretty cheap when I'm 88.

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      thesugarplumDolemite
      10/28/14 9:11pm

      Cheese. Lots of cheese, too. Can you toss in gravy?

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    Hip Brooklyn StereotypeHamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:20pm

    Gosh, if I had a nickel for every time my mother expressed this sentiment to me and my brother.

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      danidelunaHip Brooklyn Stereotype
      10/28/14 1:30pm

      oh me too! My mom is always like, "Hun, I really don't want to live to be 95!"

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      Hip Brooklyn Stereotypedanideluna
      10/28/14 1:35pm

      I think my mother just wanted us boys to both croak, but I definitely see what you mean!

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    GemchansanHamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:55pm

    Due entirely to the sad, long decline of my grandparents and my father's insistence on never dying despite being given like, 20 opportunities (at this point, at least 75% of him is either titanium or plastic) and being completely bed-ridden and kept alive solely by the evils of modern medicine (if someone or something has to do all your basic life functions for you, are you really alive?) my mother has requested that my brother and I take her out back, tie her to a tree and shoot her, Old Yeller style the minute she starts showing cognitive decline. We shook on it and everything.

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      Bones of a HareGemchansan
      10/28/14 2:13pm

      Yeah, my mom made me sign a form saying, essentially, I'd kill her if she ever fulfilled such-and-such circumstances. Right now she's fighting to make euthanasia legal in my country, which is sweet of her - she is making sure I don't go to jail in the future.

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    Sodding Junk MailHamilton Nolan
    10/28/14 1:56pm

    In the 80's, several "business friendly" policies around pension funding were enacted which allowed corporations to change the methods under which they funded their plans.

    Naturally, they chose the methods that made their plans appear to be the best funded, minimizing (and at times eliminating altogether) their required contributions.

    Fast forward a couple decades and we're all shocked (SHOCKED!) that putting very little money in a pension plan results in not having that much money available to pay benefits.

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