It always amazes me when people base entire articles on assumptions that might be false without even trying to verify those assumptions. First, with rising life expectancy and healthcare costs I think the concept of retirement at age 65 is woefully outdated. The concept of aging baby boomers exiting the workplace and still contributing to the economy through a huge nest egg is incredibly naive. In order for this to be true these baby boomers would already have had to accumulate huge amounts of wealth and be well on their way (which does not appear to be the case) or they would have to be foreseeing huge growth in the economy, far outstripping our last two decades of hyperactivity. Even that would not guarantee "normal" retirement as the younger generations would partake in those gains and would economically put the elderly back in the same boat they are in right now, which is that they are not that much wealthier relative to younger generations that are still working.

People seem to naively think that retirement planning requires you to decide on a benchmark figure of monthly income that you need and that is all there is to it. Wealth is not defined by how much you have in an absolute sense, but how much you have relative to everyone around you. To understand this you need only listen to Howard Stern's radio show when he is playing a game of "Who wants to be a Turkish Millionaire." Bill Gates is not rich because he has billions, he is rich because he has billions while you and I have thousands. So if the younger generations are getting rich at the same rate as the older generations all that will happen is that prices will rise. If this happens you can bet that the prospect of a reduction in quality of life will keep the elderly working longer than they originally envisioned.

Also, the concept that attracting younger generations will revitalize the cities since they don't have kids and are conspicuous consumers seems to ignore the fact that young people become older people at some point and will usually have kids later on. Now, I know less about city planning than I do about practically anything else on this green earth but I would venture to say that you should be looking for some sort of balance between age demographics of your population, not an extreme of one type or the other. via [drunk and retired]

10:53:14 AM  #