No Money for Retirement? Blame Bush

This Reader’s view by Robert McCarl is a couple days old but it has been eating me:

The Statesman published a series of articles by community leaders based on a presentation by economist/banker Jeff Thredgold (2nd Opinion, June 4). As a “boomer,” I take issue with Mr. Thredgold’s analysis of our economic future, as well as the “capitalism cures all” exhortations of the three commentators.

“Boomers” are reviled for not saving enough for their retirement. The solution? Hire a financial adviser like Mr. Thredgold. Think about this: Most of us are one paycheck away from the street without a social safety net. We have a globalized economy that is based on the continual commodification of everything from DNA to our body parts. Such an economic view — driven by the bottom line and the GNP — ignores other important resources, such as natural, cultural and political capital.

The war in Iraq, global warming and virtual monopolies in many economic sectors put the lie to Mr. Thredgold’s “optimistic view of the economy…”

Rather than blaming boomers for not investing, how about examining the global aspirations of the Bush administration and its transnational partners in using our tax dollars to make the “war on terror” a blue-ribbon stock option?

Shorter, “It’s Bush’s fault I’m broke.” No word on what Mr. McCarl was doing for the prior 39 + years of his life when Bush wasn’t in office, but it all must be his fault.

Thredgold’s piece was one of the most unusual things I’ve seen the Statesman publish. It’s not actually a traditional opinion speech, but the outline of his notes which include this on hiring an investment planner:

The bottom line — the wise among us will increasingly turn to finance experts for help.

The good news is that wouldn’t appear to include Mr. McCarl. Someone who looks up at his life in his mid-40s and realizes he has nothing and it’s all President Bush’s fault isn’t someone whose picture I’d put in the dictionary next to wise.

The guy’s also in college, which explains why he doesn’t have money to invest right now, but you need to understand you’re responsible for your own life. If you don’t understand that, you can have all the degrees in the world and you’ll be in the depths of poverty your whole life.

Yeah, things have hurt you and caused you problems. You deal with it and you live your life. I have six percent of my income sucked from my paycheck to pay into a Social Security System that will be bankrupt by the time I retire and that’s money I can’t use for real retirement savings. I may whine about it here, but I don’t say, “Social Security is sucking me dry, and because of them I’ll have no real retirement.” No, I suck it up and find some way to put money in the 401(k) and life goes on. If you don’t learn the lesson that you’re responsible for your own life and your own choices, then the man will be keeping you down all your life, but the man will be you.