Birth of a Movement
I am coming up on my 66th birthday next week. That used to be a relative nondescript milestone, but now, thanks to the shifting retirement standards of social security which make me a part of the first cohort to get pushed back on their retirement date by a full year. I am now technically eligible for “full retirement benefits” as of January 30, 2020. Those who are sixty now will wait until they are 67 for full retirement benefits. This is all both very meaningful and very silly. The truth is that anyone can retire for social security purposes from age 62 to age 70 and the benefits scale is smooth and reasonably non-punitive along that age spectrum. It adjusts monthly so that you can start taking benefits whenever you choose.
Unless one is earning very little income (minimum wage level), only 15% of income from social security goes untaxed, so the calculation of when to begin taking benefits is further complicated. But mostly, the calculation is driven by longevity|. If you expect to live to older than 80-85, you are best to postpone your benefits as long as you can. If that’s what you expect, you had best work to an age older than 65 in some earning capacity unless you’ve been a very effective saver your whole life.
This transition of “national retirement age” from 65 to 67 occurred without much fuss in the United States. In Russia, Putin’s attempt to shift the retirement age from 60 to 65 for men was met with noticeable protests and as the offending bill hasn’t been withdrawn, Putin’s popularity has suffered by a third (not that he seems prepared to let that slow him down from ruling Russia in perpetuity). In France, Macron has faced an even starker uprising trying to shift the French pension system retirement age from 62 to 64 years old. Just this month, Macron was forced by the protests to withdraw the proposed changes. To put that in perspective, U.S., French and Russian life expectancy in 1950 was 68, 66 and 55 years respectively. Today, those ages are 79, 82 and 71. That’s a 20% improvement in the U.S., 24% in France and 29% in Russia. Meanwhile, modest retirement age increases of 3-8% are highly objectionable even though most of the systems set their retirement ages many years ago. U.S. social security has had a 65 year old retirement age since it was created in 1935.
Tonight I have chosen to rewatch the movie Gandhi with Ben Kingsley. The story of his non-violent activism in India has always been inspirational to me. In today’s political world of battling billionaires, a hundred years ago, Gandhi started his mission to change the world without money, political office or privilege. In fact, he eschewed the privilege of his upbringing and British education (as a lawyer) to lead a movement for both independence and non-violent advocacy of non-sectarian, non-racial, non-gender-based human rights. I suspect Fios positioned the movie for people like me who are thinking of such things on the eve of Martin Luther King’s birthday tomorrow. I had not known that my birthday, January 30 (1954) is also the anniversary of Gandhi’s death on January 30, 1948.
We are starting this new decade with what the World Economic Forum (which begins in Davos on Tuesday) describes as significantly increasing risk factors. Those are, in priority:
1. Economic confrontations between global powers (a.k.a. Trump)
2. Domestic political polarization (a.k.a. Trump)
3. Extreme heat waves (exacerbated and ignored by Trump)
4. Destruction of natural ecosystems (promoted rather than combated by Trump)
5. Cyber attacks on infrastructure (misdirections and denial by Trump)
6. Trade and investment protectionism (Trump Nationalism – America First)
7. Populist and nativist agenda (MAGA)
8. Cyber attacks on data and money (more of a Trump denial)
9. Recession in a major economy – like China, thanks to Trump
10.Uncontrolled fires (more unchecked global warming)
I want to add one important risk to the list that might fall under #2, but really deserves its own priority statement. In the book I wrote in 2013 on the Global Pension Crisis, I said we were on the verge of generational warfare due to demographic shifts and economic aging (both of the population AND of our global economic order) that pits the young against the old for use of the scarce resources of a peaking world and species. I believe almost all of the risk concerns devolve to one fundamental problem we are facing. It is the age-old problem of scarcity or perceived scarcity as seen in the context of the here and now versus the future. There is no escaping the notion that short-term thinking creates dire long term consequences.
Our lifestyle as a world is better than ever, but may well be on the verge of collapse if we are to believe the folks at Davos. Hydrocarbons and their use were a boon to modern life for the past century, but now the blade cuts the other way. Oil has given Russia its disruptive strength. Oil has removed any possibility for peace in the Middle East in more ways than even religious conflict and fundamentalism. The quest for energy independence in the U.S. and places like Australia have exacerbated the global climate change impact by promoting a web of fracking that is just starting to show its damage to the environment and the geological stability of our earth.
If someone from the newest discovered habitable planet, GJ 229A c (what a catchy name!) was trying to understand the human species, they would be mighty puzzled. We denude and defile our habitat, indeed our entire planet, we fight incessantly rather than apply the Nobel-prize-winning theories of the Nash Equilibrium (A Beautiful Mind) to improve our collective well-being, and we do all we can to NOT provide a better world for our young. What’s up with that? Even a GJ 229A c-ite can see that can’t be good.
I don’t know if Bernie or Elizabeth represent the next incarnation of MLK Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi, but they are the closest thing I see out there that qualifies. I suspect that like Gandhi and MLK Jr, their rhetoric gave birth to important movements that advanced humankind (by meaningful and painful inches, but directionally right). The real on-the-ground progress will get made by others with perhaps more pragmatic methods, but all change and all movements start with spiritual fervor that eventually leads to a better place.