Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Gotta Live Like Auntie Mame

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" What are you going to do when you retire? Have you ever thought about it? Well, think no more, because you probably won't retire. No one will be able to afford to retire in the new Red America.

What with the under-funded and looted pension accounts, the under-funded and looted Social Security, and the under-funded Medicare, you and I will be flipping burgers or shoving Chinese merchandise into mail-order envelopes until we keel over from our untreated diseases.

Ah, this sounds so depressing, doesn't it? Well, what we need is a change in plans.

If you're never going to retire, go into semi-retirement now!

By semi-retirement I mean, work as little as you need to in order to get your job done. And then party like it's 1999 every chance you get! Don't squander your years of health and vigor working diligently for a company that has no allegiance to you ... or a government that wants you to pick up its slack.

Gone are the days when a person could spend 40 years in a job and then retire with a gold watch and a pension. None of us will get that. No matter how things turn out in Wisconsin, the Red Scare is upon us. Act accordingly.

One of the criticisms leveled at communism is that it stifles incentive. Sadly, the same is true of capitalism, if only a few at the top profit while everyone else struggles.

So pledge allegiance to yourself and to your deities, take what little salary you have left after all the give-backs, and live in the moment. Reconfigure your whole concept of time! There's no future worth living for. Live now. Right now. And blessed be.

In keeping with the new era of shared sacrifice, I am now paying you for my free advice. Send an invoice.

6 comments:

Jennifer said...

I second that.

I got asked a few weeks ago if I ever plan for retirement. I wanted to say, "Are you KIDDING? Retirement won't EXIST when I'm over 50." Hell, I doubt it'll exist when I'm over 40 (I'm 32).

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Slackers rule!

yellowdoggranny said...

retirement is not all it's cracked up to be.

Professor Chaos said...

Great idea! Especially since, if we keep pretending that global warming is a hoax or a scam or whatever, we may all drown before we get a chance to retire!

Gruvkitty said...

Thx for the advice. That makes me feel a little better about having to pull from my retirement money to survive the last 2 years (at least until I have to pay taxes on it in April). :)

kimc said...

I am nearing retirement age, and I have been working in a physically demanding job for 36 years. My hands hurt all the time now. I won't make it working forever.
My suggestion is that when we are at the end of our rope, we knock on the door of one of those 2% at the top, suitcase in hand, and say, "I'm moving in. You took my retirement money, now you're stuck with me." If one person does it, as Arlo Guthrie says, they'll think he's crazy, if three do it, they'll think it's an organization, and if fifty people do it, they'll think it's a movement....