the cost vs benefit of work

kabayiri

michaels wrote: »

It would be a huge saving though if you could just palm them off until they had got over teenage tantrums and were financially self-sufficient....

Can't you just register your kids offshore and record all expenditure on them as a loss against your profits (income)?

lisyloo

kabayiri wrote: »

It's a good question and I can only offer as I find. It wasn't wealth.

I think as a society we are in a period of transition.

Some were in jobs which they thought were "for life", and yet increasingly there are fewer such jobs about.

That's hard when you have spent your whole career in modest retail banking or working for the Post Office. It's depressing to see someone just give up.

On the plus side I have worked with a lot of young grads and they seem fully aware that they will have to adapt and change. It may just be transition pains.

I think it can be harder to adapt when you older but also it's easier to just give up.
My partner found it very hard to find work in his career but if you are in your 30s or 40s you can't just give up so you have to persist or adapt.
So I don't doubt your experience but I do think that people may have given up when younger people would have carried on looking.
I know my FIL gave up straight away and didn't even try.
He might have been right that mid 50's unskilled was looking bad but he didn't even try.
I'm not saying there isn't ageism but I am saying that part of the early retirement is self inflicted.

ReadingTim

The problem is that what is beneficial for the individual may not be beneficial for society as a whole - "work" has positive externalities, as economists term it. Obviously taxes pay for schools, hospitals, roads etc, which the non-worker wants to use just as much as the worker. If enough people stop working, how will those services be paid for?

Moreover, who will provide them? Fair enough if you want to jack your job in; but what happens if you happen to work as a Doctor, nurse, etc. Would you be advocating early retirement for anyone who fancies it if you've been left on a hospital trolley in a corridor 'cos there's no spare beds in the wards?

So if you want to have a system which you can "take out" of, you need people to be putting in. Carting yourself off to a desert island and try fending completely for yourself is the logical extension of your argument, which is no basis for a society, as our primitive ancestors decided.

mwpt

ReadingTim wrote: »

The problem is that what is beneficial for the individual may not be beneficial for society as a whole - "work" has positive externalities, as economists term it. Obviously taxes pay for schools, hospitals, roads etc, which the non-worker wants to use just as much as the worker. If enough people stop working, how will those services be paid for?

Moreover, who will provide them? Fair enough if you want to jack your job in; but what happens if you happen to work as a Doctor, nurse, etc. Would you be advocating early retirement for anyone who fancies it if you've been left on a hospital trolley in a corridor 'cos there's no spare beds in the wards?

So if you want to have a system which you can "take out" of, you need people to be putting in. Carting yourself off to a desert island and try fending completely for yourself is the logical extension of your argument, which is no basis for a society, as our primitive ancestors decided.

Well, my assumption is that if I've managed to reach financial independence by 50, then along the way I've put more than my fair share into the system, in productivity and in taxes.

But it depends how long I live after that I guess.

andybenw

Those who are retired still pay tax.

Income tax on pensions and other unearned income. Likely at lower levels but still there.
VAT.
Tax on fuel.

Pretty much the only thing not paying is NI.

Retirees are still spending. Retirees are freeing uo jobs for others.

Mistermeaner

pelirocco wrote: »

Unless you are working stupidly long hours , there is no lack of hours to do cleaning , personal finance etc . I really wonder how you would have managed in the good old days of working long hard hours in dangerous jobs with no holidays and zero employment protection , no free health cover etc etc etc

Im normally away from home 2-4 nights a week and am a single parent