Life Expectancy Declines

[ysabetwordsmith]

American life expectancy continues to drop.  The major reasons for that are all circumstantial, which is to say, we've created a society that isn't very healthy for humans.  That's before considering that the gap between the richest and poorest can be 30 years or more.

Comments

[thewayne]

In the mid '80s I had my first real computer job doing database and general IT work for an actuarial/pension plan company. And I saw the trend beginning of companies changing their retirement plans from defined benefit to defined compensation plans, and I saw this coming.

Under a DB plan, I as a worker have X% of my salary held from my check and put into a retirment plan, and my employer matches it. And the plan is supposed to be responsibly managed and conservatively grown, and over 20 or so years I have a nice retirement annuity.

Under a DC, I still have X% of my salary withheld, but the employer doesn't match. At the end of the plan year, the employer decides how much they're going to put in. And it's easy to manipulate the books and say "Oh, we weren't very profitable this year, so we're not going to be able to put much into the plan." As a result, your pension isn't nearly as big as under a DB plan.

Meanwhile, some Republicans ("Not All Republicans") want to privatize or otherwise destroy Social Security.