Western Workers Lose Faith in Retirement?

Saving for retirement? We wish we hadn't bothered, say one in 10 ... More than 10pc of people who are saving for retirement wish they hadn't bothered and one in five fears that it's a waste of money, research suggests. The past five years of economic and financial turmoil have left almost three quarters of retirement savers less confident in the ability of stock market investing to deliver their ambitions for retirement income. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: The stock market will provide ...

Free-Market Analysis: Modern stock markets can provide profits, even tremendous profits, but they surely should not be seen as a panacea for a larger commitment to self-sufficiency and monetary diversification.

Those who trusted government propaganda over the efficacy of equity and its inevitable, endless rise have long been disappointed – certainly in the US and now in Britain, as this study shows.

It is a major dominant social theme that people ought to simply stick their money in stocks and ... wait.

Sure, equity does move up a good deal, especially certain stocks but those same stocks can move down, too.

In fact, the stock market is far more influenced by business cycles than any other factor. Central banks print money, forcing a boom that eventually turns into a bust. Stocks plunge, people lose wealth and then are counseled not to remove their funds, which may have been halved.

It is almost impossible for someone to lose half of their invested income and keep still. Most people don't have that much money. Frightened by the prospect that stocks might unravel further, they remove their life savings and who can blame them?

Then the stock market goes back up, thanks to monetary stimulation in large part, and those who lost money have no possibility of gaining it back, as they have been scared out of investing further.

This has long been our conclusion and now there are studies – see above – to back it up. Here's more:

In research among retirement savers aged 45 or more, Metlife, the insurer, found that 12pc wished they hadn't bothered saving for retirement and nearly one in five were unhappy with their pension savings or feared they had wasted money. Six per cent were unhappy with their retirement savings despite the recent stock market revival, the survey found.

The past five years of economic and financial turmoil have left almost three quarters of retirement savers less confident in the ability of stock market investing to deliver their ambitions for retirement income ...

Dominic Grinstead, the managing director of MetLife UK, said: "It's clear that the events of the past five years have hit confidence and undermined faith in pension saving."

But he added: "The Government has worked hard to make retirement saving pay, with plans for a universal state pension, automatic enrolment into company pensions and changes to the rules on taking retirement income that allow greater flexibility."

It is, of course, government that is the problem to begin with, however. The modern mechanism of monopoly monetary stimulation causes great booms and busts via endless currency inflation. People know intuitively at this point that stock markets aren't going to provide reliable riches while the money in their pockets loses value regularly.

For this reason, it is occurring to people that saving for retirement may not be a reasonable course of action. If one loses a chunk of money every five to ten years and if the rest of one's wealth is dissipated via price inflation, then what is the scrimping and saving really worth?

This is, of course, an extremely dangerous conclusion from the standpoint of the larger civil society. When middle classes lose faith that they can create and sustain their own futures within their various societies, then a bedrock certainty has been breached.

There are few in middle classes, historically, who wish to turn their futures entirely over governmental technocrats. The hallmark of a healthy culture traditionally is one that allows individual families to make their own way within the larger environment that safeguards their ambitions and their savings.

But now all that is becoming reversed as monopoly monetary stimulation grinds on relentlessly and the 21st century reveals itself as a replica of the 20th century ... only worse.

The difference is, of course, that people know more now and understand the impoverishment of their financial conditions more clearly. For millions, even tens of millions, the central banking mechanism has been revealed ... and people naturally are surprised by what they discover.

The idea that only a privileged few control the money spigots and that the vast majority inherit its inflations and destructive business cycles is increasingly prevalent and no doubt contributing to the disenchantment with modern retirement.

Conclusion: The viewpoints revealed by this survey are not merely surprising; they ought to be profoundly disturbing to those who have concocted the present system and seem determined to continue its inflictions no matter the cost.

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