David Graeber is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. There’s so many interesting ideas in this essay. Here are a few of my favorites.

“What would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear?”

I stopped for a few seconds to think of the jobs I had (DJ, postal inspector, middle manager, web monkey) and confess nothing very bad would have happened if they disappeared.

“Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. … It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.”

“The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.”

“Technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. … Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter.”

A fascinating (scary?) report on why a million dollars might not be enough for retirement.

“One out of 10 people who are 65 today will live past 95, according to projections from the Social Security Administration.”

Or (gulp) this:

“$10,890 is the median financial net worth of an American household today.”

Not surprised to learn that more people are not planning to retire.

“An annual survey for the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that in 1991, only 11 percent of workers expected to retire after age 65, while this year, 36 percent said they would retire after 65 — and 7 percent said they didn’t plan to retire at all.”

The piece confirms what my advisors recommended regarding SS benefits.

“If you delay claiming benefits past what the government calls your “full” retirement age — 66, for people retiring this year — your monthly benefits increase by 8 percent a year until you reach 70.”

I confess to finding it a little hard to scrape up a lot of sympathy for someone that can’t live on sixty or seventy thousand dollars a year. Guess it’s what you’re used to.

“The maximum Social Security benefit for a retiree at 66 this year is $31,000 — about the equivalent of drawing down 3 percent a year on a portfolio of $1 million. […] Still, even $61,000 or $71,000 a year — the combined Social Security and cash flow from the $1 million portfolio — isn’t likely to be enough for most people who have grown accustomed to living on $150,000 or more a year. And $150,000 is the median income of a typical household in the top 10 percent, roughly the ranking of a family with $1 million in net assets, Professor Wolff says.”

And the original factoid I posted earlier:

“A typical 65-year-old couple with $1 million in tax-free municipal bonds want to retire. They plan to withdraw 4 percent of their savings a year — a common, rule-of-thumb drawdown. But under current conditions, if they spend that $40,000 a year, adjusted for inflation, there is a 72 percent probability that they will run through their bond portfolio before they die.”