A while back, I wrote about how—more than four years post-FIREing—I think I’m no longer employable in a full-time-professional-job capacity. Certainly not full-time career field. Put another way, can I do the work? Probly. Will I do the work? Probly not. My interest in, and tolerance for, full-time work is gone. My heart, no longer in it.
I’m incredibly grateful to be in a position such that all this is mostly just a fun thought exercise. Why? Cuz I’m riding a gravy train that includes index fund investments.
Produce section
I occasionally wonder: what if (1) the vast majority of people have no desire to work; (2) the concept of FIRE (or some concept fast-tracking these people to financial independence) takes off; and (3) the engine powering broad-based, low-cost index funds sputters and dies from a lack of companies able to survive and grow via employee labor?
Will those index funds collapse? Will the whole economy collapse? Will the world collapse? Heavens to Betsy!
I’ve read enough to believe with near-absolute certainty that the answers are no, no, and yes. Oopsies! I mean no, no, and no! Certainly not in my lifetime.
If for no other reason than most working-age persons’ personal-finance ignorance and acceptance of the fact that one works until “retirement age.” Cuz that’s just what you do. Some working-age people feel a drive (and/or pressure) to work, too. Heck, even yours truly took a part-time gig when things went a lil’ sideways with our investments in 2022.
I thought of this as I read a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article published a while back titled, “How I Became Less Ambitious—and Happier—in Retirement.” The article’s author, Carol Hymowitz, left her full-time journalist position at age 70 to become a “freelance writer, a part-time journalism professor and a research fellow at a university.” She writes, “I was as ambitious for career success as I had ever been, finding comfort in knowing I always had an answer when I was asked, ‘What do you do?’”
Tl;dr: after talking to other driven individuals who’d retired, she ultimately chilled out a lot.
When I’d previously thought about the question of whether the economy could collapse from lack of workers, I’d always considered those workers to consist of people squarely in the conventional working years age range. They work because they must and/or because they’re driven.
What I’d not considered is that for many even older folks the drive to work and/or to keep their identity as a worker isn’t just “there,” it’s primally there. Whether they’re financially independent is irrelevant.
It would appear that Hymowitz (for whom money appears not to be a material concern in retirement) for some years was driven by that force. Driven hard.
The article also includes this, “‘For people who’ve had careers that have given them both an identity and status—and consumed most of their energy and attention—stopping work can feel like stopping everything,’ says Ruth Finkelstein, executive director of the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College in New York. ‘It takes a recovery process to be able to enter a chapter that’s defined differently.’”
The energizered bunnies keep going and going and going . . .
This got me thinking. Are there are lotsa driven, objectively financially independent people past the conventional retirement age who continue working challenging, full-time jobs, compelled by primal forces they can’t fight against? Or don’t know (how) to fight against?
After reading this WSJ article, I think the answer is “yep!” I found that a bit revelatory.
But a bigger revelation was what this made me think next. If those people feel compelled to keep working—working hard no less—then the primal forces driving people during their conventional working years must be even stronger. I mean not only are the forces hardwired into them, but they all but certainly need the money from the job. That “need” functioning as gasoline on the primal forces fire. So, too, the drive to better oneself. As to skills and job title among other things.
Add in the fact that most people are unaware of the concept of FIRE (and many who are aware don’t pursue it) and the thought of retiring early or not working (as much) isn’t even something they can even get their heads around. Much less contemplate and execute on.
What’s more, technology should continue its relentless advance. Which will allow businesses to (figger out how to) do more with fewer (people) and prop up profit/growth.
My conclusion: there’s no universe in which any material percentage of humanity stops working. If I’m right, that means that absent a catastrophic event there’ll never be a material absence of hard (or at least productive) workers powering the economy. And even if lotsa workers (short of a material amount) do leave the workforce, those remaining will all but certainly be ordered by their corporate overlords to use technology to make up (much of) the margin.
Could profit/growth margins decrease if lotsa workers leave the workforce. Sure. Will they go to zero. I don’t see that happening. Will they go negative? Yeah . . . no.
And in the end . . .
Thank you, working people of the world, for continuing to power (publicly traded) companies! And thank you, Mother Nature, for instilling a drive to be productive in humanity! It’s work, work, work for the win.
