The new “Banksy”? 
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I walked 30km in a day just once and it was very hard on my feet. Wear and tear becomes a serious issue if you do it too much and we are talking about older people here.
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No, that is not a thing. That’s not an investment structure the SEC allows, nor will they, even as cynical as it can get around here.
If for retirement someone tells you they can deliver lofty income, which would require 10 to 20 to whatever percentage return to happen, you’re gonna lose the principal sooner than you can spend it due to the risky assets that it would take to potentially drive such a return. Guarantees of any return level shouldn’t be made anyway save for a select few (near) “risk-less” investment types!
Same here; came to say that it’s one of those ‘Sometimes Truth is stranger than fiction’ moments.
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Could you let my landlord, grocer, and pharmacist know that money isn’t real. It would help out greatly, thanks.
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Weird cultural difference: in Oz, we also have a collection of road camping grey nomads doing seasonal work.
But they don’t work for Amazon, they work as fruit pickers, using it to supplement their pensions and superannuation. Our grannies take the place of America’s undocumented.
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It’s not that “money isn’t real”, it’s that you and they need to negotiate the details of what it is. Then you won’t need somebody else to tell them.
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Wow, seriously? I always thought Australia was more civilized than that.
It’s a voluntary thing more than a financial need; our pension/super system is fairly generous.
The usual story is that a retired couple decide to sell their home, buy an RV and tour the country. Mostly they live off their savings and pensions, but they do a bit of work now and then in order to make the money last longer and give them a bit of variety.
The sort of folks doing it are generally people who are accustomed to hard outdoor labor in uncomfortable weather (such people are still fairly common in Australia). Anyone who isn’t won’t keep at it for long.
The fruit picking industry is staffed by a mix of grey nomads and young backpacker tourists. The grannies usually outperform the young 'un’s by quite a lot. 
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I am surprised that you are surprised. RV type vehicles (“camper vans”) are quite popular here. My dad and his brother each have a van, and spend part of their time working on their vehicles before heading out another trip. For some I suppose it is a matter of preferring to be mobile. But our country is quite large and fuel is expensive so if you want to cover some territory you start to think in terms of justifying the cost of the fuel, so I can see some people getting part time work to supplement their income.
That’s not quite what I meant: I inferred from what Wanderfound said that the elderly of Oz found themselves in a similar situation as those in the 'states.
I’m relieved to hear that it’s not so.
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To be honest I don’t know enough about either to give a definitive answer. I doubt anybody here is starving because they can’t or won’t take part time work. We have pensions and superannuation. Elderly people get (mostly) free health care. If you had to drive an RV across our country to get fruit picking work I doubt you would clear any money, but the work would pay for the distance you cover, so you can view it as subsidizing travel.
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OK, so here’s a super simple exercise for sociopaths.
Imagine it happened to you.
I mean, I get part of what you say, but you’re basically saying, “Well, they have RVs, that means they had it better than other people.” I mean, sure, but the first time an openly black queer woman is the CEO of a Fortune 100 company and a big deal is made of it, is the overwhelming response going to be, “Well whoop-de-doo, now she’s in the circle of extreme privilege”? Probably not. Because that’d be a big deal.
I guess what I’ll get at is that you don’t know what those people’s situation was. I’m guessing you have a mental image of a cushy working class or an upper middle class income family that now follows the seasonal work. I live close to a rural town where the two biggest businesses are strip joints (to be fair, there’s a state university a few miles down the road) and the median household income is $38k. One of the few businesses in town is an RV place. If you overspent on an expensive pickup before retirement from that industrial job, you can get a used trailer for $10k-$20k. Also, since they’re traveling from place to place, assume that the place of residence is also that trailer.
To be totally honest, at the end, though, I somewhat agree with you. The amount of whining nine years ago about “what about my second childhood”. Ugh. They’re crying about the loss of something that I knew was never, ever going to be within my grasp. I can’t sympathize because I can’t comprehend it. I don’t want to die early but I don’t see how retirement will work out.
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Years of paring cheese and an average house price to earnings ratio of below 4 got you there.
If you are anything like the rest of your generation, you are most likely a brick millionaire.
In the UK / Europe the government pretty much bailed out the 65+ generation and unless you are one of the very unlucky ones whose pension scheme has gone bust you are doing pretty well–and not just because you individually were thrifty but because the system favoured your generation.
You had free education / generous student loans / access to housing benefit / social housing +++
Pensioners in the UK are doing darn well and the government is doing a lot to keep it that way.
Just as a little example: as a 60+ in London you get free travel in a city with one of the highest transport costs. As a 16 / 18 / 20 year old kid looking for a job you are paying £12 / day for a travel card while the minimum wage for an 18-20 yr old is £ 5,60 /hour.
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Jeff Bezos has predicted that, by the year 2020, one out of every four workampers in the United States will have worked for Amazon
Workampers? Wor Kampers? Sounds like characters in a Mad Max movie. Or enemies from an early 1980s videogame.
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Really, the thing for us to do is start paying attention to the insightful predictions of the SF writers.
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Isn’t there a saying that when you defeat someone you turn into them? The US defeated the Soviet Union in 1990, since when you’ve had spying on citizens, Gulags in the Southern States, pointless wars in the Middle East. The only differences are that you have two faceless machines dominating all political discourse instead of one, and a lot more money.
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Those predate the fall of the USSR. Cointelpro, chain gangs, the Shah and Saddam…
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Not if you think the USSR fell when they defeated Germany (and became them)…
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Part of me really wishes the folks who keep suggesting that unemployed people or prisoners would be great at farm labor would keep your points in mind. The other part of me wishes those folks would be forced to do similar work for a week - so they will never suggest it again.
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