Sean Carroll

Being old is terrible.

We do have Social Security.

Certain forces in our government are trying to get rid of it.

It's a minimal amount.

It's not a huge amount of money that you get, but it can make the difference between poverty and, you know, a relatively –

a reasonable lifestyle, but we just pile on all these extra expenses, right?

Healthcare is just the most obvious one, but there's all sorts of other things that get more expensive and things that you need to do when you get older.

Housing, I mean, if you become less able to get around by yourself or if you start losing your cognitive capacities, you can deal with that, and the way you deal with it is by spending money.

And so we have this thing where, you know, we teach people to save money over the course of their careers.

And then as soon as they get old, we siphon it away as soon as we can, trying to make it sure that the system gets all the money out of people before they die.

Right.

And, you know, that's a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one.

And I'm shocked that we let that happen.

I mean, this is a place where democracy isn't working very well because clearly a lot of the interests of a lot of people are not actually being served by the social organization that we've set up.

I don't know how to fix that, you know, but it's something that I think is worth saying out loud over and over again, because I think that we often hear the voices we often hear, including from people like me on this podcast, are not the ones going through those particular problems.

So we have to draw attention to those problems existing.

So to any of you out there, if you have the wherewithal to put money into retirement, do it.

It will pay off for your future self.

And if you're older and thinking about, you know, like, how can I afford housing and health care?

Good luck to you.