I’ve been doing more of my never ending research on retiring... not going to happen for most people who are self-funded.
That said though... wages aren’t growing because the economy is stuck. The world economy is stuck as well. Gains in the stock market have been largely from stock buy backs because profits went up when people were not hired back and the recovery only was for the corporations for the most part.
NOTHING IS GROWING but insecurity and uncertainty.
I looked back 20 years at my planning assumptions. We were getting 8% on money market stuff... the 4% rule was alive and well. Since 1996 the dot com bubble burst and we had the great recession. Most of the gain since then has just been plowing back. In ten-year periods since 2000... a flat 2% investment beat the stock market most of the time.
The world economy is dead and not growing. Why? It is worse here because of obongo. I get that but why is the world also stagnant?
All over the world, debts are serious problem. Both consumer and government debts are increasing in many well-to-do countries. It is not just the U.S.. In many cases, their situation is more fragile.
This summary explains a lot of our worldly woes. Don’t let the name of the site fool you; there is good information here! Living on credit, which is what the entire WORLD has been doing for nearly a decade now, is a HUGE part of the problem.
‘World Socialist Website’
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/18/econ-f18.html
Global debt has increased by $57 trillion since 2007 to almost $200 trillion, far outpacing real economic growth, with the share of debt rising from 270 percent to 286 percent of global gross domestic product. “Overall debt relative to gross domestic product is now higher in most nations than it was before the crisis” with higher levels of debt posing “questions about financial stability,” the report noted.
And those of us that live within our means KNOW this, but are seemingly powerless to stop it.
The world is overburdened with debt. The world economies, ours included, is trying to de-leverage with a deflationary depression. The world’s bankers are trying to print fiat money to delay this collapse. So far they are delaying the collapse but all of our combined trillions of dollars are going down a rat hole, producing nothing. All these many trillions of dollars are needed just to keep the world economies stagnating. Without all the printing, we would be deflating toward economic depression.