Larry Fink, the billionaire investor who leads BlackRock investments, had some disconcerting news for people planning on retiring anytime in the near future. He basically says “don’t do it,” at least not anytime soon because a crisis is coming.
The bad news was revealed by Larry Fink in a letter to BlackRock investors.
“Think about someone who was 65 years old in 1952, the year I was born,” Larry Fink told investors. “If he hadn’t retired already, that person was probably getting ready to stop working. But now think about that person’s former colleagues, all the people around his age who he’d entered the workforce with back in the 1910s.”
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The issue here is simply that people are living longer, much longer. Fink said that the data shows that in 1952 most of the people reaching age 65 were not preparing for retirement because “they’d already passed away.”
“All this is putting the U.S. retirement system under immense strain,” Fink added. “The Social Security Administration itself says that by 2034, it won’t be able to pay people their full benefits.”
So, what is Larry Fink’s solution?
While he acknowledged that “No one should have to work longer than they want to,” Fink acknowledged that “it’s a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age — 65 years old — originates from the time of the Ottoman Empire.”
Larry Fink called for America to engage in an “organized, high-level effort to ensure that future generations can live out their final years with dignity” and added, “Put simply, the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution has been, for most people, a shift from financial certainty to financial uncertainty.”
Basically, Larry Fink says programs like Social Security were implemented in an era when the demographics of the program made sense. However, since they no longer do, maybe its time has passed.
Larry Fink is an American billionaire businessman best known for being the co-founder, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, a financial services company and the world’s largest asset manager, with over $10 trillion dollars under management.
According to his official bio, Laurence D. Fink is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock. He and seven partners founded BlackRock in 1988, and under his leadership, the firm has grown into a global leader in investment and technology solutions. BlackRock’s mission is to help our clients build better financial futures and the firm is trusted to manage more money than any other investment company in the world.
Prior to founding BlackRock in 1988, Mr. Fink was a member of the Management Committee and a Managing Director of The First Boston Corporation.
Fink is a prominent figure in the world of finance and investment, and his views on the economy and financial markets are widely followed. He is also known for his philanthropy and his involvement in various civic organizations.