Carlos Slim Might Be Seeing A Different World Than I Am

Apparently, Carlos Slim (the world’s second richest man) recently advocated moving to a 3-day workweek in order to improve quality of life. I wouldn’t argue with that, but apparently he indicated that the price of that would be to delay retirement. That indicated to me that Carlos Slim sees a very different world than I do.

For one thing, most people I know don’t expect to be able to retire. Maybe retirement is more possible where Carlos Slim is, but most of my friends anticipate trying to retire and never really being able to. There won’t be enough money, Social Security won’t be available, whatever. Most of the people I’ve talked to would like to retire, but currently imagine that they’ll pass on before being able to.

As such, where can we really defer retirement to in order to have a shorter workweek?

If we already expect it is likely that we will be unable to retire before we die, it seems like we’d have to continue working after death. Perhaps branch offices of our jobs will be set up in heaven, presuming we’re luck and don’t have to get new jobs in order to pay back this reduced work we had to perform in our lives.

Of course, it’s all probably academic anyway. The likelihood we’ll ever just have to work three days a week is probably about as likely as ever being able to retire.