[sokoloff]

Extended far enough, so is not starving to death in utter squalor. One person's luxury is another person's normal.

I view retirement as "normal" and it's just a question of when. 30, 40, or 50 - none of those would I define as luxury-due-to-age.

[pluma]

I think the mistake is the underlying assumption.

What does it mean to "retire"?

If you mean being able to live comfortably without having to work, I'm arguing (for some definitions of "comfort") that's where you should start in the first place.

If you mean having a house, money in the bank, paying for your hobbies and taking regular vacations overseas, then that's what I'm arguing is a luxury.

Sure, if you define "luxury" as something that goes beyond your goal in life (say, having a reliable amount of savings to afford your lifestyle), then retiring with a yacht at 30 may possibly not be something you'd consider a luxury. But that doesn't change what I said.

I don't view retirement (in any shape or form) as "normal", unless medically necessary. But I also don't conflate unemployment and poverty. So you may very well decide to stop working at 30 regardless of your savings and prior income -- assuming you're guaranteed access to all necessities by default.

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason you should ever end up in poverty is if you have extremely unreasonable spending habits (e.g. gambling), and even then it's most likely an indicator of an underlying psychological or social problem than "your own fault".

[sokoloff]

In today's world, absent social security or other income programs, $1MM in a post-tax account provides about $35K in income over a 60+ year projected period of non-work (aka "retirement").

This is about 75% of the median income for families of 4 and has to cover everything (including rent, unless you take some of the $1MM and buy a house, reducing your safe withdrawal rate accordingly).

That's a fairly spartan existence, IMO. Proponents of basic income systems (which are certainly appealing emotionally and viscerally) need to account for how to give every family the purchasing power of millionaires, forever. That seems economically a non-starter, regardless of whether or not I think it would be awesome to live in such a world where every precious hour of my labor could be devoted to improving my family's comfort and overall lot in life instead of more than half of it going to "run the family".