I bought this the other day, cracked it open this morning. And by page 19, after touching briefly on The Great Recession and bailout of 2009 and predicting something even more disastrous in the not too distant future, it made me think of this All of this to erratically ask, do you think it still wise to invest heavily in retirement as a 23 year old? I feel that when I'm putting money away to invest, I'm not only worrying about the quality of the investments I'm making, I'm making existential considerations of future financial systems that, typically, past investors aren't even making. Or is it hubris to think that my generation is the first to have to deal with questions like "will anything even be around in 40 years?"Debt: the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. This is one that comes up a lot in financial literature.
By the time you get to the end of that book, you'll discover that one of Graeber's arguments is that capitalism cannot be considered by its participants unless they have a sense that the world will end soon. 'Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist.' - Kenneth Boulding Here's how I look at it: I may never retire. I may never get to retire. That doesn't mean I can't invest. It's all about understanding the rules and how to get the most out of them.