Todd:

You are an anomaly according to Chris. Had your Dad been born later like only last year where he would still be a bouncing babe in excellent health, you are not really here except for some sort of time warp.

LOL

Chris: Please read your post before you hit the trigger.

Seriously though, I am in about the same shape. At 75, it can take all night to do what I used to do all night. I really hate to see these younger guys go off on some sort of tangent. What I really think is up is some sort of Soyant Green scenario where, you become a canned food product when you are no longer useful in the work force. Of course there are quite a few of us over aged well armed veterans that may not go for that idea.

Whichever future you wish to pick, it will be interesting.

umm, wait, so you're proposing that 10 million or so Americans will not retire but instead go into 'consulting'. where will their salaries come from? no offense to consultants, but I doubt that armies of them will create enough value in our already stressed economic environment to justify consulting salaries.

plus haven't I been reading about the life expectancy headed down in the US going forward? I thought with obesity and it's associated problems, it was pretty much agreed that the current generation of children and young adults will grow up with more health problems and shorter lives than their parents. is that not the case?

f*ck later retirement, if that was the deal when I started working, I should have been allowed to stay in 'high school' or some other state of non-responsibility for the same number of additional years that I'm now expected to work. we are told our whole lives that computers and technology, etc. will make us more efficient and our lives will be easier and we will have more free time. then now the new 'reality' is we are so f*cked in this country that we have to work MORE years than the generations who lacked computers, blackberrys, 30-billion-lines-of-code software, video conferencing and all the trappings of 'productivity'. wtf? they're all liars looking for longer-serving debt-slaves, that's all.

Chris, I have to agree with Todd, even with longer lifespans most workers are physically and mentally buggered well before age 70. I hate to see politicians and corporate execs in their 60s who think that others enjoy working in later life. Newsflash, pollies work in A/C offices with plush leather seats but the millions of blue collar workers stand 8-10 hours/day on steel or concrete floors or out in the sun/rain.
I'm 45 and can hand unload 60t of cargo a day, but I see plenty of 30 somethings who struggle, they will have a hard time working in their 50s to the (current Australian) retirement age of 65, let alone their 70s.

I agree that oil-burning tasks have similar electricity driven systems. Surely, the end result should be used as the metric, not just EROEI of the primary energy source. And, lets not compare the low efficiency use of oil with the high tech "equivalent" without considering the rest of the system. Of course, one would like to make the comparison using the best diesel hybrid drive vehicle, something which is not yet available in the market, but which would be the obvious alternative to the pure electric drive.

For some sort of personal transportation, there's the problem of batteries, which require energy to manufacturer and then recycle at end-of-life. A pure battery driven vehicle is going to be heavier and will likely have less cargo space or carrying capacity than a similarly sized IC equivalent. With wind and solar PV, there's the problem of intermittent supply, which means that recharging the batteries in a pure electric vehicle may not be as simple as plugging the cord into the charging station at night.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of solar and wind energy. I live in a solar heated house, but there are times when the sun doesn't shine, such as yesterday, when we had clouds and snow showers almost all day. Low temperature solar thermal systems can cheaply provide more than half the thermal energy needed, but attempting to go all solar implies a much larger system and some dedicated thermal storage. Otherwise, there will still be a need for backup, which I provide with propane. My eventual goal is to use wood for backup heat, but that may not be an option in a higher density location, such as a city, where air quality problems could result.

I think that low temperature solar thermal ALREADY offers cheaper energy compared with oil, especially when oil begins to become scarce after Peak Oil. Certainly, my system was very cheap, being constructed of commonly available materials on site by yours truly. I worry that focusing on high tech PV and wind with centralized power generation and distribution may hide the immediate benefits of low temp solar thermal systems from the public, which could delay their adoption by people who will need them.

E. Swanson

Speaking of solar:

http://greenwombat.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/10/29/new-solar-technology...

SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive told Green Wombat that First Solar’s more economical panels will allow the company to expand to the East Coast and other areas that do not heavily subsidize solar. SolarCity installs solar panels at no cost to the homeowner and then leases them back for a monthly charge. “What matters is not efficiency but cost per kilowatt-hour,” Rive says, noting that solar programs like California’s reduce rebates to panel makers as the number of installations increase. “We need solutions that address declining subsidies.”

EROIE has to be >1 to use anything as a source of energy - that is the only criterion.

What is important for an alternative source of energy to oil is that it has the same cost as, or is cheaper than, oil.

The reason that the world has been able to consume ever more oil and hence grow our economies is that the oil has become ever more affordable.

Affordability is not just the price, it is the price relative to income - for most of the world's population oil at the current price is completely unaffordable.

Any viable alternative to oil will have to do the same, ie. get ever more affordable - IMO mathematically impossible, and unlikely, especially in the short term.

I don't think the US government has any choice but to tap pension and retirement accounts. The US treasury gravy train has been funded by a vicious circle -- Americans buy oil plus goods from Asia, the Asian exporters and the petrostates turn around and re-invest those dollars in US Treasuries.

The first half of that circle has been shut down. Of necessity, the second half will shut down as well. The US is going to need to float trillions in new (and old, rolled over) debt every year for the next 4 or 5 years. In a world-wide economic downturn, where is the money going to come from? The Saudis, Chinese, Russians, et. al. are going to be draining their Sovereign Wealth Funds to keep their governments going, not looking for places to put new dollars.

To feed the debt addiction the govt will first force retirement accounts into government debt. That will work for a while, but eventually the only option I can think of is to turn to the Fed, the lender of last resort.

This will also sound the death knell for stocks. With no more money flowing in via 401K contributions, and money flowing out to boomers, the funding of stocks overall will be significantly less.

Great point. That's one of several reasons it won't fly IMO.

As I read it, this idea differs from SS because it would be a strict account of your contributions with beneficiary benefit I presume as opposed to a defined amount that goes in and more or less comes out depending upon how long you live. Still it's a subtle difference.

And no money or political will for PO solutions.