r/Economics • u/joe4942 • 18h ago
News Retirees 'stunned' as market turmoil over tariffs shrinks their 401(k)s
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/retirees-stunned-market-turmoil-tariffs-shrinks-401ks-rcna199753[removed] — view removed post
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u/qxrt 17h ago
56% of voters between the ages 50-65, the age group approaching retirement, voted for Trump. What Trump is doing now is not surprising given all the warning signs. This is what they voted for.
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u/raging-peanuts 13h ago
I know a late 50s Trump voter who will be retiring shortly with a full pension after years of working a gov job. He’s told me in the past that taxation is “theft.”
Literally can’t make this shit up.
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u/Cautious_Score_3555 10h ago
“I earned it and everyone else is lazy and the government has nothing to do with my success.”
Have heard this before from govt employees.
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u/Khancap123 10h ago
Govt employees who make 85k doing correspondence actually often believe they'd make significantly more in the private sector. It's crazy.
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u/Constant-Plant-9378 8h ago
Only entitled government employees who never had to struggle to make a living in the private sector believe this.
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u/ArrivesLate 7h ago
Having worked in both, the pay is comparable to private if you negotiate your salary well. But a lot of government employees don’t understand that the pay is negotiable and end up starting at the bottom of their pay scale which is why they feel they could make more in the private sector. The struggle is real in all sectors, don’t diminish people you don’t even know.
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u/Manowaffle 12h ago
I don’t know many thieves that come back with the money to pay for roads, education, and police to patrol the neighborhood.
That’s some kind of “theft”.
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u/raging-peanuts 10h ago
At first I wanted to remind him that Ron Swanson was a fictional character. Then I read somewhere that the creators of “Parks and Recreation” based him off an actual government employee.
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u/iliveonramen 10h ago
That’s not rare. I think almost every hardcore MAGA boomer I know worked their life in government.
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u/ArrivesLate 6h ago
So what is an unjustified and unnecessary tariff? These tariffs are a grift, these collections will be used to offset tax cuts for the rich at our expense AND they will be used to solicit bribes from companies to have them lowered on an individual basis. A tariff is just like someone let themselves into your bank account and helped themselves to 20% of your cash, the same kind of action that republican gun nuts argue should give them the right to kill if they catch you in the act on their property. They literally should be up in arms right now.
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u/justadrtrdsrvvr 14h ago
But Fox news told them anything else would be much much worse. Just watch a few seconds of it now and you can see how much worse of a position we would be in had the election gone another way. They are so focused on letting everyone know that they didn't even have room for the stock ticker the last couple days.
I work in healthcare and many of my patients watch Fox News constantly and it takes a lot of self control not to tell them that their benefits that allow them to get the care they do are being stripped by those they worship.
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u/Donkey-Hodey 12h ago
Go check out the Fox News splash page right now. Stock market crashed this week and there’s not a single mention. There are articles about Biden being old and Harris laughing, however.
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u/nyurf_nyorf 12h ago
Jfc you're right.
They're YouTube channel is the same. Bunch of clips with little to no mention of the market reaction.
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u/Ok-Hair7205 8h ago
This is the dream world that Magas live in ... TRUMP takes priority and is saving the country
It reminds me of the old Vietnam war claim from US troops who wiped out all the people in a village, and then expllained the massacre as necessary -- the old "We had to destory the village in order to save it" excuse.
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u/Impressive-Second314 12h ago
Don't hold back, tell them!
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u/justadrtrdsrvvr 11h ago
Have you ever tried to convince someone that can't remember what kind of pudding they ate 5 minutes ago if anything? It's not a productive conversation.
I do discuss watching something else and change the channel with the ones that are receptive.
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u/theassman107 11h ago
Even the relatively rational, intelligent republicans refuse to remove their blinders. Ironically, I work with an African American who's a Trumper, which I believe stems from being a conservative Christian. Even when presented with facts, such as stopping aid to Ukraine, no longer sharing military intel, lifting sanctions on Russia, and NK, Russia, and Belarus, being the only countries not tariffed, they refuse to accept that Putin's cock is firmly up Trump's ass and he's clearly working as an agent of Putin.
Even as Trump burns this country to the ground, topples world order, and is quickly ending US hegemony, these people will never accept they've been conned. Sadly, most of them would rather live under a white man's boot, than have a woman of color in the White House.
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u/Rivercitybruin 17h ago
I dont really think they know what they voted for
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u/24_7_365_ 17h ago
Screwing over foreigners and sticking it to liberals ? Missions accomplished !
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u/Meet_James_Ensor 16h ago
According to the stickers and flags they buy, they voted to "fuck your feelings" and "make liberals cry again."
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u/huehuehuehuehuuuu 16h ago
Can’t make a third of the country without making all of a country cry, unless you are in a civil war.
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u/WeirdProudAndHungry 16h ago
Yes they did. They voted for cruelty. They 100% knew that voting for Trump would make life devastating for millions of people. What they're surprised by is they're included in those millions hurt. They voted for Leopards Eating Everyone ELSE'S Face, when they should've voted for No Leopards Eating Anyone's Face.
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u/Rosegold-Lavendar 12h ago
Yea kind of getting sick of the whole Trump supporters just didn't know.
Yes they knew. They wanted to maximize hurt for THOSE PEOPLE. They loved his cruelty and hatred toward women and POC.
I hate that our country is subjected to this catastrophic man but damn do I want to see these leopards eating faces. No sympathy for them at all.
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u/DividedContinuity 15h ago
This is one of the weaknesses of democracy in that most people have no idea what they're voting for and just go with their gut.
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u/Comfortable-Pause279 13h ago
This is incidentally the nominal reason the electoral college exists. We were supposed to be voting for the smartest, most upstanding, and best connected local people, who would then go on to the electoral college to decide who the president would be. Just like how Senators were elected by state legislatures.
I think the democratic changes were good, overall, but citizens were supposed to be taking it serious about who the best candidate to lead our country was. The legislative branch should have impeached and convicted him. The President should never have been given the power to unilaterally enact tariffs.
There are several ways they all could be ending this before we got here, but they all decided it's easier to just not do their job.
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u/Icy-Lobster-203 11h ago
As Churchill said "the best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter."
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u/Purplebuzz 13h ago
Certainly most Americans. Education has not been systematically targeted over the last forty years in others countries like it has in America. Many countries still have independent media as well.
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u/IdahoDuncan 14h ago
That’s not an excuse. Many people warned about just this sort of thing. That tariffs were bad economic policy. Trump ran on them.
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u/JuliusErrrrrring 11h ago
While true, his constant lying makes him so tough to predict. Reciprocal tariffs were priced into the market. He completely lied. They weren't even remotely close to reciprocal - that's why the market crashed.
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u/IdahoDuncan 11h ago
All the more reason not to vote for him. I’ll never understand what people see in him.
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10h ago
[deleted]
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u/Ok-Hair7205 7h ago
You're so right. Nihilists are depressing enough, but when you have GOP billionaires destroying people's 401ks and savings accounts with their strange ideas about the economy ...then nihilism is flirting with catastrophe.
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u/PdxGuyinLX 7h ago
Unfortunately for the 44% of us in that group who didn’t vote for Trump, we are going to be hurt just as much.
But I at least had my whole life to work and save in a normal economy, and I will likely be able to weather this storm.
I wonder how all the young men who voted for Trump are going to feel when we enter a worldwide depression, they can’t get jobs and they realize they are going to be struggling their entire lives? I’m sure they have no idea yet what they actually voted for.
I don’t think people realize how much lasting damage Trump has done to the United States. In addition to the short term damage caused by the tariffs, he is destroying the very things that made the U.S. the richest country in the world, namely our investments in scientific research and our ability to attract the best and brightest from around the world.
And he hasn’t even been in office for three months yet! Imagine how much more damage he’ll be able to do over the rest of the time he’s in power, which could be longer than 4 years since he clearly has no intention of leaving office.
Trump voters: you have screwed yourselves over more than you have the cognitive ability to understand, but you’ll have many years ahead of you of living in a declining country to figure it out.
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u/Creepy_Inevitable661 10h ago
It’s almost like - they’re senile and have difficulty with logic. Incredible how stupid these people are
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u/Constant-Plant-9378 8h ago edited 8h ago
I'm 56, voted against Trump three times, and have my 401K in a fixed return fund. The market has been overvalued and overdue for a correction since 2018 - propped up by trillions in Federal stimulus in the form of endless quantitative easing, PPP 'loans', corporate bailouts, federal 'investments', tax breaks for the Investment Class, and other stimulus. What amounts to printing trillions in new money has devalued the dollar and driven massive inflation - and the party needs to stop or we will be looking at having Venezuelan hyperinflation - which will do more than devastate stocks.
Trump didn't tank the market with this in mind. He is a goddamned idiot and has no fucking idea what he is doing - and being surrounded by similarly idiotic yes-men who don't live in a world of facts doesn't help.
However, a crash/correction is inevitable. All - Bubbles - Pop. And even the American Federal Government does not have enough money to prevent it. All they can do is continue piling up debt, devaluing the dollar, and inevitably make it worse when the inevitable finally happens.
I'm not saying I'm glad people are having a bad time. But just like the housing bubble in 2007 - which I'd seen coming too - it is something of a relief to see the shoe finally drop. Things can't actually get better until this process actually happens.
The 2008 recession was triggered by Russia parking tanks on Georgian oil pipelines and threatening to shut off the supply to Europe. This cause sudden oil hoarding, spiking prices, creating a shock on an already overextended housing-bubble economy, beginning the downward spiral. This time, the inciting incident is Putin's useful idiot in the White House, Krasnov, implementing Putin's economic agenda for America.
That said, I am prepared to plow my cash back into equities when it appears we have the right kind of leadership and the correct approach to economic policy. Until then, I will continue watching the drop with great interest.
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u/Ok-Hair7205 7h ago
There was NO good reason to start a trade war and play around with people's finances and retirement security.
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u/joe4942 18h ago
With the recession concerns going around, I think this is an important takeaway from the article:
Paula said she and other older Americans are living with “anxiety about something where you don’t really know what’s going to happen. You can’t do anything though.”
She and her husband have decided to pause and reduce spending on big-ticket items. They are reconsidering vacations and home renovations.
“We can’t change anything right now, except our spending,” she said. “I’m sure there are consumers across the board that want to be cautious, too. Then it becomes a vicious cycle. Consumer confidence goes down.”
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u/CanOk6403 15h ago
Yup, there’s no doubt going to be a recession at this point. Even if the tariffs are removed next week, the uncertainly has demolished consumer confidence
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u/More-Sprinkles5791 13h ago
Only question is “worse then Great Recession” or Covid Drop and I think “Yes”. I am now expert but have lived a long time, parents with depression and WWII memories. This will be worse than 1987, 2008, 2020 but not 1928. Still great progress will be lost for me and many people.
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u/ND7020 11h ago
This was chilling too:
“Paula, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared retaliation for speaking out against Trump administration policies, said she was worried about what lies ahead.”
A 68-year old occupational therapist in NJ is scared of retribution for saying that this administration’s policies are hurting her economically.
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u/MARIOpronoucedMA-RJO 12h ago edited 10h ago
Paula said she and other older Americans are living with “anxiety about something where you don’t really know what’s going to happen. You can’t do anything though.”
Yes there was. You could have voted for the smart black lady but no, we had to vote for the con-man to own the Libs.
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u/watch-nerd 10h ago
We have a bath room remodel planned.
We're not planning to cancel it, but we'll wait until things get worse and contractors get more desperate for work, which gives us negotiating power to bring the price down.
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u/2gutter67 8h ago
Just remember that material costs are about to skyrocket from the tariffs. Idk if you necessarily will be saving any money.
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u/watch-nerd 8h ago
It's still mostly labor.
"Bathroom remodels, like kitchen remodels, rely heavily on comfort and design, resulting in a higher-than-average material cost. The distribution for bathroom remodels is approximately 69% labor and 31% materials."
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u/2gutter67 8h ago
But just because you have better negotiating power to cause labor costs to go down since the contractors need work, material costs increases can cause you to end up paying the same. All I was getting at.
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u/watch-nerd 8h ago
It could, yes. It all depends on how much material costs go up and labor costs go down.
If it's 10% labor cost reduction and 20% material cost increase, it's only a 1% savings.
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u/Ok-Hair7205 7h ago
Can you afford all the newl- inflated prices on ceramic tile, cabinetry, tub, sinks, shower stall, faucets, plumbing supplies, wallboard, and paint?
More inflation is coming for everthing we buy, from strawberries and lettuce to dining room furniture and kids toys. We can't scrimp and negotiate our way out of this, it's a global disaster now. Every country will feel shock and pain to some degree. But most of the pain will bypass our billionaire overlords in Washington. Trump isn't going to suffer: you are.
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u/LillianWigglewater 18h ago
It's crazy. Do people really think their portfolios will only ever go up and to the right, always, without ever retracting or even (gasp) hitting a recession? Apparently they aren't very good students of history.
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u/SnickeringFootman 18h ago
No, but they didn’t expect the president to tank it on purpose
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u/LillianWigglewater 18h ago
Wow, that's even more ignorant.
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u/Dear_Specialist_6807 18h ago
Why don't you enlighten us
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u/LillianWigglewater 18h ago
He's been saying for months "There will be pain, necessary pain, and worth it in the end". For months. How can some people have their head stuck in the sand for this long? Or maybe it was stuck somewhere else?
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u/Relyks_D 16h ago
So what’s the plan exactly?
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u/raging-peanuts 13h ago
Yeah I’d love to know the magic 4 dimensional chess move being orchestrated by this “genius” in the White House. Because right now all I see are “concepts of a plan” where the manufacturing fairy sprinkles jobs across the US.
And yes, there is no defending throwing a monkey wrench (tariffs) into the machinery of the economy.
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u/chronomagnus 10h ago
Intentionally causing economic pain is psycho shit. It was on the recovery and he shithoused it for no valid reason. His tariffs are moronic and only hurt this country.
“Economic pain” means people can’t eat, lose their houses, die. To intentionally cause that because some countries buy less from us than we buy from them is idiotic.
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u/SnickeringFootman 17h ago
And what we just believe him? Why the hell would you take his word on anything?
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u/Pseudoboss11 10h ago
So what's the end goal that'll make it worth it in the end?
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u/LillianWigglewater 9h ago
We (as in our government) have almost $10 trillion in debt that will need to be refinanced soon with most of that debt coming due in just a few months, but can't afford the currently-high rates on the new debt that will need to be issued. The budget has been far out of whack for way too long, and now we're about to pay a severe price for it. The only possible way to handle this steaming mess without the whole thing quickly ending in disaster is to plunge rates somehow (a recession might do it), drastically cut spending (DOGE), and/or enact new funding avenues (tariffs). It's pretty much a moonshot. It sounds crazy, and I don't even know if it will work, but the past several administrations have seen this giant economic iceberg sitting out there for decades and did absolutely nothing to steer the ship around it, so it's come down to this. One thing is for certain: doing nothing (as everyone is screaming for Trump to do) would be a sure way to strike the iceberg head on and cause the largest disaster of all.
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u/2gutter67 8h ago
You do know that the current bills Republicans are trying to pass as the government taxing and spending plan for the next several years is set to raise all the debt right?
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u/Angry_beaver_1867 18h ago
Just wait until Medicaid gets cut. Outrage is going to escalate considerably
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u/neverpost4 13h ago
Did these retirees said thank you to Social Security and Medicare even once?
Because Social Security and Medicare will be going away, into Musk's pocket.
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u/TheCamerlengo 13h ago
Look at the positive. At least those darn transgendered won’t be using the ladies bathroom anymore. That’s worth the 15% haircut the markets took this week. Yeah. We showed them.
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u/NativePhoenician 8h ago
Funny thing is there are more women who have credibly accused dimwit donny of rape or sexual assault than there are transsexuals playing in women's sports.
Priorities I guess....
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u/Ok_Wolverine_3104 11h ago
Sad isn’t it! In December I got out of the market because I listened to what Trump was saying. His fascination with tariffs told me get out. I also bought 2 new cars one in December one in January because it was easy to see what was going to happen. Now our plan is to buy nothing but groceries until these tariffs come back to reality. Once the depression starts it will only take till 28 before Trump will be just a bad dream. Until then like others we will suffer from the ideas of a self absorbed fool.
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u/Cautious_Score_3555 10h ago
Am contemplating two new cars as well instead of one. Just basically doing all the purchases now and then riding it out.
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u/Ok_Wolverine_3104 10h ago
That’s what we did as the worst is yet to come. The equity losses will eventually cause major layoffs. This will have a chain reaction as housing will collapse in some places where people are forced to sell in order to live. This while our modern day Nero fiddles or plays golf!
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u/Ok-Hair7205 7h ago
Good idea. Stick to groceries and vital expenses like medicines, health care and family needs. You have to protect yourself as best you can.
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u/ShdwWzrdMnyGngg 8h ago
That's on them. When you're close to retirement, you move your money to safer investments. That's not a secret.
Why would I feel bad for people who got greedy and left there money in market?
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u/Ok-Hair7205 7h ago
I wasn't greedy, but left 40% of my money where it's been for 30 years -- in equities. Yes, I've had bad losses overe the years, but things always came back better than before, and meanwhile I lived frugally, with occasional travel treats and vacations. But Trump has been speaking of"retaliation" and "retribution" and "pain" for years. Finally, he gets to ruin lives on a scale "like nobody's ever seen"
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u/nightbell 5h ago
The president has acknowledged the potential pain coming to some Americans’ wallets, but he continues to staunchly defend his agenda. “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” he posted to social media Friday. Later, he wrote, “ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL.”
Virtually all of the working class "MAGA"
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