Adam Ruins Everything (2015) s02e16 Episode Script
Adam Ruins the Future
1 (LAUGHTER) Oh, Melinda, spectacular job.
Dare I say, we've never had a fountain unveiling go off as smoothly as this.
And your design, it's original, yet classic.
Gil (LAUGHS) Adam, how does it feel to be on the arm of the future of fountains? I've never been happier.
In fact, I've never had a single doubt about our relationship.
Oh, do I hear wedding fountains in your future? Gil, stop trying to predict the future.
It's not possible.
Well, if I were in Adam's loafers, I would be looking for rings.
Yeah, if I could forget everything I know about the diamond industry.
The truth about rings is that Please don't ruin anything tonight.
Of course.
Francois, shut off Melinda's masterpiece, please.
You don't want to deplete all the company's liquid assets.
(LAUGHING) (MELINDA) Very funny.
So funny.
It was good.
Fountain humor! Are you okay? Of course.
My voice always sounds this strained when I'm confident about my choices.
Adam, maybe we should have a conversation about our future.
You've been acting strange ever since our argument about the moon landing and it's just I know sometimes relationships have expiration dates, so Funny you should say expiration dates, because the expiration dates on food don't mean what you think they do.
Are you seriously starting a show right now? Yeah, it seems like the right time.
Hi, I'm Adam Conover, and this is "Adam Ruin Everything.
" Okay, Adam, if you're sure there's nothing you want to talk about, then I guess I'll just help the caterers clean up so we can get out of here.
What the Eggs, sell by yesterday? Orange juice, best by two days ago? Yogurt, use by last week? Well, now I have to get rid of all this food.
If I don't, someone could get sick.
No, you don't.
Best by, use by, sell by.
Contrary to popular belief, none of these dates actually tells you when food stops being safe to eat.
In fact, food can still be good way past the date on the label.
According to food safety experts, eggs can be eaten three to five weeks past the sell-by date.
Sell-by dates are a yolk! And the USDA says canned and dried foods can be safe indefinitely.
Ho-ho-ho! I won't go bad for years! And if food isn't handled properly, it can actually go bad before the date on the label.
Even something as simple as leaving it out on the counter too long or setting your fridge at the wrong temperature can cut shelf life short.
It's so hot in here.
I think I'm I'm going bad.
Oh, yeah! At the end of the day, these dates just don't tell you that much.
Instead, you need to check your food for signs of spoilage, like changes in smell, color or texture.
Ugh, woof! Okay, well, then this milk is definitely bad.
Nope.
You can still drink me.
Oh, yeah.
Milk is a really neat exception.
Even after it spoils, it's still totally safe to drink.
Oh, ew, stop! You're gonna get sick.
Nope.
Milk is pasteurized, which means any harmful bacteria was removed long before it hit the shelves.
Even though it might not taste great, the safety risk of drinking spoiled milk are virtually zero.
Adam, stop.
I get it, I get it.
But if the date doesn't say when the food's safe to eat, why does the federal government put it there? Hate to break it to you.
They don't.
We all assume that these labels are some kinda big government safety regulation, but with the exception of baby food, the federal government actually doesn't require date labeling of any kind.
The citizens of this great nation have the inalienable right to eat five-year-old mayonnaise if they want, for this is ew America.
Instead, it's all left up to the states, and every state has their own rules.
In fact, nine states have no date labeling regulations at all.
Well, who does put the dates on the food? Seems like they don't tell us anything at all.
Oh, no, they do tell you one thing: when the manufacturer thinks their food tastes the best.
What? Here at Hulko, we use cutting-edge food science to determine the exact best by and use by date at which our food is the most snacktabulous.
Mmm.
It's still pretty good.
Pretty good garbage, you mean.
Date it, boys.
But that food's not dangerous.
And he just said it still tasted good.
Not good enough! We need our customers eating our food at maximum crunchitude or they might buy something else! And hey, if they think they have to throw it away sooner and buy more But that's wasting food.
That's right, Melinda, and it's a major problem.
Melinda, this is Dana Gunders.
She's a senior scientist at the natural resources defense council and a co-author of a major 2013 Harvard report detailing the massive problem with these dates.
Americans trash over 160 billion pounds of perfectly good food every year.
Roughly 40% of our food supply is thrown out, and thee confusing dates are a huge factor.
One survey found that 83% of Americans have prematurely thrown out food based on the sell-by date, but that date isn't even meant for consumers.
It just tells stores when to turn over their inventory.
Wait, sell by today? But I bought this today.
Oh, well.
This is ridiculous.
Someone should do something.
Well, some leaders in the grocery industry are pushing for clearer, simpler labels, but until there's a nationally mandated system, their recommendations are just voluntary.
And the worst part is, we're trashing all this perfectly good food while millions are going hungry.
- Whoa.
- That one's alive.
All this has got to go.
(DANA) No, I'm still good! I've got to stop this.
Hey! Give me that cheese.
It's pasteurized! Yeah.
I'm glad we're not giving up on this cheese too early, 'cause it could last a lot longer than we think, and maybe the cheese is just going through a rough patch right now.
Wait, what? Well, like, back when I didn't have cheese, I wanted cheese so bad.
And just because the cheese I have now isn't the cheese I thought it would be, that doesn't mean we should throw it out.
Maybe it's the kind of cheese that gets better with time.
It really sounds like you're talking about a lot more than cheese here.
Are you sure you don't want to have that conversation about our future? The future? Uh, well the thing about the future is In the future, you'll be miserable, 'cause you probably won't be able to retire on your 401(K).
Just what I wanted to talk about.
Whee! Drinking all that old milk made my hyphy! Ha-ha! So instead of talking about our relationship, now you want to ruin 401(K)s? Yep.
Well, I don't see what there is to ruin.
Putting money in a 401(K) is the most responsible financial decision I've ever made.
I contribute 5% of every paycheck, my company matches it and I get to choose all my own investments.
By the time I'm 65, I'll be set.
Yeah, that's what they tell you, but it's not true.
Not only are 401(K)s a lot riskier than you think, when it comes to securing your future, they are woefully inadequate.
In the old days, if a company had a retirement plan, it was a pension.
So I break my back in your mine for 30 years and then you give me a check every week until I die? Gee, Mister, that's swell.
For workers that had pensions, this was actually a pretty great deal, but in the '80s and '90s, more and more companies started switching to 401(K)s, a shiny new financial product that gave workers an incentive to save more of their own money for retirement.
Pensions are your dad's retirement plan.
Try this 401(K).
Whoa, so I just put aside a little bit of my paycheck into an investment account, tax free, and then you match it? And unlike a pension, I can take my 401(K) with me from job to job? That freedom is perfect for my active '90's lifestyle.
But that freedom was a bit oversold.
401(K)s have tons of hidden fees, and it's pretty easy to make a bad investment.
Here, just pick some stocks.
Wow, Blockbuster, Enron! Pets.
com! I love that sock puppet! Well, if people don't bother to learn how to set up their 401(K), that's on them.
If you do it right, you can guarantee your own retirement.
No, you can't.
Because the biggest problem with 401(K)s is that they put all the risk on you, and the one thing you can't guarantee is the stock and bond market.
We learned how big that risk is during the recessions of the 2000s, starting when the dotcom bubble burst.
My Pets.
com stock! That puppet lied to me! And especially during the 2008 financial crisis.
Okay, 2000 was rough, but now it's 2008 and yes, we can keep working here, I guess.
People on the brink of retiring were screwed, even if they had done everything right.
But that was years ago.
The economy recovered, so my 401(K) will be fine.
Right? Sorry, lady.
You're gonna have to save a lot more than you thought.
Okay, well, I contribute 5% of my paycheck right now.
What if I upped it to six? Not good enough.
Experts say you should save at least ten or even 15%.
15%? That's more than I spend on groceries.
I can't afford that.
Yeah, and you're not alone.
With stagnant wages and the skyrocketing costs of healthcare, childcare and college, 52% of American households are at risk of not having enough money to maintain their standard of living when they retire.
And nearly half of Americans ages 32 to 61 have no retirement savings at all.
Looks like you're gonna have roommates in your seventies.
(SNORTS) Okay, forget 401(K)s.
What should I do instead? 403(B)? Roth IRA? Good old-fashioned mattress fund? Actually, none of those are enough on their own.
Melinda, this is Teresa Ghilarducci.
She's a labor economist at The New School who studies retirement security.
401(K)s were never meant to replace our pension system.
They were intended to supplement pensions and social security.
Even social security only replaces 40% of what an average worker needs in retirement.
And this problem is only getting worse.
10,000 baby boomers are turning 65 every day and we have no good plan in place for how we're gonna take care of them.
And instead of making one, we've just sent a message to workers that if you're not prepared for retirement, it's your fault.
Asking people to be a retirement expert, to be an investment expert is like asking people to do their own dental work.
Then what do we do? Well, since we don't have any better options, if your employer offers a 401(K), then take it.
If they don't, then open an IRA.
In either case, only invest in index funds because they charge much lower fees.
But in terms of a bigger picture, we should all pressure the government to set up a well regulated public private retirement system like other countries have.
Until that happens, your only choice is to save as much as you can.
Thanks, Teresa.
This is overwhelming to think about.
I know.
But it's a problem that we as a nation have to face head on.
We can't avoid having this conversation about our future.
Our financial future.
That's the future I'm talking about.
Other conversations about the future, you can avoid forever.
Hopefully.
Adam, look at me.
We can both tell there's something off here.
Just tell me how you feel.
I don't know how I feel.
I really like spending time with you, but I don't know if I'm as happy as I should be.
You're my first real girlfriend and I don't know if the problem is us or me.
If I invest more in our relationship, maybe it'll grow with time.
Or maybe it'll crash, like Pets.
com.
Not really into this metaphor.
I don't know what to do.
(SIGHS) Well What do you want to do? Research! Oh, no.
If I talk to a ton of experts and read every relationship study I can find, I'll be able to predict, for sure, what our future will be.
No.
Adam, you can't predict the future.
And I'm gonna prove it to you.
The power of knowledge! Yep.
Hold on to your hair.
This is "Melinda Ruins Everything.
" What is this place? This is the future.
But I can't see anything.
Exactly.
We can't know what the future holds.
Man, these powers are cool.
It's fun being the Adam.
But you can't ruin predicting the future! People have done it throughout history.
They have.
But usually, their judgments are too clouded by the present.
Before the car was invented, 19th century sci-fi writers imagined people would get around like this.
In the future, man shall transport himself upon a steed of steel! (HORSE NEIGHING) And at the 1964 World's Fair, IBM passed over their computers to showcase what they thought would be the truly revolutionary modern technology.
The electric typewriter! Forget about those oversized adding machines.
The future is typing at a slightly faster speed.
Even today, you should be skeptical of any tech company that makes big promises about the future.
Remember Google Glass? In 2012, Google hyped it up before they had even finished testing it.
They lined up celebrity endorsements, a Time Magazine profile, even a 12-page spread in Vogue.
But in the real world, people hated those dumb nerd goggles.
Is this how ugly people feel? (HUFFS) Okay, well, maybe we can't always call the next big tech thing, but what about my future? I should be able to predict that.
No, you can't.
And here's why.
There's psychological research that shows that when we try to imagine our future, we only picture a couple of details.
Ugh, I just know I'm gonna hate this party.
I'll have to meet a bunch of people.
And talk to them about stuff.
But there are thousands of factors that could change how you feel about the future once you reach it, and you can't possibly predict them all.
Wait, all my friends are here? And I'm drunk? And there's a dog! Hell, yeah.
I never imagined this party would be fun.
So as much as you want to know exactly where our relationship's gonna go, there are countless potential futures ahead of us.
Even our personalities change over time.
No, no, no.
I couldn't change my personality if I tried.
And I have tried.
People have asked me to.
Sorry, it happens to all of us, even if we can't imagine it.
In one study, researchers compared how much people believed they'd changed in the last ten years to how much they predicted they were gonna change in the next ten years.
I was completely different when I was a kid.
I used to listen to ska.
But even though, like, him, most people believed they were different in the past, they still didn't think they would change much in the future.
This is who I'll be forever.
Punk will never die.
Ha! Believe me.
Punk dies, kid.
And it wasn't just the young'uns.
Older participants showed the exact same pattern.
I'll be doing Jager bombs with my finance bros 'til I die! Ugh.
Believe me, your bros die, kid.
Somewhere around the 20th shot.
We seriously underestimate how much and in what ways we're gonna grow and evolve.
That's why we're so bad at predicting how we'll feel in the future.
But if I can't know for sure how I'm gonna feel, how can I make decisions about anything? No.
I need to do more research.
Adam, you know there are some problems that you can't research away, right? Yeah.
I've learned that.
Well, then you should know that it's okay not to know.
Honestly, I'm not sure about our future right now, either.
These past couple months have been fun, but they've been hard, too.
So how do we decide what to do now? Well, you can use another person who's had a similar experience as your guide.
It's a psychological method called surrogation.
In one experiment, researchers told speed daters they could find out all about their date, likes, dislikes, photos, or get a rating from a woman who had already gone out with him, then the researchers asked the women to predict how much they'd enjoy the date.
It turned out, the women who had gotten someone else's opinion made better predictions than the women who had done their own research.
What happened? I checked your Facebook, Instagram, Linkedln.
I thought I'd love you.
Yeah, Eliza told me you'd be an F.
Minus.
Huh.
You can't predict exactly how things are gonna turn out.
You just have to follow your heart and make a decision.
But if you want a better idea of how that decision might make you feel, ask someone who's been there before.
Phone a friend.
(CELL PHONE RINGING) (SCOFFS) This mother falcon.
Adam, where are you?! You can't just Mary Poppins away and never call.
I mean, I thought you got sucked up by a jet engine.
No, I'm fine.
I've been with my girlfriend.
Well, I find that hard to believe, but continue.
I thought being in a relationship would make me happy or complete.
And she's great, but something's still missing, and now I don't know what to do.
Have you ever felt that way? Adam, when I first started dating, I was really insecure.
I mean, I would just jump into a relationship with anyone who said they liked me, as though if I didn't have someone else's approval, that meant there was something wrong with me.
Yeah, that sounds familiar.
I wonder if that's why I ruin things, too.
I mean, I'm not a therapist, but, like, yeah, fo' sho.
But eventually, I realized, I was actually fine, all by myself.
I just needed to learn how to be okay with who I was.
And no one else was gonna do that for me.
That is something that I had to learn how to do on my own.
Which took time.
But if there's one thing I know about Adam Conover, it's that he always has time to learn something new.
Besides, you probably only think you need to be in a relationship because of some old dude's marketing campaign.
(LAUGHS) Yeah.
He was probably really into eugenics, too.
(LAUGHING) Thanks, Em.
I think we should break up.
I think we should break up.
Wait You do? Yeah.
There are a lot of things I really like about you, but I don't think we're right for each other.
I think you are the most amazing person, and you've taught me so much.
But I have some things I need to figure out on my own.
It really is incredible, Melinda.
Thanks.
You know, even though our future didn't turn out like I thought, I think we're both gonna be okay.
Me too.
Goodbye, Adam.
Hey.
Can you, like, magic your stuff out of my house? Of course.
You know, cell phones cause cancer.
And microwaves make you infertile.
Read it on Facebook.
If you think I'm wrong, speak now, or I'm gonna believe that forever.
I'm okay.
Thanks, though.
Huh.
Some people just don't want to know the truth.
(DEEP INHALE) Hello, everyone.
I'm here behind the scenes on "Adam Ruin Everything" with Teresa Ghilarducci.
Thanks for being here on the show.
I'm really glad to be here, thank you.
If you could put it in a nutshell, what is the problem with how America handles retirement? Well, for the past 37 years, we've had an experiment, and that experiment has been with 401(K)s or what I call a do-it-yourself retirement system, and it's failed.
We don't have a system designed for the human beings that we have or designed for the kinds of labor market we have.
We're not robots and we don't have our jobs for our whole life and we don't start saving when we first start our jobs.
What I say to people is, don't give up if you're 50 and you don't have any savings, save as much as you can, but I also tell people to kind of cut their expectations, to cut their living standards by 20 or 30%.
- But I - That's a tough thing to tell people.
Yeah, my heart breaks when I do.
Well, so what do you say I'm sure a lot of Americans say, hey, I like that it's voluntary.
I like that I decide what to do with my money, and so it's up to that individual person.
I mean, a lot of people feel that as an ethos and that's important to them.
What do you say to those folks? You know, if you ask people whether or not it should be a voluntary system, they say yeah, it should be voluntary, but if you actually tell them that we've had that experiment, that voluntary experiment for the past 40 years and that half of Americans are going to end up being downwardly mobile when they retire, they'll move from being a middle class worker to a poor or near-poor retiree, they have second thoughts about it, and they say, boy, I wish someone told me to save.
But people do tell us to save and yet we don't.
Yeah, it's not just about telling to save, it's about making them save.
There's a lot of ideas out there to provide a mandatory layer on top of social security.
I mean, lots of people in this country have a mandatory layer.
It's the unionized plumber, it's the worker at the auto plant, it's the teacher at the university.
It's the cop on the beat.
- Right.
- They all have a mandatory system, so it's not un-American to have a layer of pensions that is advance funded and get their returns from the finance market.
We just need to get more people in those programs.
Yeah, we need to get more people in it, but to have a system that gets everybody to a place where they maintain their living standards is what you would expect from a functioning nation.
Yeah.
And we've told people, we've tortured them in fourth grade with the idea of having to save, but it hasn't worked, and in every other country that's experimented with a voluntary system, it covers about half the population.
- Like ours does.
- That's right.
And it's not people's fault, it's the environment's fault.
We have not designed a good system.
We don't have flawed human beings.
We have a flawed system.
It's like, we need a good healthcare system, but we also need people to take care of themselves and not smoke and not eat too much.
That's something we talk about so much on this show, is the interaction of that individual responsibility in action with the system, and both need to work.
We need We need people who are gonna take responsibility for themselves and we need a system that supports them and helps them make those choices and supports them in making the best choices.
And that's totally American.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show to talk to us about this, Teresa.
- Thanks, Adam.
- It's really been wonderful.
Dare I say, we've never had a fountain unveiling go off as smoothly as this.
And your design, it's original, yet classic.
Gil (LAUGHS) Adam, how does it feel to be on the arm of the future of fountains? I've never been happier.
In fact, I've never had a single doubt about our relationship.
Oh, do I hear wedding fountains in your future? Gil, stop trying to predict the future.
It's not possible.
Well, if I were in Adam's loafers, I would be looking for rings.
Yeah, if I could forget everything I know about the diamond industry.
The truth about rings is that Please don't ruin anything tonight.
Of course.
Francois, shut off Melinda's masterpiece, please.
You don't want to deplete all the company's liquid assets.
(LAUGHING) (MELINDA) Very funny.
So funny.
It was good.
Fountain humor! Are you okay? Of course.
My voice always sounds this strained when I'm confident about my choices.
Adam, maybe we should have a conversation about our future.
You've been acting strange ever since our argument about the moon landing and it's just I know sometimes relationships have expiration dates, so Funny you should say expiration dates, because the expiration dates on food don't mean what you think they do.
Are you seriously starting a show right now? Yeah, it seems like the right time.
Hi, I'm Adam Conover, and this is "Adam Ruin Everything.
" Okay, Adam, if you're sure there's nothing you want to talk about, then I guess I'll just help the caterers clean up so we can get out of here.
What the Eggs, sell by yesterday? Orange juice, best by two days ago? Yogurt, use by last week? Well, now I have to get rid of all this food.
If I don't, someone could get sick.
No, you don't.
Best by, use by, sell by.
Contrary to popular belief, none of these dates actually tells you when food stops being safe to eat.
In fact, food can still be good way past the date on the label.
According to food safety experts, eggs can be eaten three to five weeks past the sell-by date.
Sell-by dates are a yolk! And the USDA says canned and dried foods can be safe indefinitely.
Ho-ho-ho! I won't go bad for years! And if food isn't handled properly, it can actually go bad before the date on the label.
Even something as simple as leaving it out on the counter too long or setting your fridge at the wrong temperature can cut shelf life short.
It's so hot in here.
I think I'm I'm going bad.
Oh, yeah! At the end of the day, these dates just don't tell you that much.
Instead, you need to check your food for signs of spoilage, like changes in smell, color or texture.
Ugh, woof! Okay, well, then this milk is definitely bad.
Nope.
You can still drink me.
Oh, yeah.
Milk is a really neat exception.
Even after it spoils, it's still totally safe to drink.
Oh, ew, stop! You're gonna get sick.
Nope.
Milk is pasteurized, which means any harmful bacteria was removed long before it hit the shelves.
Even though it might not taste great, the safety risk of drinking spoiled milk are virtually zero.
Adam, stop.
I get it, I get it.
But if the date doesn't say when the food's safe to eat, why does the federal government put it there? Hate to break it to you.
They don't.
We all assume that these labels are some kinda big government safety regulation, but with the exception of baby food, the federal government actually doesn't require date labeling of any kind.
The citizens of this great nation have the inalienable right to eat five-year-old mayonnaise if they want, for this is ew America.
Instead, it's all left up to the states, and every state has their own rules.
In fact, nine states have no date labeling regulations at all.
Well, who does put the dates on the food? Seems like they don't tell us anything at all.
Oh, no, they do tell you one thing: when the manufacturer thinks their food tastes the best.
What? Here at Hulko, we use cutting-edge food science to determine the exact best by and use by date at which our food is the most snacktabulous.
Mmm.
It's still pretty good.
Pretty good garbage, you mean.
Date it, boys.
But that food's not dangerous.
And he just said it still tasted good.
Not good enough! We need our customers eating our food at maximum crunchitude or they might buy something else! And hey, if they think they have to throw it away sooner and buy more But that's wasting food.
That's right, Melinda, and it's a major problem.
Melinda, this is Dana Gunders.
She's a senior scientist at the natural resources defense council and a co-author of a major 2013 Harvard report detailing the massive problem with these dates.
Americans trash over 160 billion pounds of perfectly good food every year.
Roughly 40% of our food supply is thrown out, and thee confusing dates are a huge factor.
One survey found that 83% of Americans have prematurely thrown out food based on the sell-by date, but that date isn't even meant for consumers.
It just tells stores when to turn over their inventory.
Wait, sell by today? But I bought this today.
Oh, well.
This is ridiculous.
Someone should do something.
Well, some leaders in the grocery industry are pushing for clearer, simpler labels, but until there's a nationally mandated system, their recommendations are just voluntary.
And the worst part is, we're trashing all this perfectly good food while millions are going hungry.
- Whoa.
- That one's alive.
All this has got to go.
(DANA) No, I'm still good! I've got to stop this.
Hey! Give me that cheese.
It's pasteurized! Yeah.
I'm glad we're not giving up on this cheese too early, 'cause it could last a lot longer than we think, and maybe the cheese is just going through a rough patch right now.
Wait, what? Well, like, back when I didn't have cheese, I wanted cheese so bad.
And just because the cheese I have now isn't the cheese I thought it would be, that doesn't mean we should throw it out.
Maybe it's the kind of cheese that gets better with time.
It really sounds like you're talking about a lot more than cheese here.
Are you sure you don't want to have that conversation about our future? The future? Uh, well the thing about the future is In the future, you'll be miserable, 'cause you probably won't be able to retire on your 401(K).
Just what I wanted to talk about.
Whee! Drinking all that old milk made my hyphy! Ha-ha! So instead of talking about our relationship, now you want to ruin 401(K)s? Yep.
Well, I don't see what there is to ruin.
Putting money in a 401(K) is the most responsible financial decision I've ever made.
I contribute 5% of every paycheck, my company matches it and I get to choose all my own investments.
By the time I'm 65, I'll be set.
Yeah, that's what they tell you, but it's not true.
Not only are 401(K)s a lot riskier than you think, when it comes to securing your future, they are woefully inadequate.
In the old days, if a company had a retirement plan, it was a pension.
So I break my back in your mine for 30 years and then you give me a check every week until I die? Gee, Mister, that's swell.
For workers that had pensions, this was actually a pretty great deal, but in the '80s and '90s, more and more companies started switching to 401(K)s, a shiny new financial product that gave workers an incentive to save more of their own money for retirement.
Pensions are your dad's retirement plan.
Try this 401(K).
Whoa, so I just put aside a little bit of my paycheck into an investment account, tax free, and then you match it? And unlike a pension, I can take my 401(K) with me from job to job? That freedom is perfect for my active '90's lifestyle.
But that freedom was a bit oversold.
401(K)s have tons of hidden fees, and it's pretty easy to make a bad investment.
Here, just pick some stocks.
Wow, Blockbuster, Enron! Pets.
com! I love that sock puppet! Well, if people don't bother to learn how to set up their 401(K), that's on them.
If you do it right, you can guarantee your own retirement.
No, you can't.
Because the biggest problem with 401(K)s is that they put all the risk on you, and the one thing you can't guarantee is the stock and bond market.
We learned how big that risk is during the recessions of the 2000s, starting when the dotcom bubble burst.
My Pets.
com stock! That puppet lied to me! And especially during the 2008 financial crisis.
Okay, 2000 was rough, but now it's 2008 and yes, we can keep working here, I guess.
People on the brink of retiring were screwed, even if they had done everything right.
But that was years ago.
The economy recovered, so my 401(K) will be fine.
Right? Sorry, lady.
You're gonna have to save a lot more than you thought.
Okay, well, I contribute 5% of my paycheck right now.
What if I upped it to six? Not good enough.
Experts say you should save at least ten or even 15%.
15%? That's more than I spend on groceries.
I can't afford that.
Yeah, and you're not alone.
With stagnant wages and the skyrocketing costs of healthcare, childcare and college, 52% of American households are at risk of not having enough money to maintain their standard of living when they retire.
And nearly half of Americans ages 32 to 61 have no retirement savings at all.
Looks like you're gonna have roommates in your seventies.
(SNORTS) Okay, forget 401(K)s.
What should I do instead? 403(B)? Roth IRA? Good old-fashioned mattress fund? Actually, none of those are enough on their own.
Melinda, this is Teresa Ghilarducci.
She's a labor economist at The New School who studies retirement security.
401(K)s were never meant to replace our pension system.
They were intended to supplement pensions and social security.
Even social security only replaces 40% of what an average worker needs in retirement.
And this problem is only getting worse.
10,000 baby boomers are turning 65 every day and we have no good plan in place for how we're gonna take care of them.
And instead of making one, we've just sent a message to workers that if you're not prepared for retirement, it's your fault.
Asking people to be a retirement expert, to be an investment expert is like asking people to do their own dental work.
Then what do we do? Well, since we don't have any better options, if your employer offers a 401(K), then take it.
If they don't, then open an IRA.
In either case, only invest in index funds because they charge much lower fees.
But in terms of a bigger picture, we should all pressure the government to set up a well regulated public private retirement system like other countries have.
Until that happens, your only choice is to save as much as you can.
Thanks, Teresa.
This is overwhelming to think about.
I know.
But it's a problem that we as a nation have to face head on.
We can't avoid having this conversation about our future.
Our financial future.
That's the future I'm talking about.
Other conversations about the future, you can avoid forever.
Hopefully.
Adam, look at me.
We can both tell there's something off here.
Just tell me how you feel.
I don't know how I feel.
I really like spending time with you, but I don't know if I'm as happy as I should be.
You're my first real girlfriend and I don't know if the problem is us or me.
If I invest more in our relationship, maybe it'll grow with time.
Or maybe it'll crash, like Pets.
com.
Not really into this metaphor.
I don't know what to do.
(SIGHS) Well What do you want to do? Research! Oh, no.
If I talk to a ton of experts and read every relationship study I can find, I'll be able to predict, for sure, what our future will be.
No.
Adam, you can't predict the future.
And I'm gonna prove it to you.
The power of knowledge! Yep.
Hold on to your hair.
This is "Melinda Ruins Everything.
" What is this place? This is the future.
But I can't see anything.
Exactly.
We can't know what the future holds.
Man, these powers are cool.
It's fun being the Adam.
But you can't ruin predicting the future! People have done it throughout history.
They have.
But usually, their judgments are too clouded by the present.
Before the car was invented, 19th century sci-fi writers imagined people would get around like this.
In the future, man shall transport himself upon a steed of steel! (HORSE NEIGHING) And at the 1964 World's Fair, IBM passed over their computers to showcase what they thought would be the truly revolutionary modern technology.
The electric typewriter! Forget about those oversized adding machines.
The future is typing at a slightly faster speed.
Even today, you should be skeptical of any tech company that makes big promises about the future.
Remember Google Glass? In 2012, Google hyped it up before they had even finished testing it.
They lined up celebrity endorsements, a Time Magazine profile, even a 12-page spread in Vogue.
But in the real world, people hated those dumb nerd goggles.
Is this how ugly people feel? (HUFFS) Okay, well, maybe we can't always call the next big tech thing, but what about my future? I should be able to predict that.
No, you can't.
And here's why.
There's psychological research that shows that when we try to imagine our future, we only picture a couple of details.
Ugh, I just know I'm gonna hate this party.
I'll have to meet a bunch of people.
And talk to them about stuff.
But there are thousands of factors that could change how you feel about the future once you reach it, and you can't possibly predict them all.
Wait, all my friends are here? And I'm drunk? And there's a dog! Hell, yeah.
I never imagined this party would be fun.
So as much as you want to know exactly where our relationship's gonna go, there are countless potential futures ahead of us.
Even our personalities change over time.
No, no, no.
I couldn't change my personality if I tried.
And I have tried.
People have asked me to.
Sorry, it happens to all of us, even if we can't imagine it.
In one study, researchers compared how much people believed they'd changed in the last ten years to how much they predicted they were gonna change in the next ten years.
I was completely different when I was a kid.
I used to listen to ska.
But even though, like, him, most people believed they were different in the past, they still didn't think they would change much in the future.
This is who I'll be forever.
Punk will never die.
Ha! Believe me.
Punk dies, kid.
And it wasn't just the young'uns.
Older participants showed the exact same pattern.
I'll be doing Jager bombs with my finance bros 'til I die! Ugh.
Believe me, your bros die, kid.
Somewhere around the 20th shot.
We seriously underestimate how much and in what ways we're gonna grow and evolve.
That's why we're so bad at predicting how we'll feel in the future.
But if I can't know for sure how I'm gonna feel, how can I make decisions about anything? No.
I need to do more research.
Adam, you know there are some problems that you can't research away, right? Yeah.
I've learned that.
Well, then you should know that it's okay not to know.
Honestly, I'm not sure about our future right now, either.
These past couple months have been fun, but they've been hard, too.
So how do we decide what to do now? Well, you can use another person who's had a similar experience as your guide.
It's a psychological method called surrogation.
In one experiment, researchers told speed daters they could find out all about their date, likes, dislikes, photos, or get a rating from a woman who had already gone out with him, then the researchers asked the women to predict how much they'd enjoy the date.
It turned out, the women who had gotten someone else's opinion made better predictions than the women who had done their own research.
What happened? I checked your Facebook, Instagram, Linkedln.
I thought I'd love you.
Yeah, Eliza told me you'd be an F.
Minus.
Huh.
You can't predict exactly how things are gonna turn out.
You just have to follow your heart and make a decision.
But if you want a better idea of how that decision might make you feel, ask someone who's been there before.
Phone a friend.
(CELL PHONE RINGING) (SCOFFS) This mother falcon.
Adam, where are you?! You can't just Mary Poppins away and never call.
I mean, I thought you got sucked up by a jet engine.
No, I'm fine.
I've been with my girlfriend.
Well, I find that hard to believe, but continue.
I thought being in a relationship would make me happy or complete.
And she's great, but something's still missing, and now I don't know what to do.
Have you ever felt that way? Adam, when I first started dating, I was really insecure.
I mean, I would just jump into a relationship with anyone who said they liked me, as though if I didn't have someone else's approval, that meant there was something wrong with me.
Yeah, that sounds familiar.
I wonder if that's why I ruin things, too.
I mean, I'm not a therapist, but, like, yeah, fo' sho.
But eventually, I realized, I was actually fine, all by myself.
I just needed to learn how to be okay with who I was.
And no one else was gonna do that for me.
That is something that I had to learn how to do on my own.
Which took time.
But if there's one thing I know about Adam Conover, it's that he always has time to learn something new.
Besides, you probably only think you need to be in a relationship because of some old dude's marketing campaign.
(LAUGHS) Yeah.
He was probably really into eugenics, too.
(LAUGHING) Thanks, Em.
I think we should break up.
I think we should break up.
Wait You do? Yeah.
There are a lot of things I really like about you, but I don't think we're right for each other.
I think you are the most amazing person, and you've taught me so much.
But I have some things I need to figure out on my own.
It really is incredible, Melinda.
Thanks.
You know, even though our future didn't turn out like I thought, I think we're both gonna be okay.
Me too.
Goodbye, Adam.
Hey.
Can you, like, magic your stuff out of my house? Of course.
You know, cell phones cause cancer.
And microwaves make you infertile.
Read it on Facebook.
If you think I'm wrong, speak now, or I'm gonna believe that forever.
I'm okay.
Thanks, though.
Huh.
Some people just don't want to know the truth.
(DEEP INHALE) Hello, everyone.
I'm here behind the scenes on "Adam Ruin Everything" with Teresa Ghilarducci.
Thanks for being here on the show.
I'm really glad to be here, thank you.
If you could put it in a nutshell, what is the problem with how America handles retirement? Well, for the past 37 years, we've had an experiment, and that experiment has been with 401(K)s or what I call a do-it-yourself retirement system, and it's failed.
We don't have a system designed for the human beings that we have or designed for the kinds of labor market we have.
We're not robots and we don't have our jobs for our whole life and we don't start saving when we first start our jobs.
What I say to people is, don't give up if you're 50 and you don't have any savings, save as much as you can, but I also tell people to kind of cut their expectations, to cut their living standards by 20 or 30%.
- But I - That's a tough thing to tell people.
Yeah, my heart breaks when I do.
Well, so what do you say I'm sure a lot of Americans say, hey, I like that it's voluntary.
I like that I decide what to do with my money, and so it's up to that individual person.
I mean, a lot of people feel that as an ethos and that's important to them.
What do you say to those folks? You know, if you ask people whether or not it should be a voluntary system, they say yeah, it should be voluntary, but if you actually tell them that we've had that experiment, that voluntary experiment for the past 40 years and that half of Americans are going to end up being downwardly mobile when they retire, they'll move from being a middle class worker to a poor or near-poor retiree, they have second thoughts about it, and they say, boy, I wish someone told me to save.
But people do tell us to save and yet we don't.
Yeah, it's not just about telling to save, it's about making them save.
There's a lot of ideas out there to provide a mandatory layer on top of social security.
I mean, lots of people in this country have a mandatory layer.
It's the unionized plumber, it's the worker at the auto plant, it's the teacher at the university.
It's the cop on the beat.
- Right.
- They all have a mandatory system, so it's not un-American to have a layer of pensions that is advance funded and get their returns from the finance market.
We just need to get more people in those programs.
Yeah, we need to get more people in it, but to have a system that gets everybody to a place where they maintain their living standards is what you would expect from a functioning nation.
Yeah.
And we've told people, we've tortured them in fourth grade with the idea of having to save, but it hasn't worked, and in every other country that's experimented with a voluntary system, it covers about half the population.
- Like ours does.
- That's right.
And it's not people's fault, it's the environment's fault.
We have not designed a good system.
We don't have flawed human beings.
We have a flawed system.
It's like, we need a good healthcare system, but we also need people to take care of themselves and not smoke and not eat too much.
That's something we talk about so much on this show, is the interaction of that individual responsibility in action with the system, and both need to work.
We need We need people who are gonna take responsibility for themselves and we need a system that supports them and helps them make those choices and supports them in making the best choices.
And that's totally American.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show to talk to us about this, Teresa.
- Thanks, Adam.
- It's really been wonderful.