Can’t beat them? Play with them at their own game – Use the stock markets as retirement goal

As much as we hate capitalism and how self-serving and self-entitled many corporations are, that's how the system has been running for hundreds of years. It won't change this lifetime. A practical action plan is important.

tl;dr below –> Learn to spend less, long-term invest your savings in the stock market, therefore retire earlier.

We as regular people earn a monthly/hourly/daily wage, so we need to learn to budget. And it is really important to do that when you enter the work force and start making money. Then exploit the stock market like the corporations tries to increase the shareholder value at our expense.

1. Figure what is really necessary for your daily expenses.
2. Practically speaking: Leave a tiny amount to spend for your luxuries/discretionary. Think the food pyramid but for your expenses budgeting instead. What we mean is to avoid spending too much on what is feeding these greedy corporations.
3. Overall you should have an annual expenses budget that's below your estimated annual income.
4. Practically speaking, a small part of your savings needs goes into your bank just in case of emergencies.
5. The remaining savings all goes into long-term ownership of shares in the stock market of a country which you believe would increase in value over time. Unless you are very confident in a particular company's long term prospects (I buy a hell lot of shares in my country's State Owned Enterprises for instance), you should be buying regular amounts in an index fund/ETF. Maybe do it quarterly, do it monthly. Its your call.
6. Do that over the next 20 years or so. Do your own financial investment projections, given the history of the stock market chances are you get a decent sum of money for retiring from work.

A stable job is preferable, but otherwise, endure and work hard, avoid the excesses of the modern lifestyle that the world loves to promote for the sake of these money-grubbing corporations, and let your savings in the stock market work hard. There's a lot more to retirement planning, but the above points is a simple start.