laklak wrote:rEvolutionist wrote:
It's vitally important that you don't get population bubbles where there are more old people than young people. If you get that, then you don't have the tax income to support the welfare of the old.
We're in that situation now, with the Boomers hitting retirement age (the man in the mirror, I start pulling my pension in May!!!!!).
The solution, in the U.S., anyway, is to take Social Security out of the General Fund and invest the contributions, or allow people to opt out and invest their own. Make in mandatory that you must invest the same percentage of income. That way the younger taxpayers aren't subsidizing the old toppies. But our politicians can't keep their sticky little fingers out of Social Security funds and spend it on their favorite pork barrel bullshit.
That's actually a red herring offered by conservatives who want to pretend they are out to save our money for us. If there was a time to have employees start saving in private retirement accounts in order to ensure that the young don't subsidize the codgers, then it was 50 years ago, when the current codgers were young. Everyone caters to the codger vote, by saying "I'm not going to touch social security for those at or near retirement age! Those are commitments we promised to make and people relied upon them!" And, then they say that the young folks now are going to save for their own retirement.
The fact remains, though, that the general fund is still going to be used to pay off Social Security obligations to the same extent. So, the workers are going to foot that bill. The only thing is, they'll have to foot that bill AND pay for their own social security through retirement and if they lose their money, well, either they're going to be left high and dry, or 20, 30 and 40 years from now the government will just enact a new policy which pays them a social security pension anyway, because they can't be left with nothing.
This is the kind of shit that makes me hate Cruz and Rubio -- they know there is an audience for this kind of talk -- the "let me save the money taken out of my check for social security in a 401k or IRA!" crowd is really into that. The problem is, that entire retirement savings' accounts can be depleted if there is an economic downturn, and the government isn't going to let the retirees starve or die. So, the so-called privatization plan becomes privatization with a de facto social welfare component where the taxpayer is going to foot the bill anyway.
laklak wrote:
But that won't work either, because people will opt out of SS contributions and either blow the money somehow or invest it in Ponzi schemes, and end up with nothing when they're ancient. Then they'll scream for a handout, and the kind-hearted among us will say "Aww shame look at that poor, old, starving person!" and give them money. I'm not kind-hearted, though. If you opt out off SS you're on your own, and if you end up sleeping in a gutter it's your problem. Hope you've got decent kids, because I'm not subsidizing you.
Yep.
And remember, there aren't people who blow the money on bad decisions -- these are only people who work just as hard and just as smart as the well-to-do, but are unlucky. Well, except the white CIS men. The white CIS men make bad decisions. Everyone else is set upon by the patriarchy.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar