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That's what the government tries to tell us but the reality about Social Security is quite different. Insurance is risk-based. What I pay in needs to be acutarially sound based on the likelihood of me collecting on the insurance.
Social Security is very progressive. I'm a 5%-er. I'd have to live to age 100 to collect, inflation-adjusted, what my employers and I have contributed during my work career. ...and that completely ignores any kind of return on investment.
Social Security is a progressive income transfer program that takes money from affluent people and hands it to less affluent people. If you log 35 years working at minimum wage, the amount you collect when you retire is enormous compared to what you and your employer have contributed. I'm paying for that. My employers are paying for that. It's not "insurance".
I'm not saying Social Security is bad. I think it's an essential program to mitigate elderly poverty. I have no problem that I'm never going to get back what I put in. It's my obligation to society as one of the affluent people who had all the advantages to be successful. This is why I object to any proposal to abolish Social Security and replace it with a program where your pension is directly proportional to what you contribute. That gives a hard screwing to the bottom half and is only a benefit for the most affluent in our society. I'm not proposing full-on Bernie Social Democracy but the whole Libertarian everybody-for-himself mantra leaves behind a very nasty stench.
This is incorrect. Social security is a massive and corrupt expropriation of earned wealth. It is a simple welfare program that supplements many other welfare programs. All of which stifle and destroy the economy. And all of which are based on the evil philosophical premise that it is acceptable to expropriate the wealth of one person for the unearned and undeserved benefit of another.
A retirement program where 15% of your pay is withheld and invested for your benefit would remove the need for social security. And would rid of us a massive corrupt state apparatus that itself costs and wastes billions. I don't even want to get into the legions of fake phony fraud citizens who doctor up and manipulate paperwork to get access to benefits they are not due, even under the provisions of the nanny state.
The 15% Mandatory Retirement Plan would solve this in large part.
1) It is based on correct morality and recognizes private property rights.
2) It allows anyone who works to retire comfortably ON THEIR OWN STEAM. And without victimizing their fellow man.
3) It eliminates a massive corrupt State bureaucracy and machine that millions manipulate to score undeserved benefits.
4) It's fun and good to watch your money grow. Especially since you earned it, you own it, and it's YOURS!
5) It provides investment capital for the economy, which would cause spectacular growth, further adding to the expected benefit at retirement.
The one thing I do respect about your posts is that you are up front about that. You are okay with others starving without intervening to force others to share (and I don't mean divide wealth equally; I just meant get those with an abundance to chip in to help those who don't have enough). I think it is an unfortunate reality that many people are not compassionate enough to help others and I feel strongly that we should help. I will vote for policies that lean that way.
Yes. I am okay with others starving before being allowed to loot the property and lives of others. I also recognize that such starving will never happen because of private charity and the basic reality that most people enjoy helping others and will do so when ASKED. ASKED!!!!!!!
Libertarians live in a fantasy world where nothing bad ever happens to people who don't deserve it.
As a former Libertarian, it's not a fantasy world. It's simply projecting your personal circumstances on others. I had the good fortune to be born intelligent and healthy with affluent, college educated professional parents. Even with a lot of bad life decisions, I couldn't help but be successful. I grew up hearing "you can be anything you want to be." For me, that was certainly true. For much of my life, I projected my circumstances on everybody else. People were obviously unsuccessful because they made bad decisions. The reality is that they didn't have the engaged parents who lived in an affluent suburb where they lived an enriched life that prepared them for a good college. They didn't have the intellect to handle an undergrad Electrical Engineering and Computer Science curriculum. I graduated from college in 1980 at the height of the post-Vietnam War recession with double-digit inflation and rampant unemployment. I had tech firms lining up to hire me. By being engaged and competent at work, I climbed the ladder with ease and have pretty much always earned 5%-er income. For years, I just assumed that people who didn't have my level of success were just being lazy. It took me a very long time to figure it out but that's mostly because I lived in my little self-segregated 5%-er universe. All my co-workers were 5%-ers. All my neighbors were 5%-ers. All my winter ski resort friends were 5%-ers. All my summer friends on the golf course or sailing with me were 5%-ers.
My politics have shifted to being more of an elitist east coast/west coast "liberal". I believe the unwashed masses simply don't have the capability to look after their affairs. The impact of automation and global competition have diminished the value of low skill repetitive task labor. The bottom half is screwed. I'm uncomfortable with the Libertarian view that those people can simply freeze and starve in the streets. I think Medicaid is far too generous and the benefits should be cut back with that money instead spread around to everybody as a bare bones single payer system focused on well care. I'd do more for working class families. I'd go to an 8+ hour school day and 48 week school year so working class families don't need to juggle child care.
To go back on-topic for this thread:
I think compelled savings is a great idea when applied to the top-50%. Our savings rate in this country sucks. It's far too easy to avoid saving and opt for the smartphone, Cable TV/Satellite TV, new car payments, and all the other consumer-driven trappings of 21st century 'Murica. As a self-professed elitist, I think the government needs to step in and protect people from their bad financial decisions. The problem is that the bottom half lives paycheck-to-paycheck. Compelled savings would be an enormous burden. The program would need to be designed taking that into account.
Yes. I am okay with others starving before being allowed to loot the property and lives of others. I also recognize that such starving will never happen because of private charity and the basic reality that most people enjoy helping others and will do so when ASKED. ASKED!!!!!!!
This is incorrect. Social security is a massive and corrupt expropriation of earned wealth. It is a simple welfare program that supplements many other welfare programs. All of which stifle and destroy the economy. And all of which are based on the evil philosophical premise that it is acceptable to expropriate the wealth of one person for the unearned and undeserved benefit of another.
If you ignore the rhetoric and political dogma, you just agreed with everything I wrote. The difference is that I think it's my obligation to society as one of the fortunate "haves" to subsidize all those "have nots". I think Social Security is a great program. It has essentially ended elderly poverty. The problem is that the whole "trust fund" is a big charade. Social Security needs to be cash flow neutral. Today, what goes-out exceeds what goes-in and only the slight of hand of "interest on the trust fund" makes the books balance. The program is underfunded by 30% mostly due to the realities of people living longer and our declining birth rate among the economically successful part of our population. We need to increase taxes in some way to account for this. I think the increase should be broad-based so everybody feels a bit of the pain. I'd increase the employee contribution percentage a bit without nailing employers. I'd let the cap drift up a bit. I'd put a modest tax on passive income and earned income above the cap. If we go full-Bernie, I'd be OK with eliminating the cap. I'm high income so I'd see it in my paycheck in the 2nd half of each year but it wouldn't change my quality of life a bit. I think it would be more fair to have everyone have a stake in the pain but it wouldn't change my life at all.
We all know the quote from the French Revolution: "Let them eat cake". That was a horrible mis-translation. The modern French word for cake is "brioche". In 1790 France, "brioche" was a communion wafer. The correct in-context translation would be "Let them eat communion wafers" implying that the Catholic Church should deal with the problem.
When somebody argues that charity should replace our mild Social Democracy to take care of the poor, infirm, and elderly, I think "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche".
No, we stop subsidizing anyone. Over 50 years, even a low level person will earn enough with compounding to retire comfortably. Even the pettiest functionary in retail or the merest of underlings in an office could retire nicely. The power of investing 15% of your earnings with compounding every week from the time you are 16 is unbelievable.
Also, this system is just. Those that make a lot will have the most comfortable retirements. Such a system would reward hard work and advancement. But even a janitor who does nothing but push a broom for 50 years will do just fine.
And the innocent young taxpayers would no longer face the disgusting horror of having their property stripped and handed over to irresponsible old people who didn't take care of business. EVERYBODY would take care of business because there would be no choice.
There would also be pride in watching your fortune build over the decades as the economy expanded.
We need to do this. It's morally correct, would yield the best result, and would keep the money out of the hands of the greedy collectivist corrupt crony-infested State.
I don't like subsidizing real estate and stocks, but they do it. You benefit directly from that system. If we had market-based rates, people would get more income from fixed-income investments in addition to equities. Much of the forecast on expected returns from retirement-directed assets is based on history where return on assets depended more on income than asset appreciation (2/3rds of equity appreciation historically comes from dividends). You really can't use those historical returns now to project retirement returns will be 8% or 10% annually. Notice Fink also wants a high percentage of those assets to be placed with riskier and more highly-leveraged assets held by private equity and hedge funds to which his firm provides management and custodial services.
I believe the unwashed masses simply don't have the capability to look after their affairs. I think compelled savings is a great idea when applied to the top-50%.
A big part of it is that the working poor would have all their assets at risk as opposed to those who are in the middle- and upper-income brackets who have other savings. They are going to get scared and lose their money because their savings has been largely diverted into investments. They would be better off in a defined-benefit plan. The traditional way of how families managed their money before the 401ks and low interest rates was that investments were kept separate from savings. When time deposits paid 5 ot 6 percent on CD's or savings, one could park 10 to 20 percent there while letting investments ride out 10 to 20 percent declines.
"Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me". I am not sure who said it first but it still applies today. Why would anyone trust a retirement system that depends on our government to administer it?
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