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Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

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Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#61

Post by scottwhudson »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #33
rdlecler1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have never been poor. Poverty and misfortune wears you down. A moment of weakness is inevitable. Moreover financial stress has shown to significantly reduce effective IQ.

Exceeding the speed limit isn't exclusive to the poor and downtrodden. Should fines for breaking the law be different for different incomes? Edit: for those of you saying 'yes': who decides what is "fair"?

This is already being done in places like Finland, where speeding tickets are calculated as a percentage of income. This makes a lot of sense given the simple fact that $300 means very different things to different people. If the goal of a fine is deter law-breaking activity, why not use a system that incentivizes everyone equally?

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#62

Post by kafkaesq »

s_q_b wrote: post #25
kasey_junk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being down-voted because the US has near universal basic income for older folks & the subject of the story collects it. It's one of the real questions I have about basic income schemes generally. The examples we have are not powerful arguments in favor of them.

Social Security worked well, before cost of living overtook the benefits provided.

Exactly.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#63

Post by 6stringmerc »

s_q_b wrote: post #8

Before Social Security, over 70% of seniors died in poverty. Today, that number is less than 10%. The amount of transfer payments to the elderly is so much larger than to any other age group, but unless you're willing to let those below the median income die in abject poverty, it's necessary.

I'm not an advocate of "debtors prisons" as a traditional concept, but I'm also very reluctant to sympathize with those living on a fixed income who refuse to pick up and move to an area where the cost of living adequately aligns with their financial means. As in, if a person is old and broke, they should be grateful to have the freedom to move to a cheap place to live, not bemoan that they can no longer afford their house near the beach or whatever.

I'm hoping there is some kind of reckoning whereby these poverty-destined seniors can be inevitably moved to dense housing and care facilities for cost-effectiveness...well, not counting the immense medical bills they'll probably try to rack up on their way out the door. Want that new hip at 74? Sure, just pay for it all out of your pocket.

Might sound cruel, but strangling the youth to feed the elderly, as would be the alternative, doesn't work in the US economic model.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#64

Post by tomjen3 »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #33
rdlecler1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have never been poor. Poverty and misfortune wears you down. A moment of weakness is inevitable. Moreover financial stress has shown to significantly reduce effective IQ.

Exceeding the speed limit isn't exclusive to the poor and downtrodden. Should fines for breaking the law be different for different incomes? Edit: for those of you saying 'yes': who decides what is "fair"?

Nah it is pretty much a universal crime. And I actually think it would be correct to fine different people different amounts - say 10 minutes of income for every mile above the limit, up to a max of some percentage (say 20%) over the limit. That way you have the minimum necessary fine to make it not worth speeding without it being so that rich people can speed with impunity.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#65

Post by tamana »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #38
s_q_b wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Security worked well, before cost of living overtook the benefits provided.

Cost of living is not the problem (except for healthcare cost inflation, which Medicare could mitigate if someone could gut Congress of representatives preventing Medicare from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies). The problem is that everyone who collects Social Security is living longer. The question is: How can you continue to provide a high quality of life to seniors without bankrupting the country. It can…

The answer is that SS age gets pushed back along with average lifespan

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#66

Post by Spooky23 »

kafkaesq wrote: post #6

Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…

It's really a indictment of basic income as a concept.

She's 79, gets social security, medicare, and a small pension. She has $50,000 in credit card debt, and drives around the country in an RV. Why do you feel sorry for her?

How much more are you supposed to give her? When she can't travel anymore, she has no assets and will be able to get a subsidized senior apartment. When she can't care for herself, it will be tough without family, but she'll get a nursing care of some sort through Medicaid.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#67

Post by refurb »

x5n1 wrote: post #4

Just shows that the US government can't afford to launch any wars or flex its muscles, when it does so it does it at the cost of all these people who have paid a life's worth of taxes, and have nothing show for it. The corporate interests and the government has eaten all that work and not given them enough to live off in their old age.

all these people who have paid a life's worth of taxes

The social security benefits she receives are based off her lifetime earnings and thus the taxes she paid.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#68

Post by tamana »

6stringmerc wrote: post #19

> Nearly one-third of U.S. heads of households ages 55 and older have no pension or retirement savings and a median annual income of about $19,000. So now we finally get to the root of why Baby Boomers are so upset with the Millenial generation - there's nobody to bail them out of the mess they created.

Poor old folks aren't the exploiters you are looking for.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#69

Post by toomuchtodo »

6stringmerc wrote: post #19

> Nearly one-third of U.S. heads of households ages 55 and older have no pension or retirement savings and a median annual income of about $19,000. So now we finally get to the root of why Baby Boomers are so upset with the Millenial generation - there's nobody to bail them out of the mess they created.

Perhaps you should ask the questions:

Why did Boomers not have enough income to put savings aside?

If savings was put aside, what rate of return did it earn? And what remains of those savings?

But heh, f___ old people for decisions that were made before you were born, amirite?

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#70

Post by [deleted] »

alkonaut wrote: post #52
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But there should be no hesitation at all about applying it to seniors. As in, right now. So something like social security. Which she is already receiving.

Feels like a poor kind of "social security" to have to work if you are elderly. Either something is missing in the story, like an expensive addiction, or the minimum benefits (minimum pensions or social security) are simply too low to actually allow someone to retire on.

[deleted]
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