Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by k-mcgrady » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:02 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #63

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…

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

It sounds very cruel. There's most certainly a balance we can strike but when politics, particularly in the US, is so two sided balance is hard to find. Picking up the elderly and forcing them to move is pretty drastic. Imagine being 10-20 years from death and having to leave your home, family, friends and community. When your partner dies you're going to be pretty damn lonely and I doubt you'll survive long - or want to survive long.

>> "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."

There's absolutely no reason we can't afford to provide free health care to everyone. Health care should not be something you get if you can afford it. I doubt you'll be espousing this same view when you can't walk due to a bad hip and can't afford a new one possibly due to factors outside of your control. If we can afford endless, unnecessary wars, and the bailing out of large financial institutions we can afford to help everyone to lead bearable lives with adequate medical care and decent financial benefits where necessary. Sure there will be people who abuse those systems but from what I've read it's negligible.

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

#92

Post by PavlovsCat » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:02 PM UTC

thinkingkong wrote: post #10

Hopefully at some point in the future we look back at situations like this with a sense of perplexion. I worry though, that if we do roll out some form guaranteed minimum income, the moral highground of those against welfare and social assistance will be replaced by the moral highground of those who work to supplement their income.

Greed and taking advantage of people will not lead to the opposite when taken to big enough extremes. It's not the suffering which causes revolts that is the problem, it's the possibility of revolt. Once that is taken care of the suffering can be ignored or even enjoyed, depending whether the person is just a coward or a sadist.

When enough people are so disenfranchised that they need "handouts" to survive, I wouldn't be surprised about the decision to simply get rid of those people, then revising history to turn that into the best possible solution for an unfortunate problem nobody was guilty of creating. It'd be just more of what we're doing already.

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

#93

Post by kafkaesq » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

big_youth wrote: post #23

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…

Well she gets $1200 a month from social security, which is already essentially a basic income for old folks.

Rent for a studio. Who needs food, toiletries, or prescription medicines?

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

#94

Post by hockeybias » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

x5n1 wrote: post #7

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

Its tricky to feel sympathy w/ the lady in this article. She's part of the most benefitted generation, the "hardships" shown are induced by her own choices (expensive dinner, speeding ticket) and by world standards she's won the lottery to even be alive and living comfortably at her age. Alas, thats the trick with other people's stories-- difficult to project how it would feel if I were in their shoes.

It's not tricky at all. The government eats that $300 dollars for nothing, you could easily index those fines depending on how much money people actually have. But then you can't overtax the underclass with policing. I live in Canada, you know how much the police harasses me? Not at all. The expensive dinner is three meals, which comes out to around $7/meal; not really that expensive. America has a huge underclass ma…

Actually it is not as simple as that. You are over-simplifying.

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

#95

Post by robertcorey » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

She made several major financial mistakes in this article. 21.36 would have gotten her a months worth of beans and rice. But we shouldn't write people off for making poor financial choices. Maybe SS payments could be offered in the form of room and board for those struggling to manage their cashflow.

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

#96

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

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]

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

#97

Post by 6stringmerc » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #85

6stringmerc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The youth are going to get old as well. And if you're young and you're not rich already, I bet you don't like birthdays that much.

Actually I have a summer birthday so, yes, I do not enjoy them very much. I'm basically very disappointed at the economy and society that I've inherited. Forgive me if I don't wear a smile while looking critically at those who came before me.

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

#98

Post by gwern » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

Its tricky to feel sympathy w/ the lady in this article. She's part of the most benefitted generation, the "hardships" shown are induced by her own choices (expensive dinner, speeding ticket) and by world standards she's won the lottery to even be alive and living comfortably at her age. Alas, thats the trick with other people's stories-- difficult to project how it would feel if I were in their shoes.

> are induced by her own choices (expensive dinner, speeding ticket)

The point of the quoting of the speeds ("43 mph in a 35-mph") was to point out that the ticket she got was part of the trend of local American governments of turning traffic enforcement into unchecked taxation and exploitation of poor people by abusing traffic rules to the hilt to hand out as many bogus tickets as possible in order to turn a profit. This has come up many times on HN.

In this case, it sounds like it was part of a speed trap where a sign is put up to lower the speed on a very short stretch of road by 10mph or so and then a cop can sit there and harvest the traffic; there's one of these where I live, and it makes me furious because aside from being transparently bogus a highly regressive tax/revenue trick, it actually makes everyone less safe because the flow of traffic along that road is always faster than the dip section and if everyone complied with it and braked, that would endanger people and encourage rear-endings. Similar to the abuse of red-light cameras.

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

#99

Post by astral303 » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

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"?

If the objective of the fine is to provide a financial disincentive to commit a violation, then the fines should absolutely be scaled for different incomes.

Otherwise, there is no real financial disincentive to the rich (who can hire lawyers with chump change), as is obviously demonstrated today.

Finally, it is extremely difficult to drive perfectly enough to avoid violating the speeding limit. Signs are often missing or covered. Limits change at unexpected locations, sometimes nasty ones (at the end of descents, etc). There is very little culture of speed change warning (varies state to state, but nowhere like, say, the UK).

The poor and the downtrodden have to apply a significantly larger effort to maintain speed limit compliance in their driving, because the downsides of getting a speeding ticket are so financially devastating.

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

#100

Post by creshal » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #48

Here's a breakdown of the US 2015 combined (Federal, State, Local) government spend: Total Spend: 6.18tn Total Revenue: 6.08tn Healthcare: 1.32tn (21.3%) Pension: 1.20tn (19.7%) Education: 0.93tn (14.8%) Defense: 0.80tn (13.1%) Welfare: 0.50tn (8.2%) Other*: 1.43tn (23.1%) *Other = Protection, Transportation, General Government, Interest Currently, social security is taking in ~$74bn less in payroll taxes than it pay…

Healthcare spending is at least as broken as education: The US health care system is 50-100% more expensive per capita as comparable European systems, yet less capable. There's lots of savings potential here.