201–210 of 479 posts
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nothing changed. instead of a racist white old billionaire buying a candidate, they just decided to run themselves.
Im not making this a political argument, just stating the fact that people absolutely had a hand in this election.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
So the alternative is tyranny of the minority? It doesn't reassure me that we give much more weight to a minority of voters just because they live in less densely populated areas. That's completely arbitrary.
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I truly believe that whatever people think about social security not being around when they retire, that it will be around at some level. We will almost certainly reduce benefits and/or increase retirement age. What is the alternative? There are far too many people who really can't save for retirement due to low wages for a significant part of the population. We aren't going to let these people live in abject poverty…
> There are far too many people who really can't save for retirement due to low wages for a significant part of the population. We aren't going to let these people live in abject poverty, and they aren't going to have any money to cough up to support themselves. The history of the US in the past several decades suggests that yes, we absolutely are going to let these people live in abject poverty. Unfortunately.
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Im not making this a political argument, just stating the fact that people absolutely had a hand in this election.
Just because you're surprised, doesn't mean it was "the people". You can't have an Electoral College system in which shuffling Toledo across state lines changes the electoral outcome and credit the people for political outcomes.
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Or don't use a massive government sponsored Ponzi scheme for a national retirement plan.
Social security is not a Ponzi scheme. http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2014/sep/24/car...
This is terrible legalistic reasoning. It essentially says the government cannot create a Ponzi scheme because Ponzi schemes are by definition illegal and governments define what is legal.
Better reasoning would incorporate the government's indirect control of inflation, direct control of federal wages and ability to "restructure" social security benefits and taxes, as well as the fact that the economy grows in real terms. This reasoning is more complex, but it is behind why investing in a start-up that plans to go public isn't a Ponzi scheme.
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it took 30 years for people's stocks to recover that bought them right before the great depression.
The very nature of saving in a 401k is that you never at one time put in a high percentage of your balance into it. The max individual contribution is $18,000 a year. Let's say you have been doing around $10,000 the first 10 years of your career and the economy tanks. You now have 30-40 years until retirement, and you start doing $15,000 or so a year. That money that you put in before this huge crash may not grow tha…
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> It is not an entitlement, it's your money That's not how social security works. Every dollar you pay in flies out to fund promises made in years past. "Your" social security money needs to be earned by our children.
The Social Security Trust fund generally runs a surplus (as recently as 2014 it added $25 billion.) However it's projected that around 2030-2034 the number of recipients will be drawing more than is being paid in. At that point your statement will become more correct than it currently is.
It's all good, SS can go on forever. As long as shootings increase, gun control laws are kept at bay, and healthcare remains unavailable to all or at least expensive odds are good a growing minority of workers will never collect SS benefits. It's fairly genius actually. It all stems from the American Dream, one of the most dangerous yet lucrative schemes ever devised. Get workers to increase productivity to boost the economy with the hope and "promise" of a big payday one day. When it became to crumble a new "promise" was devised, this time with the workforce paying the bill. Retirement was the 20th centuries American Dream. Healthcare is coming in to save the day, but not the way we expected.
I'm not planning on Social Security being around by the time I'm old enough to tap into it, and I'm also not planning on having any kids to bail me out when I go senile, so yeah I'm putting a lot into my 401k. I think a lot of people my age (turning 30 next week) are feeling the same way, so I wonder if it's younger workers driving this trend.
That's amusing. I'm 45 and said the same thing when I was in my mid-20's. And now I think it's just naive. The most docile 60 year olds I know become positively vitriolic at the idea of even the age of benefit payout being changed by 5 years. If Social Security were just done away with, I guarantee you the violent revolution they'd be considering wouldn't involve clever devices that take people's heads off cleanly, q…
I guess I'm afraid of a slow rollout. ie. everyone who's 40 and older gets normal social security, if you're ~35 now, you'll have to wait a few years more. It's exactly the kind of "we got ours" BS that the boomers are so known for.
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And if you take out a couple states, Clinton won the electoral college. What's your point? That we should ignore the votes of two of the largest states because they don't agree with you?
> That we should ignore the votes of two of the largest states because they don't agree with you? Ahh, yeah. That's the point. So America isn't CaliforNewYork. The electoral college isn't a scam, it exists to bring balance, so your hipster javascript developer gets the same weight as a coal miner in rural Ohio.
You keep implying that the rest of us aren't Americans and don't deserve an equal voice, and don't be surprised if we start trying to secede or revolt violently against the tyrants ruling over America's urban majority against our will.
[1] -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/upshot/as-american-as-appl...
I'm not planning on Social Security being around by the time I'm old enough to tap into it, and I'm also not planning on having any kids to bail me out when I go senile, so yeah I'm putting a lot into my 401k. I think a lot of people my age (turning 30 next week) are feeling the same way, so I wonder if it's younger workers driving this trend.
> "I'm not planning on Social Security being around by the time I'm old enough to tap into it" You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you. The fact is you pay ~16% of your paycheck into social security and medicare, it is designed to be like a pension. It is not an entitlement, it's your money.
Except the facts don't match up with this.
It is not designed to be like a pension. It is the workers of today paying for the retirees of today, on the assumption that when you retire there will be workers to pay for you. There is no guarantee, and there is no fallback. The money is spent just as soon as it's taken from you.
It is an entitlement because I'm paying for my parents and my peers' parents. If it's around when I retire, I will be spending other people's hard-earned money, not my own. I mean the Wikipedia "definition" of entitle is "a government program guaranteeing access to some benefit by members of a specific group" which is exactly what SS is.