Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#451

Post by kmicklas » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 11:55 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #385

kmicklas wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It hasn't built its prosperity on invading other nations to annex them and plunder their national wealth, which is traditionally how empires temporarily sustain themselves. That is exactly how it has built its wealth, what?

The US didn't plunder their wealth. It extinguished / concentrated the previous civilizations and created a new civilization in it's place. Even if the US experienced severe economic, military, and social decline, Illinois isn't going to turn back into the Illiwek Confederation. Those people don't exist anymore. To put it more simply, America isn't a patchwork of nations and nationalities. Empire's are several nation…

> The US didn't plunder their wealth. It extinguished / concentrated the previous civilizations and created a new civilization in it's place.

It did plunder their underlying wealth in natural resources. That's not to mention what we've done in the Middle East, South America, Africa, Asia, and even Europe if you go back to the world wars.

I get what you're saying about there not being enough of substrate national power to undermine the US on its own territory but I think externally anti-imperialism is gaining currency just about everywhere. And that will come back to bite us one way or another.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#452

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 11:56 PM UTC

readams wrote: post #147

grzm wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this similar to investments or savings where you put in money expecting to receive something in the future? That money isn't static, it's actively being used in other ways. For example, money I deposit in my bank account today is going out into loans the bank is issuing today. I'm not taking a position on Social Security, just wondering if the analogy does much useful work.

No; investments go toward productive work to create economic value. Social Security doesn't have any element that would actually create wealth. It works exactly like a Ponzi scheme.

Well, you hope. The value of investments can go down as well as up.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#453

Post by smsm42 » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 12:02 AM UTC

hsitz wrote: post #349

baddox wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, I will argue that the commenter's attitude is MORE harmful. He or she is placing the responsibility on the individual, when this clearly is something where the individual has no authority. The notion that if you just vote REALLY HARD the people in power will treat you well, and that if you're not treated well you must not have voted hard enough, only helps maintain the status quo.

Haven't you ever heard that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"? There's a reason the Christian right has a political voice far out of proportion to their actual numbers: they're active and loud. No, of course the answer isn't to "vote really hard", but that phrasing is simply rhetoric built to disparage the poster you're responding to. Everyone has only one vote. But the people who make noise, the people who are pol…

70% of Americans identify as Christians (source: Wikipedia), and 50 to 70% of Christians are leaning Republican (source: Pew Research) (depends on denomination, Mormons and Evangelicals higher, Catholics lower). So we have 1/3 to half of the population. Do you think it's not large enough group to have strong political voice? I think it is. I'm not sure what "far out of proportion" claim is based on.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#454

Post by gnopgnip » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 12:06 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #329

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's why we need people not to bet their retirement on a pyramid scheme, which is the point the parent of this whole conversation was making.

How exactly can a 45 year old currently making <$25,000/year be expected to finance their retirement, without Social Security?

myira.gov, saves tax credit, pension from their job, ROTH IRA, increasing their income, having many children

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#455

Post by smsm42 » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 12:09 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #453

hsitz wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you ever heard that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"? There's a reason the Christian right has a political voice far out of proportion to their actual numbers: they're active and loud. No, of course the answer isn't to "vote really hard", but that phrasing is simply rhetoric built to disparage the poster you're responding to. Everyone has only one vote. But the people who make noise, the people who are pol…

70% of Americans identify as Christians (source: Wikipedia), and 50 to 70% of Christians are leaning Republican (source: Pew Research) (depends on denomination, Mormons and Evangelicals higher, Catholics lower). So we have 1/3 to half of the population. Do you think it's not large enough group to have strong political voice? I think it is. I'm not sure what "far out of proportion" claim is based on.

Correction: turns out 70% was for white evangelicals (missed a note), so the number is surely lower than half and probably around 1/4. The point still stands - 1/4 of the population is a huge block.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#456

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 12:11 AM UTC

callinyouin wrote: post #4

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

But you assume your 401k will retain its favorable tax treatment?

Why? Because it was promised, implictly, when you paid into it?

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#457

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 12:17 AM UTC

RestlessMind wrote: post #223

monocasa wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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.

Honestly, I don't think its such a bad idea. Life expectancy in 1935 was 62. Today its 79. So if we want the program to be solvent, we have to adopt one or more of the following solutions: keep increasing the SS-eligibility age in tandem with life expectancy, increase the FICA tax, cut benefits

You left out adding more people into the system, although that's usually considered in the context of demography rather than mortality. One accounting reason to consider it from this perspective, though, is that adult immigrants have typically been raised and educated at some other country's expense so their productive entry to the US workforce is free of any debt overhang, ie no public monies were spent by the US on educating so they're basically coming to help out with the national debt for free. Of course the flip side of this is a brain drain for countries that see too many people leave.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#458

Post by bogomipz » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 12:23 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #245

avn2109 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your employer is perfectly capable of doing accounting. So they pass through their 6.2% to you. In practice the mechanism is that every employer figures it in to their offers, such that every offer you ever receive is ~6.2% lower than it would be if SS didn't exist.

> such that every offer you ever receive is ~6.2% lower than it would be if SS didn't exist Every offer is up to 6.2% lower. I have a business with employees but their pay is sufficiently low (compared to the revenue of the business; their pay is above market for the jobs they do) that SS does not enter into our calculations. If the employer portion of SS was eliminated tomorrow we would not give anyone a 6.2% raise,…

>" if for no other reason than SS taxes are capped so you reach a point where more salary does not equal more SS tax."

Indeed, social security isn't taxed on anything above 118K.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#459

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 12:31 AM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #230

monocasa wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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.

> It's exactly the kind of "we got ours" BS that the boomers are so known for. The boomers are just recipients of an anomalous post-war economic order that heavily benefitted the US for a couple decades. The average 60-year old had no role in pulling the rug out from millennials.

You're right, but the many boomers have been happy to accept the benefit even while seeing the cost fall on succeeding generations, though it's hard to blame individual people from drifting along with their cohort.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#460

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 12:34 AM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #400

logfromblammo wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The average Boomer had nothing to do with it. To be fair, the Boomer politicians and business managers didn't screw the Millennials, either. Not directly. They pulled the rug out from the Gen-Xers, and let the domino effect take out the Millennials, too. Yeah, as a generation, we still exist, even though nobody talks about us. The Boomers were the beneficiaries of post-war prosperity, but they also decided to…

> The Boomers were the beneficiaries of post-war prosperity, but they also decided to steal money from the future to finance their generational party/gravy train. I hear this a lot, but what exactly do you mean? The real reason we don't have the same great lifestyles our (let's be honest - mostly white, male) parents and grandparents did is because no one can get a good paying factory job right out of high school any…

No - that's an important structural reason, but I dispute your claim that it's the overarching economic factor or that it's entirely out of our control.