The idea of relying on the government for your retirement is insane to me, for exactly this reason. You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't.
Most people (in the world) live entirely without saving and are making do in whatever way possible. For democracies that have stable governments sans USA, there is absolutely the assumption that the gov will pitch into avoid people starving in the streets.
One big challenge I see with the whole business about pension reform (and government spending in fact) as a public debate is that two sides are talking on totally different planes. In France, and someday very soon, here in the US. And the public in a certain sense, will problematically have to end up voting a simple yes/no on extremely complex topics which are incentivized to push buttons on single issues. cf. Brexit…
>There is no magic getting out of this hole.
There is magic, the rise of productivity.
It just didn't reach the ordinary people.
The idea of relying on the government for your retirement is insane to me, for exactly this reason. You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't.
Most don’t want to by choice! Many Americans specifically can’t afford to save, so what option do they have?
This is another example of how the state gets its numbers wrong, promising something it can not deliver without bankrupting the country. France is not alone, other country's have raised the pension age, but other countries use their food legislation to keep the population docile, high house prices to keep people from protesting for fear of losing a roof over their head, and other tactics people are getting wise to an…
> This is another example of how the state gets its numbers wrong, promising something it can not deliver without bankrupting the country. France pension system isn't close to bankruptcy. It needs some adjustment but pushing retirement age isn't the only option. Also one thing to understand is that there are two criteria to get a full pension 1. work 43 years (this used to be 36.5 but has been increased 10 years ago)…
> France pension system isn't close to bankruptcy.
Citation required.
Last I looked, France's national debt as a percent of its GDP wasn't exactly in happy territory.
On the other hand, if you believe that France will continue to be able to borrow for eternity to feed its increasingly large retiree population, then yes you are correct: when a banker is always ready to lend you money however large your existing debt, you can never physically go bankrupt.
The idea of relying on the government for your retirement is insane to me, for exactly this reason. You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't.
That's if you have enough salary to save enough for retirement. Which is not the case for a lot of people unfortunately. Hence a government lead system where wealthy people are required to pay more to help less wealthy have a somewhat acceptable retirement.
The idea of relying on the government for your retirement is insane to me, for exactly this reason. You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't.
No, you're betting that their always will be a government and other people who pay taxes and social security fees.
If you save for yourself it's likely that you lose.
This is another example of how the state gets its numbers wrong, promising something it can not deliver without bankrupting the country. France is not alone, other country's have raised the pension age, but other countries use their food legislation to keep the population docile, high house prices to keep people from protesting for fear of losing a roof over their head, and other tactics people are getting wise to an…
>promising something it can not deliver without bankrupting the country. If the government can not get something basic like covering subsistence-level costs for its population over 62 working without bankrupting the country, the government is broken, the economic system is broken and shutting it down is an appropriate response. Technology and efficiency has caused labor productivity to increase [1] and that increase…
The reason for discrepancy between productivity growth and wages stagnant is because the productivity initiatives were created by a few people that benefited handsomely, not by the masses employed in call centers / coffee shops / warehouses. I think one probable reason for this change was technology - technology made spreading knowledge and controlling processes among thousands of entities a lot cheaper.
Who are these few people? Most likely you will find them in corporate centers. These people constantly fine tune processes, haggle with suppliers, diversify their suppliers, create new machines, lobby for legislation to make off-shoring easier, etc...
I had the opportunity to work 4 years in Amazon as Financial Analyst. None of the cost savings initiatives came from call centers / distribution centers. Even more to the point, as part of ACES program, bright motivated individuals in call centers / distribution centers would be picked up and brought to HQ so their initiatives can be applied to the entire company.
When I worked as Financial Analyst with Starbucks there was only one cost saving initiative that came from a store manager - that store manager figured out how to use less milk for the lattes. All the other cost saving initiatives came from HQ.
The idea of relying on the government for your retirement is insane to me, for exactly this reason. You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't.
> You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Hear, hear, especially given the historical priors : (hint: across a generation-sized time spans, governments never keep their promises. Why should they, they usually are in power for decades at most). And yes, relying on governments to handle your retirement money is completely insane, but the vast majority of folks in e.g. the…
>Retirement plans the way they work in Western Europe were always an absolute con, very much like a ponzi scheme (new players pay for the earlier players)
That's pretty much how families worked before retirement plans, the kids payed for the parents.
This just got transferred to the whole society. And it worked as long the rise of productivity led to a rise of wages.
The french pension reform attempts have been going on for decades . I remember in the mid-90s a huge, weeks- (months-?) long public transit strike which, funnily enough, kick-started Parisian's interest in roller-blading (and led to the awesome weekly Friday-night roller-blading tour [1]. If it's your thing, I highly recommend it! But be prepared to have to go over some cobblestone sections) France's system has the w…
Every single pension system has the working population pay for the retirees. Where do you think the money comes from? Thin air? Any increase in the value of pension funds (for example) is coming from the workers.
> Every single pension system has the working population pay for the retirees. Where do you think the money comes from?
Disagree.
Counter-examples:
401k in the US
Second pillar in Switzerland.
The money comes from the people saving and investing their own money for their old age.
The idea of relying on the government for your retirement is insane to me, for exactly this reason. You're willing to bet your life that the government is always going to do right by you? Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't.
Mandatory pension schemes remove the option to defect and spend money that "should" go toward retirement to instead compete in zero-sum games for benefit today for yourself and your kids (say, housing in good school districts, tuition, et c.). That part's pretty nice.