201–210 of 835 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Which is just a socialized form of the previous social security system which had children or grandchildren look after their parents. Of course, the glaring difference is that social security schemes have motivated many millions, who otherwise might have, to not have children at all or an inadequate number and so contribute very little to n…
This implied link between public pensions and demographic collapse paints a picture that social security was destined to fail because people wouldn't have children for the purpose of taking care of them in old age. The millennial generation, the largest American generational cohort, were born almost 50 years after the founding of social security. How does it make sense that public pensions motivated millennials to not have children, but not their parents?
Across all developed countries where you have demographic collapse you have societies where it becomes more and more expensive to raise children. The public pension system requires that the economy grows year after year and that becomes hard when your population shrinks. As to why the population is shrinking you have to look at why people aren't having children. And when you ask that question you get way more "I can't even afford to buy a house" and not "the government is going to take care of me when I'm old".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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,…
https://www.retraite.com/dossier-retraite/le-deficit-du-syst...
Roughly 20 billion euro per year, which isn't big.
For comparison, public debt is 3000 billion. Bernard Arnault net worth is 120 billion (6 times more than 10 years ago), Total profit in 2022 is 40 billions.
There must be ways to have better wealth redistribution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Shocker, I know.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 isn't like the US were people are incentized to build equity for their retirement. This is true but puzzling for one reason: the US pension system (Social Security) pays retirees the same amount of money as the French one. US pensions are not ungenerous compared to Europe. Americans are incentivized by the government to build equity in addition to their government pension, so that they are not wholly depende…
I think, for most French, the retirement model was that we should own a house/apt by the time we retire, and then our pension would be enough to cover our expenses. It seems we're transitioning to a system more akin to the US and it's causing some friction as we're not prepared.
Another interesting point to me is that the retirement age is causing protests, but we were essentially screwed when they increased the number of worked years from 36 to 43 - which arguably was a necessary reform. Someone who started to work at 23 (college graduate - HN demographics) won't retire before 66. At that point, my concern isn't so much about working until 66, but having a job at that age. Working in tech, I don't see many people over 50 around me.
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.
What makes you think that if people are stupid enough to elect corrupt government officials they will be smart enough to invest their money wisely? If you trust the financial markets more than the government that you elect, I have a bridge to sell you. Sure some smart people will be able to extract profit from the market but most won't. I'd rather live in a country where the people I chose can organize to ensure that…
Source? Put your money in an index fund. The S&P 500 from 1958 to 2008 went up 90x. The worst case scenario - All your savings are in stocks and you retire during the second worst financial crisis ever. And your returns are 90x. Not 90%, 9000%.
The idea that "most won't extract profit" is nonsense. In the long term, its free money for everyone.
https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1958?amount=1...
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.
There are very few if any institutions that sophisticated investors trust to pay back money more than the U.S. government. Banks go bankrupt, gold changes value, cash gets stolen. Seems like the U.S. government is the best option.
I would trust my retirement to the US Treasury. No sane human would trust their retirement to the US Congress.
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…
These pensions were bankrupt the minute they were implemented - the capital appreciation rates were completely insane to start, and have only looked worse as time rolls on (which, I have to stress, is extremely tough to imagine). Delusion around pension portfolios eclipses all but the most insane crypto scams. Quite a bit of my university work in the early 2000s revolved around studying and modeling pension-type reti…
I support pensions, but this has to be done at the federal level, and funded heavily through taxes and pro-natalist policies to keep demographics correct. Cities, states, counties and companies are not able to adequately fund defined benefit pensions.
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…
An example of the flaws of this argument/article is how Social Security is self-funded, and not in any financial jeopardy on its own. [1] Some of the other entitlement programs on the list also work that way.
Regardless, my understanding is that a government's budget never has to be balanced. It doesn't operate like a family household. Oftentimes, national debt is used for pursuits that return on their investment, just like how startup companies operate at a deficit on purpose to prioritize growth that will make the company more valuable in the long term. Inflation also lessens the value of the national debt over time.
I quite like one of those options: taxes on the wealthy and ultra-wealthy have a lot of room to rise. Jack them up, billionaires shouldn't exist, and people like Jeff Bezos shouldn't have a single-digit tax rate.
The other part would be looking at government inefficiencies and flawed policies that aren't on your list, the kind that result in wasted spending that's hard to demonstrate tangibly. For example, should we not talk about how suburban development and the interstate highway system is a monetary drain on wealth for the majority of the country?
It's really obvious to me how building more sewer, road, and utilities per person and forcing everyone to own one car per capita or more is a dumb waste of money on a national level. Our government on every level plays a heavy hand in subsidizing that development pattern.
It would be really easy to afford my tax rate increasing to a much higher level if I wasn't forced to own more than one car just to get myself to work. It would also be easier for me to afford housing if a bunch of single family home owners weren't preventing dense housing from being built, and then all that extra money I saved could go toward something more economically productive than a parking lot.
The average American spends somewhere between $5,000 to $10,000 per vehicle annually. Imagine a USA where everyone could go down to one car per family and how the rest of that money could be used.
But no, instead let's add one more lane and make our retirees work until they're 85 rather than fixing our structural problems that make America a very expensive and energy-wasteful place to live.
Because, when you think about it, national wealth is basically access to energy, and America is squandering their own wealth by dumping it into their GMC Yukon Denali Ultimate that gets 14MPG.
I don't understand why there's a temptation to jump to the conclusion that the answer is to make people retire later in life or cut safety net programs, which are often investments with ROI (e.g., hungry kids learn poorly, hungry kids result in reduced workforce education and productivity).
Are 70 year old employees particularly productive for the economy in the first place? It seems like there are smarter ways to save wealth or earn more wealth for the nation.
[1] https://www.aarp.org/retirement/social-security/info-2020/10...