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Why does raising the retirement age hurt young people?

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Re: Why does raising the retirement age hurt young people?

#21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes on the very wealthy were dramatically higher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1935

But there were a lot of deductions and shelters and nobody actually paid those rates except maybe Elvis.

We have a way to measure this, it's called the Gini Coefficient, and it spiked in the 80's under deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy. Since then, it's been out of whack with Western norms and now more closely resembles Latin American wealth distribution.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?end=2023&lo...

Re: Why does raising the retirement age hurt young people?

#23

At this point I just want the debt incurred by the electoral decisions of the last fifty years paid off. If that means retirement gets pushed back, well, shrugs .

Why do you want the debt paid off?

The debt has been growing for 50 years, has life gotten worse during those 50 years?

What happens if we don't pay off the debt?

Re: Why does raising the retirement age hurt young people?

#24

Interesting claim - let's see if it passes the sniff test. It's very unlikely that we are actually currently at an ideal retirement age on the margin where a move in either direction hurts. If raising the retirement age hurts young people, then lowering the retirement age probably helps young people. Does that sound correct to you? Would lowering the retirement age now help young people?

>Does that sound correct to you?

Yes? I'm not sure if I'm missing something you think is obvious. Lowering the retirement age will open up high seniority jobs that younger people can now promote into. You can see this in congress - despite millenials being in the 40s now they are rarely seen in high level political positions due to boomers and older sticking to their jobs.

Re: Why does raising the retirement age hurt young people?

#25
post #9

All of this is by design. You get: - Lower taxes for the ultra-wealthy - People working longer to make the ultra-wealthy slightly wealthier; and - Younger people getting padi less, again making the ultra-wealthy slightly more wealthy. The entire policy and government appratus of the US in particular is designed as a massive wealth transfer from the poor and young to the old and wealthy. There is no reason why the wea…

> There is no reason why the wealthiest countries on earth can't afford to let people who are 60 years old retire. There is, though. The 60+ year-olds wanting to retire spent the last four-to-six decades racking up a metric crapload of public and private debt. Not only did they spend a lot, they seriously weakened the ability for revenues to cover said debts. Severe bureaucratic handicapping of revenue agencies, mean…

> Retirement isn't a right

Society decides what people's rights are. Why should we not decide that retirement is a right?

The wealthy not paying a wealth tax is not a right.

Re: Why does raising the retirement age hurt young people?

#27
post #9

All of this is by design. You get: - Lower taxes for the ultra-wealthy - People working longer to make the ultra-wealthy slightly wealthier; and - Younger people getting padi less, again making the ultra-wealthy slightly more wealthy. The entire policy and government appratus of the US in particular is designed as a massive wealth transfer from the poor and young to the old and wealthy. There is no reason why the wea…

> There is no reason why the wealthiest countries on earth can't afford to let people who are 60 years old retire. There is, though. The 60+ year-olds wanting to retire spent the last four-to-six decades racking up a metric crapload of public and private debt. Not only did they spend a lot, they seriously weakened the ability for revenues to cover said debts. Severe bureaucratic handicapping of revenue agencies, mean…

There is nothing wrong with living off of your savings. After all it’s the money you earned so you don’t owe anyone anything for it, and you can spend it as you see fit.

The problem with retirement schemes today is that most people’s savings are not enough to pay for their retirement so the younger generations need to chip in.

Re: Why does raising the retirement age hurt young people?

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no reason why the wealthiest countries on earth can't afford to let people who are 60 years old retire. There is, though. The 60+ year-olds wanting to retire spent the last four-to-six decades racking up a metric crapload of public and private debt. Not only did they spend a lot, they seriously weakened the ability for revenues to cover said debts. Severe bureaucratic handicapping of revenue agencies, mean…

> Retirement isn't a right Society decides what people's rights are. Why should we not decide that retirement is a right? The wealthy not paying a wealth tax is not a right.

The math still has to check out. Yes I agree getting rid of the ultra wealthy improves the situation a lot and should be done. But at some point you still have too many retired people for the working population to support.

At that point it's going to have to be considered that a 60 year old is still perfectly capable of working low physical demand jobs rather than spending 10-30 years on cruise ships.

Re: Why does raising the retirement age hurt young people?

#29

At this point I just want the debt incurred by the electoral decisions of the last fifty years paid off. If that means retirement gets pushed back, well, shrugs .

The retirement age has already been pushed back about as far as it can be, barring major advancements in medicine. Maybe some of us will still be fully capable of doing software work at age 67 but those who have spent their lives doing manual labor have usually accumulated some significant disabilities by that age. They need a break.

Re: Why does raising the retirement age hurt young people?

#30

Ah yes, the mental anguish of knowing you'll never retire because you'll either die before retirement age or they'll just keep pushing it up, so that you do.

Retirement is not an age, it's a financial position. Both my parents and grandparents were able to retire before qualifying for social security payments (and neither ever earned top 30 percentile incomes at any point in their lives).

Diligently save away and invest a portion of your income and you'll be alright.

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