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America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

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Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#101

Post by foxyv »

coldtea wrote: post #83
foxyv wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the government get to decide when we retire?

It doesn't (you can retire early), but it does decide part of what you will need to be saving and how. And the reason it decides that, apart from "because it can", is because many societies have seen what happens when it's left to individuals to take care of this, and they fuck it up in massive numbers, and the outcome of that then fucks up society.

It is really easy to "Fuck it up" when greedy assholes jack up the price of necessities like food, shelter, and medical care. 66% of bankruptcies are due to medical costs. We should just socialize necessities like food, shelter, and medical care so there is no chance of "Fucking it up." That would cover the possibility of disability as well.

It sounds to me like we have built a system to exploit people as much as possible. Treating them like farm animals.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#102

Post by forshaper »

mothballed wrote: post #75
jonahx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely answers why. You are asking for an appeal to some moral justification. But there isn't one, and it doesn't matter. That's the whole point of "might makes right".

CPF makes a moral justification by arguing it is a "savings and pension plan" under the auspices of a moral justification of helping citizens set aside their own money. The very first thing you are greeted with on their website is that it's savings and an overview represents it as "setting aside" your own funds. The government makes a moral justification of a savings plan but then when we dig down to it it's all ethe…

When are moral justifications not facades?

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#103

Post by atomicnumber3 »

throwway120385 wrote: post #89
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s almost impossible for an upper middle class couple to retire in the US before their 65 unless they have some type of government provided or private company provided health insurance like teachers, police officers, military etc. It’s about $25K a year for a decent plan which is doable. But you have to hope that Republicans - and yes this is a political issue - don’t successfully kill the ACA and make it impossibl…

The other way to avoid a pre-existing condition is to just avoid medical care entirely.

Ah yes, the 4chan retirement plan. Die of a preventable cause at age 42 while waiting for your captcha.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#104

Post by bubblewand »

philwelch wrote: post #90
bombcar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more fleshed out in the book "Die with Zero" which may be a bit too extreme. But in general you have three things to spend in your life: time, money, and effort. You don't want to spend all your time saving money because you'll run out of time eventually, but you also don't want to spend all your money saving time because you'll run out of money. It's all about balance and thoughtfully understanding what you…

Money can be passed down to your children and grandchildren though.

If you follow the fairly common path of "various expensive, intermittent medical problems for a couple decades, a handful of years of very-bad medical problems, nursing home, then hospice care" in the US, and you don't have a shitload of money, you don't really have a savings of your own, you're just temporarily taking care of the medical and end-of-life-care industries' money. There's not going to be much to pass down.

This becomes more true by the year, as those costs keep rising faster than broader inflation.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#105

Post by foxyv »

philwelch wrote: post #81
foxyv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an attempt to steelman, you are saying: "There is no moral justification for the government setting a retirement age, but they are able to. So it doesn't matter."

The government doesn’t set the retirement age. You can retire whenever you want. There are no laws against a 50 year old retiring and living off his own savings, nor against a 70 year old continuing to work. There is a minimum age to collect old age benefits from the government. The justification for that should be obvious.

The choice between working and starving to death is not a choice. If your savings have been taken by the government, then you don't have a choice.

The justification is to force people to work until they are too old to do so. Then steal whatever they have left with medical bills and price hikes on necessities.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#106

Post by zozbot234 »

drdec wrote: post #94
zozbot234 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payroll taxes actually pay for current Social Security benefits, the trust fund was tacked on with separate government funding in order to make it a bit less of a complete Ponzi scheme.

The trust fund is funded by the overage of collected Social Security taxes compared to Social Security payouts. It is not "tacked on" and does not use "separate government funding". Currently there are more payouts than taxes so the trust fund is being used to make up the difference. When the trust fund is depleted (barring any changes, this happens at some point in the next decade if I'm not mistaken) then there wil…

> does not use "separate government funding".

Yes, it does. The Obama administration explicitly appropriated general government funds to try and make up a developing shortfall in the 'fund'. There is no money being accumulated because there are more payouts than taxes - but even if that wasn't the case, these are not actual "bonds" that have been bought on any market, they're just non-market government obligations.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#107

Post by InkCanon »

dmoy wrote: post #65
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore is one of the last countries one will be a 'serf' in. The parent contributor has conveniently left out the fact that the 37% of CPF contributions is split 20-17 in terms of employee-employer contributions[1], and has a ceiling of S$8000[2], so if one earns more than that, every additional dollar goes entirely to them, which is also taxed at globally low income tax rates[3]. One can put all one's post-tax mo…

$8000 is considerably above median income, no?

Yes. Bluntly put, the government maximizes residence of high net worth individuals, and a 37% forced purchase of low interest bonds would be outrageous to them.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#108

Post by autoexec »

InkCanon wrote: post #50
3rodents wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t speak for Singaporeans and every government has their detractors but the Singaporeans I’ve known loved their system and hated the western systems they were exposed to. They would laugh if you tried to describe their life as serfdom when compared to a life in the U.S. or Europe.

I'll be blunt and say most Singaporeans have a very poor idea of how these policies work. Another major one - virtually all Singaporeans believe they own their houses, and it is a point of pride and financial security. Most houses are on 99 year leases, but the idea that is deeply lodged is that this is longer than you can live so this is inconsequential. While this is true if they only cared about living in it, hous…

> virtually all Singaporeans believe they own their houses, and it is a point of pride and financial security. Most houses are on 99 year leases

It's not as if the US fairs any better. Here you never own your home, you have to pay property taxes your whole life (basically rent) or it will be taken from you. Eminent domain means that they can take your property from you at any time even if you've kept paying them.

Singapore has a home ownership rate of ~90% vs 65% in the US and prices are so unaffordable that on average people buying their first starter homes in the US are in their 40s! Most Americans, if they're lucky will get maybe get 30 years of their life in a home they own while they are still young and healthy enough to enjoy it.

Last I heard Singapore only had about 1,000 homeless. Whatever they're doing with housing could probably be improved on, but they seem to be doing a lot better than we are.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#109

Post by foxyv »

jonahx wrote: post #82
foxyv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an attempt to steelman, you are saying: "There is no moral justification for the government setting a retirement age, but they are able to. So it doesn't matter."

I'm just saying it is the answer. To make an overly dramatic analogy, if you were kidnapped and asked why the kidnapper was able to hold you against your will, the answer is because they've chained you up and they have the gun, and so on. That's literally the answer to why . The fact that what they're doing is morally wrong is completely irrelevant.

I know why they are able, what I want people to think about is "Why." The kidnapper has a reason.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#110

Post by alistairSH »

everforward wrote: post #57
ecshafer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CPF sounds pretty clever. It covers a major individual cost and need (retirement, medical, housing) instead of just throwing it into a tax. It makes the government money. This sounds like a win win kind of policy.

To me it sounds like a tax structured in a strange way so it doesn't obviously read as a tax. It's essentially a forced loan to the government at subpar rates. The "tax" is the delta between what the government pays out for the bonds vs what a bond of equivalent risk in the free market would have paid. The magnitude of the investment also probably makes it impractical for anyone but the very wealthy to retire before…

That's not all that different than US Social Security. SS has a much lower required contribution/tax rate, but the overall scheme seems similar (lower than market returns, etc) and naming (despite SS actually being called a tax, many residents think of it as a required personal retirement savings account).
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