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Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

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Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#171

Post by merrywhether »

marshray wrote: post #17
dreamdu5t wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your sentiment, I do not agree that it is my responsibility to take care of your parents. I want to take care of mine, and socializing these costs just means I'm forced to pay for your parents at the expense of mine. There is no replacement for the family unit. Obviously I feel differently about people who have no family, but that is the exception not the norm.

Not every elderly is a parent.

Which a cynic would say means they had an opportunity to save tons of money over the course of their life (relative to those who paid for having kids).

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#172

Post by zanny »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #151
zanny wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to strangle the youth to feed the elderly. IT is always a false dichotomy to think that you need the poor to provide for the poor. Here are numbers to consider. Per capita real GDP in 2015 in the US was $51,143. Fourty years ago it was $24,693. We have more than doubled our per-person wealth, and are continuing to increase at 2%, roughly twice the rate of inflation. We are absolutely wealthy as a count…

>We are absolutely wealthy as a country. Well now that you mention it... if we have responsibility to the poor of this country, do we not also have responsibility to the poor of other countries? Even more so if you are talking about the US due to all our meddling in the affairs of other countries.

We do feel responsible for the poor of other countries, that is why people donate and participate in charity to such large degrees, and the US spends billions on international aid every year.

However, unless these nations concede sovereignty to the US, we cannot be held responsible for the bad behavior of nation states and be expected to make up for their failings with our own sacrifice.

If everyone wanted to voluntarily join a world government that also provided UBI to every human being I would absolutely be for it, in the knowledge that I would certainly lose a lot of first world conveniences to uplift the extreme poor in third world nations. We could get away with spending a lot less on entertainment and excess and more on guaranteeing human decency to everyone.

But when you start talking about using force of arms to force my own ideals on others and compel them to participate, that is well over a line. It would require the mutual desire and cooperation of everyone to try it.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#173

Post by Mikeb85 »

zepto wrote: post #156
6stringmerc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I have a summer birthday so, yes, I do not enjoy them very much. I'm basically very disappointed at the economy and society that I've inherited. Forgive me if I don't wear a smile while looking critically at those who came before me.

Sounds like you blame the elderly for your situation. What happened to taking responsibility for your own station?

You know what they say, "Recession is when your neighbour loses his job, depression is when you lose yours".

It's easy enough to say that it's up to oneself to 'take responsibility', until you find yourself in a place where there are no jobs, and it's really not possible to thrive.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#174

Post by s_q_b »

thinkmoore wrote: post #81
s_q_b wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic stats: http://www.cbpp.org/archives/4-8-99socsec.htm You can go a lot deeper on this. Even today, about 50% of seniors would be below the poverty level without Social Security. That's mostly okay, because the majority of seniors have the major expenses covered by guaranteed benefit pensions, Medicare and private savings, usually in the form of a house. But things would get pretty grim without the government pro…

Whose parents have a guaranteed benefit pension these days? As far as private savings, those disappear almost immediately in the face of a medical disaster. Things are pretty grim indeed without the government programs (Social Security and Medicare).

My grandfather has two guaranteed benefit pensions: one FBI and one as chief of local police. But you're right, they're vanishingly rare for anyone in the private sector under 80.

Bankruptcy by medical disaster should be averted by Medicare and a supplementary plan, assuming it's late enough in life. Slightly earlier, and yeah, your savings can vanish.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#175

Post by s_q_b »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #38
s_q_b wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Security worked well, before cost of living overtook the benefits provided.

Cost of living is not the problem (except for healthcare cost inflation, which Medicare could mitigate if someone could gut Congress of representatives preventing Medicare from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies). The problem is that everyone who collects Social Security is living longer. The question is: How can you continue to provide a high quality of life to seniors without bankrupting the country. It can…

I should clarify. My COLA statement includes increased medical costs/consumption, longer life, lack of keeping up with GDP, etc. Total lifetime costs might be better phrasing.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#176

Post by s_q_b »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #144
hapless wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of social security is that it is a social insurance program. It's funded out of workers wages, and paid back to workers in proportion to what they paid in. If you remove the cap on social security contributions without removing the cap on payouts, how is it anything but a special surcharge on people who earn money from wages?

> If you remove the cap on social security contributions without removing the cap on payouts, how is it anything but a special surcharge on people who earn money from wages? I never said it wasn't. I can hardly shed a tear (for myself included) for anyone making over $120K/year who pays an extra few percents of tax on income to prevent elderly poverty.

I'm coming to appreciate the plight of the middle class at this point. How the hell am I supposed to put away enough savings for a house, retirement for two, and college savings for 2.5 kids? Between myself and my girlfriend, "household" income is around 200k.

I should be exactly the person opposing these tax increases. I'm squarely in the white, male, 95% demographic.

Yet, the more I look at the financial figures for the total population, the more I realize how lucky we really are. I can't conscionablely oppose paying more in taxes. I just wish the system of expenditure was more rational.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#177

Post by dragonwriter »

hapless wrote: post #142
toomuchtodo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is universal healthcare, which then becomes a sunk cost for the entire population (Medicare->OneCare). The answer is removing the social security tax cap at ~$120K (this causes SS to become solvent in perpetuity immediately ). This will be done regardless if the SS fund goes broke and must be propped up with the general fund, its just how long you want to kick the can for. (EDIT: Medicare has no cap on the…

The whole point of social security is that it is a social insurance program. It's funded out of workers wages, and paid back to workers in proportion to what they paid in. If you remove the cap on social security contributions without removing the cap on payouts, how is it anything but a special surcharge on people who earn money from wages?

> It's funded out of workers wages, and paid back to workers in proportion to what they paid in.

No, its not. There are "bend points" where the ratio of earnings to benefits is reduced. (The benefit is 90% of average indexed monthly earnings up to the first bend point, plus 32% of AIME between the first and second bend point, plus 15% of AIME above the second bend point.)

> If you remove the cap on social security contributions without removing the cap on payouts, how is it anything but a special surcharge on people who earn money from wages?

Since the cap on contributions is a per-working-year cap and the cap on payouts is a maximum limit applied after the formula aggregates the lifetime earnings, there is no strong relationship between the two caps.

OTOH, you could uncap both annual contributions and benefits and you'd still improve the health of the trust fund, just not quite as much as you would if you uncapped only annual contributions, so if that's the only objection, go ahead and uncap both, with or without adding a third bend point.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#178

Post by [deleted] »

s_q_b wrote: post #176
toomuchtodo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you remove the cap on social security contributions without removing the cap on payouts, how is it anything but a special surcharge on people who earn money from wages? I never said it wasn't. I can hardly shed a tear (for myself included) for anyone making over $120K/year who pays an extra few percents of tax on income to prevent elderly poverty.

I'm coming to appreciate the plight of the middle class at this point. How the hell am I supposed to put away enough savings for a house, retirement for two, and college savings for 2.5 kids? Between myself and my girlfriend, "household" income is around 200k. I should be exactly the person opposing these tax increases. I'm squarely in the white, male, 95% demographic. Yet, the more I look at the financial figures fo…

[deleted]

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#179

Post by toomuchtodo »

s_q_b wrote: post #176
toomuchtodo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you remove the cap on social security contributions without removing the cap on payouts, how is it anything but a special surcharge on people who earn money from wages? I never said it wasn't. I can hardly shed a tear (for myself included) for anyone making over $120K/year who pays an extra few percents of tax on income to prevent elderly poverty.

I'm coming to appreciate the plight of the middle class at this point. How the hell am I supposed to put away enough savings for a house, retirement for two, and college savings for 2.5 kids? Between myself and my girlfriend, "household" income is around 200k. I should be exactly the person opposing these tax increases. I'm squarely in the white, male, 95% demographic. Yet, the more I look at the financial figures fo…

> Yet, the more I look at the financial figures for the total population, the more I realize how lucky we really are. I can't conscionablely oppose paying more in taxes. I just wish the system of expenditure was more rational.

We agree on this.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#180

Post by dragonwriter »

kasey_junk wrote: post #16
kafkaesq wrote: post #6

Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…

You are being down-voted because the US has near universal basic income for older folks & the subject of the story collects it. It's one of the real questions I have about basic income schemes generally. The examples we have are not powerful arguments in favor of them.

> You are being down-voted because the US has near universal basic income for older folks

No, it doesn't. The US has a broadly-applicable mostly-mandatory contribution-weighted public pension program, which is almost entirely unlike a basic income.

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