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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

#81

Post by philwelch »

foxyv wrote: post #69
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".

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.

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

#82

Post by jonahx »

foxyv wrote: post #69
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".

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.

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

#83

Post by coldtea »

foxyv wrote: post #23
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.

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.

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

#84

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

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…

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 impossible to get insurance at any cost if you have a pre-existing condition. If you are old - you will develop a pre-existing condition.

My parents are 83 and 81 and retired at 57/55. But my mom was a teacher who still gets benefits through the government and my dad gets benefits from the one factory that didn’t shut down in our hometown.

I’m 51 and even if I could retire early financially, I wouldn’t do it and stay in the US. Play the smallest fiddle for us. I “retired my wife” at 44 in 2020 8 years into our marriage when I did a slight transition to an industry where remote work with travel is the norm (cloud consulting + app dev) and we have traveled a lot including doing stints as “digital nomads”.

We are staying in one of the countries that we might retire to as a Plan B for six weeks starting next week.

Even now that we moved to state tax free Florida and my wife hasn’t had to work in six years, she keeps a current CDL because she can get a job as a school bus driver easily for the benefits and someone will pay me for independent consulting if I lose my job.

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

#85

Post by gruez »

zozbot234 wrote: post #70
InkCanon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

99 year leases make complete sense. Much of the value of a 'house' in an urban area like Singapore is actually in the land, and the value is being created by the community on a day-to-day basis. It makes no sense for that value to be captured for all future time by a single owner, that just encourages pointless speculation and makes it harder to allocate real estate towards its highest and most valuable use.

> It makes no sense for that value to be captured for all future time by a single owner, that just encourages pointless speculation and makes it harder to allocate real estate towards its highest and most valuable use.

How do 99 year leases fix the problem? Do people actually get kicked out at 99 years, or does the government renew it for a nominal fee?

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

#86

Post by drivebyhooting »

nosianu wrote: post #41
drivebyhooting wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the part where citizens get low returns and are forced to work their whole lives accruing minimal benefit. How is being a serf win win?

Unless we scale back our lives significantly, and are fine with a lot less stuff and vacations and devices and modernized living (houses and transit today are vastly more complex systems than a few decades ago), there simply is no way to let a large number of people live like rich people. I grew up in East Germany, and while it was a total failure, they got at least one idea correct in the workers paradise: We need t…

Working as a painter for lack of imagination of what else to do is not fun. It reminds me of being “institutionalized” from Shawshank’s redemption.

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

#87

Post by mothballed »

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.

But the CPF isn't represented as benefits from the government. It's represented and claimed to be your own savings that you have set aside. At gamed bond rates where the government skims off the top.

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

#88

Post by yoyohello13 »

arolihas wrote: post #15
hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #8

>They’re failing to save because the world is rough, and their institutions don’t do enough to help them weather it. Well, America is rough. It turned on hardcore capitalism mode for itself because a significant portion of its population wants to try and solo socioeconomic hardships and hates any one who doesn't want the same challenge. But not to just blame the voter, lots of money is spent for setting up systems to…

Like half of our budget goes to welfare (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Income Security, etc). https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function

What annoys me the most about this is I'm like 80% sure none of those programs will exist by the time I retire.

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

#89

Post by throwway120385 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #84
everforward wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#90

Post by philwelch »

bombcar wrote: post #45
bluGill wrote: post #22

You know who they didn't interview: those who regret saving so much. Many of those people are dead and so the regret is something we can only apply on assumption that they would. I've known a few people who unexpectedly died before they hit retirement age. I've know a few people who retired and died suddenly. The vast majority of people in a "first world" country have an expected lifespan of about 80 - but there is a…

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.
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