891–900 of 1001 posts
The solution is pretty simple for the society. Either have three kids or you work till you are 70.
The society first has to provide for its citizens instead of giving socialism to billionaires instead of a proper social safety net, or they won't want to or can't have kids.
Realistically, what are countries supposed to do? Almost every single industrialized country has a birth rate below replacement, so there's fewer younger people to help carry the burdens. Medical care means the elderly live on and on and on, draining enormous costs as they age. I'm not trying to be cruel, but from a pure numbers sense it makes perfect sense. Would you prefer taxes go up instead? Lessen spending on in…
Tax wealth. I know that's a very hard thing to do due to the mobility and political power of capital, but we need international co-operation and just do it. That's where all the money is and where it's going at an accelerating rate.
And you only get to do that once.
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Allow me to remind you that Churchill quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others". Or in this situation, pensions are the worst form of retirement savings, except for all the others. Political parties struggle even imagining alternative solutions, but if you found a better idea by all means please come forward and we will all vote for you! I will for sure.
Non-mandatory, private savings is a far better idea. Ah wait but now the govt doesn't have the money anymore... ops. Maybe _that's_ why they struggle, because they don't find a way of taking your money without telling you... we changed forms of government, but taxes (and hidden taxes) remain, did you notice?
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> Pension is a Ponzi scheme. It's most appropriately a shared investment scheme. Your pension money should not sit idle while you are building it. That money can earn a percentage in many ways and dividend reinvestment makes the fund grow massively. > Retirement depends on having young workers. Profits do. Retirement is going to happen regardless of how many young workers there are.
There is zero advantage to a society-level investment scheme and many disadvantages - mainly due to distancing "investors" from the investment which means that the goal of the system becomes profit only without any consideration for ethics.
Except we're using it and it works. It's demonstrably better than the previous scheme wherein when a business failed it could take the entire pension with it leaving thousands of people high and dry.
> mainly due to distancing "investors" from the investment
It puts me directly in control of the investment whereas before I had zero control and had to accept whatever the company administrator decided.
> which means that the goal of the system becomes profit only without any consideration for ethics.
Do you want to solve the retirement problem or ethics in investing problem? If you insist they both be solved by the same action then I think you're going to end up with a system that has _negative_ advantages and _everyone_ will hate.
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My guess - they'll just gut the benefits to anemic levels for everyone slowly rather than some big easy to point to maneuver like this.
Whoever does that will get voted out. Voters over 62 make up >25% of the midterm vote. By 2030 - that number could easily be >30%.
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It would be hard to distill the fallacy of human fungibility into a purer form than this. If you’re say Danish, the kids you raise will be Danish. The immigrants won’t be Danish, they’ll be like the people from their country of origin: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran... . And as a result, they won’t be nearly as economically productive as Danes, ironically undermining the whole point of i…
What makes Danish children productive is not their Danish blood, it's the culture and infrastructure that they operate in. The children of any nation would be equally capable. As an immigrant myself, I find the second article silly. You import people according to your own criteria, and they arrive pre-raised and pre-educated. A larger proportion of them will leave the country before retirement age. It's a hell of a d…
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Tax wealth. I know that's a very hard thing to do due to the mobility and political power of capital, but we need international co-operation and just do it. That's where all the money is and where it's going at an accelerating rate.
> Tax wealth Are you saying that Denmark, a nordic socialist country, has not taxed wealth enough?
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Tax wealth. I know that's a very hard thing to do due to the mobility and political power of capital, but we need international co-operation and just do it. That's where all the money is and where it's going at an accelerating rate.
Taxing 100% of the wealth of all the billionaires in the US would fund federal spend for about 8 months. And you only get to do that once.
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100% yes. My father is 67, and to be honest, he really shouldn't be working anymore. Both physically and mentally. And he is not very sick or disabled in any way. He just doesn't have the same capacity as he had in his 50s so after a 9-5 he was just recovering and going to sleep for the last few years. Terrible. He retired last year. He didn't have an easy life. Very few jobs would benefit from his work and continuin…
You can raise you personal "taxes" and provide for you father if you so desire.
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You can raise you personal "taxes" and provide for you father if you so desire.
What if my father didn't have kids?
If he voluntarily chose not to raise kids, not even adopted ones, then he placed himself at the mercy of strangers. This may or may not end well, depending on how much spare resources they have.