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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

#91

Post by autoexec »

goolz wrote: post #58
ecshafer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government decides when we can retire and they help us out. You can stop working today if you want, Government shouldn't pay you for it for no reason. Your duty as a citizen is to work and build your nation, eventually the government pays back that service with benefits.

These days I wonder about that duty I have. It sure felt obligatory some time ago. I thought of myself as a patriot and that the rule of law was something we we should be proud of. A country whose own anthem spoke of "liberty and justice for all". The current trajectory makes my question a lot of things, including this whole "government pays back that service with benefits" as it will be some time before I ever see a…

> A lot of our taxes in this country seem like a giant waste or are grossly inefficient at best.

It's our duty to elect people who use tax dollars wisely and to vote out officials who neglect their responsibility to the people and use tax money to enrich themselves and anyone else willing to bribe them. Our government is filled with grifters because we've failed to hold them meaningfully accountable for robbing us and failing to provide the benefits we're funding.

Many of the grifters in government have been working hard to make it difficult to hold them accountable. They disenfranchise voters, they keep us afraid and our futures uncertain, they collude against efforts to reform the system they've established for their own benefit.

Government was never going to just let us have "liberty and justice for all" the job was always on "we the people" to insist on it. We can't just pay taxes and expect everything to work out. We have to use the democracy we have to force the government to work for us and not just for themselves. If we've reached a point where that's no longer possible then it's our duty to "refresh the tree of liberty" until we have a government that works for us.

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

#92

Post by zozbot234 »

gruez wrote: post #85
zozbot234 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If the lease gets renewed at market value then there's no point in speculating about what that land might be worth in the farther future. It's a key difference from a system where all of the future value must be captured at once by a single owner.

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

#93

Post by u8vov8 »

temp8830 wrote: post #67
paxys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is the number. Workers on temporary visas make up ~1% of the labor force in the US. And a large chunk of them will eventually get citizenship or permanent residency and qualify for benefits later in life. Countries like Singapore and all of the Middle East meanwhile rely on a revolving door of cheap immigrant labor. In the extreme cases like Qatar 95% of the working population are on short term visas.…

The US also has a huge pool of undocumented immigrants who don't get any benefits, don't pay into the social security system, and can be paid below minimum wage (because officially they don't exist). Any time this labor supply is threatened, the construction and agriculture industries rise up (and probably sponsor all those massive protests you see in the news).

No one is paying protesters, people like us in Minneapolis actually do organically hate the current regime and its apologists (you?) that much.

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

#94

Post by drdec »

zozbot234 wrote: post #79
philwelch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The primary purpose of CPF is not a pension scheme. It is structured as a massive forced bond purchase scheme by citizens. Financially what happens is the 37% of citizen income buys a long term bond (till retirement age, on average decades) at rock bottom interest rates (it's pegged to the overnight rate or a minimum of 2.6%). Social Security is effectively the same thing. Payroll taxes are collected and placed in…

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 will be a reckoning. If no action is taken by Congress the result is that payouts will be cut by the necessary percentage to match the taxes.

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

#95

Post by arolihas »

phkahler wrote: post #19
arolihas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Social Security is a separate tax in a separate fund (invested in T-bonds). If you split that out of the budget, the budget looks even worse. The boomers retiring is just going to be bonds maturing without the holder (social security) reinvesting the money.

Boomers are getting way more than they ever put in.

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

#96

Post by foxyv »

goolz wrote: post #58
ecshafer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government decides when we can retire and they help us out. You can stop working today if you want, Government shouldn't pay you for it for no reason. Your duty as a citizen is to work and build your nation, eventually the government pays back that service with benefits.

These days I wonder about that duty I have. It sure felt obligatory some time ago. I thought of myself as a patriot and that the rule of law was something we we should be proud of. A country whose own anthem spoke of "liberty and justice for all". The current trajectory makes my question a lot of things, including this whole "government pays back that service with benefits" as it will be some time before I ever see a…

I wouldn't mind taxes if everyone paid their fair share and it went to improving the lives of everyone instead of the wealthy few. We live in the most productive times per capita that have ever existed. Why do we need to scrimp and save to buy food while the number of billionaires continues to climb?

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

#97

Post by joe_mamba »

erichocean wrote: post #16
joe_mamba wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Singapore has a regressive shock absorber model where something like half the country are immigrants that are ineligible for, say, public housing which even the better off citizens take advantage of in Singapore It's similar in Vienna where only native Viennese are immediately eligible for social housing, but outsiders will end up paying into the system without being eligible.

> outsiders will end up paying into the system By definition, outsiders don't have to pay into the system since they already have a gov't somewhere else that is dedicated to them, just like the Viennese do.

>By definition, outsiders don't have to pay into the system

They absolutely do pay into the system when they move to and work in Vienna. By outsiders in this context I meant foreign workers. I assumed that was clear from the context of the discussion.

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

#98

Post by arolihas »

danny_codes wrote: post #27
arolihas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And yet that GINI keeps rising and cost of living outpaces inflation over the past 40 years in housing, healthcare, and education. If you are bottom quintile, maybe bottom 2, you are poorer now than 40 years ago on average. Recent policy changes seek to drop the third quintile as well. America is designed for rich people

The bottom quintile gets everything handed to them and it's still not enough. We all live at the mercy of them and their dysfunction.

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

#99

Post by spyckie2 »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #80
spyckie2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the US, right? Especially with the part 2? I know this may sound like a shock because you are privileged but 7% yoy return on capital is NOT the norm for the rest of the world. Just look at any other index not called the S&P or the Dow. Look up US exceptionalism. The US policy for retirement savings shackles the younger generation with a ticking time bomb. Forcing your own citizens to save money for themselv…

If ROI is lower than inflation then what’s the point of saving? So you can have an even worse standard of living after you retire? Forced investment in low ROI vehicles is just a tax by another name.

Well, would you have a better standard of living with $0 or $1000 when you retire?

Even if that $1000 used to be worth $10000, that $0 is still worth $0.

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

#100

Post by bubblewand »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #86
nosianu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Adult coloring books are a thing. I could definitely see a person enjoying a version of that, that also had a purpose beyond killing time.
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