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Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
- xutopia 11y agoI feel so sad when I read stories like these ones... a 300$ ticket is the difference between being broke and having food on the table for her. To me it says a lot about our society if we can't take care of our elderly.
- dreamdu5t 11y agoWhile 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.
- ossreality 11y ago>socializing these costs just means I'm forced to pay for your parents at the expense of mine wow, just wow. that doesn't even make sense and yet you asserted it because it's the only leg you have to stand on
- marshray 11y agoNot every elderly is a parent.
- merrywhether 11y agoWhich 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).
- exhilaration 11y agoYou're pretty confident that you and/or your savings will live to take care of your parents. What if you get hit by a bus? Or lose your ability to work? Isn't that what a social safety net is for?
- caskance 11y agoFor most of us with dependents, that's what private life insurance is for. The social safety net is for people too poor or irresponsible to have life insurance.
- jtuente 11y agoDo people not understand the safety part of the safety net? It's not there because you expect to fail, it's there for if you happen to. I don't keep a fire extinguisher in my kitchen because I expect to set it on fire, but rather I want to be able to stop a fire should one ignite. If you're reliant on a safety net, then you've failed at what you were trying to do.
- caskance 11y agoWhat does that have to do with what I said? Why do you think I mentioned life insurance?
- quadrangle 11y agoNot socializing these costs means externalizing them. Should we all chip in to take care of this very social issue or should we just accept the costs in the form of living in a dysfunctional society with all the ramifications of huge numbers of poor elderly folks? We bear the costs as a society one way or the other. It seems what you're saying is: you just wish every elderly person just had a wealthy enough family that could comfortably take care of them. But that's completely useless fantasy talk.
- tamana 11y agoSince everyone has 2 parents, essentially, it is absolutely trivial to work out a fair welfare scheme. This is much easier than most welfare systems.
- CocaKoala 11y agoPlease explain this fair welfare scheme which is trivial to work out, because I'm not seeing how "every person has two parents" leads directly to it.
- tamana 11y agoSince everyone has 2 parents, essentially, it is absolutely trivial to work out a fair welfare scheme. This is much easier than most welfare systems.
- MrZongle2 11y ago"a 300$ ticket is the difference between being broke and having food on the table for her." And the same could be said for a 18-year-old, living out on his or her own. But in both cases, it is the result of a poor choice (inattentive driving) rather than a major flaw of society, and has nothing to do with being "too poor to retire and too young to die", as was the supposed focus of the article.
- RussianCow 11y agoReplace the speeding ticket with medical treatment, and that no longer holds true. Either way, you're missing the point, which is that no one (elderly or otherwise) should have to live a life in which a necessary expense of a couple hundred dollars can cause you to go hungry.
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y agoThe punishment for this speeding infraction is $300. Think about what kind of effect a $300 fine has on your life, and compare it to the impact on this woman's life. The punishment is to pay a fine, not to starve. We should not punish people with starvation, it's cruel and unusual. The punishment is different for you than for her, and that's not just.
- MrZongle2 11y agoThink about what kind of effect a $300 fine has on your life, and compare it to the impact on this woman's life. I have. That's why I don't speed. $300 lost means that I have to find what to cut from a budget to support a family of four, while trying to pay off all my bills with a goal to become debt free before I become this woman's age. Unlike the woman in the article, we don't choose tours of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings over dental care. I'd like to know how the woman in the article budgeted her money 34 years ago, when she was my age. Then we're closer to comparing apples with apples, even though according to the article she never had children to further strain her finances. A lot of the discussion in this entire thread involving the traffic ticket focuses on how such a ticket is devastating to the poor and the weakest of wrist-slaps to the uber-rich. I see very little discussion of the potential impact on the majority of us in the middle class, or how personal responsibility factors into the mix.
- maerF0x0 11y agoIts tricky to feel sympathy w/ the lady in this article. She's part of the most benefitted generation, the "hardships" shown are induced by her own choices (expensive dinner, speeding ticket) and by world standards she's won the lottery to even be alive and living comfortably at her age. Alas, thats the trick with other people's stories-- difficult to project how it would feel if I were in their shoes.
- x5n1 11y agoIt's not tricky at all. The government eats that $300 dollars for nothing, you could easily index those fines depending on how much money people actually have. But then you can't overtax the underclass with policing. I live in Canada, you know how much the police harasses me? Not at all. The expensive dinner is three meals, which comes out to around $7/meal; not really that expensive. America has a huge underclass made by shitty government policies that favor corporate interest and complexes like the military industrial complex or the prison industrial complex at the price of its people. It's as simple as that. And they individualize all of those bad policies and make individuals pay for it, as if it's their fault. It's not.
- hockeybias 11y agoActually it is not as simple as that. You are over-simplifying.
- rdlecler1 11y agoIt sounds like you have never been poor. Poverty and misfortune wears you down. A moment of weakness is inevitable. Moreover financial stress has shown to significantly reduce effective IQ.
- MrZongle2 11y agoExceeding the speed limit isn't exclusive to the poor and downtrodden. Should fines for breaking the law be different for different incomes? Edit: for those of you saying 'yes': who decides what is "fair"?
- x5n1 11y agoJust shows that the US government can't afford to launch any wars or flex its muscles, when it does so it does it at the cost of all these people who have paid a life's worth of taxes, and have nothing show for it. The corporate interests and the government has eaten all that work and not given them enough to live off in their old age.
- refurb 11y agoall these people who have paid a life's worth of taxes The social security benefits she receives are based off her lifetime earnings and thus the taxes she paid.
- tamana 11y agoThat's not true. SS taxes are an entry ticket, but the benefits are paid without regard to any sort of national investment of those twx payments.
- refurb 11y agoThey aren't based on off the investment of those contributions, but yes, they are based off the income you earned over your lifetime.[1] [1]https://www.ssa.gov/retire/estimator.html https://www.ssa.gov/retire/estimator.html
- nadezhda18 11y agoshe needs a financial class to learn how to save money - much more than money itself
- rdlecler1 11y agoPoverty begets poverty. I think this is going to become increasingly common. Her generation had all the benefits of a 66 year economic boom, and still there are many who will live out a good portion of their lives in poverty. What about subsequent generations that have been saddled with their debts, who can't afford housing, and who must pay their entitlements?
- kafkaesq 11y agoWestfall — 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 can debate all you want about implementing basic income for the general population. But there should be no hesitation at all about applying it to seniors. As in, right now. And the trickle-down effects of the basic message: "If you can take care of your self until age 65, you've got it made" -- will be enormous.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago>But there should be no hesitation at all about applying it to seniors. As in, right now. So something like social security. Which she is already receiving.
- alkonaut 11y agoFeels like a poor kind of "social security" to have to work if you are elderly. Either something is missing in the story, like an expensive addiction, or the minimum benefits (minimum pensions or social security) are simply too low to actually allow someone to retire on.
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- Lawtonfogle 11y agoShe was receiving $1200 per month if I remember correctly. Most basic income schemes I see tend to offer less than that. Perhaps this shows that basic income is not the solution we sometimes treat it as.
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- s_q_b 11y agoBefore Social Security, over 70% of seniors died in poverty. Today, that number is less than 10%. The amount of transfer payments to the elderly is so much larger than to any other age group, but unless you're willing to let those below the median income die in abject poverty, it's necessary.
- hitekker 11y agoI agree with you, but do you have more sources that convey the full impact of Social Security?
- s_q_b 11y agoBasic stats: http://www.cbpp.org/archives/4-8-99socsec.htm 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 programs.
- thinkmoore 11y agoWhose 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).
- s_q_b 11y agoMy 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.
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- thinkingkong 11y agoHopefully at some point in the future we look back at situations like this with a sense of perplexion. I worry though, that if we do roll out some form guaranteed minimum income, the moral highground of those against welfare and social assistance will be replaced by the moral highground of those who work to supplement their income.
- PavlovsCat 11y agoGreed and taking advantage of people will not lead to the opposite when taken to big enough extremes. It's not the suffering which causes revolts that is the problem, it's the possibility of revolt. Once that is taken care of the suffering can be ignored or even enjoyed, depending whether the person is just a coward or a sadist. When enough people are so disenfranchised that they need "handouts" to survive, I wouldn't be surprised about the decision to simply get rid of those people, then revising history to turn that into the best possible solution for an unfortunate problem nobody was guilty of creating. It'd be just more of what we're doing already.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago>Nearly one-third of U.S. heads of households ages 55 and older have no pension or retirement savings and a median annual income of about $19,000. So now we finally get to the root of why Baby Boomers are so upset with the Millenial generation - there's nobody to bail them out of the mess they created.
- tamana 11y agoPoor old folks aren't the exploiters you are looking for.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoVoting records tell a different story.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoPerhaps you should ask the questions: Why did Boomers not have enough income to put savings aside? If savings was put aside, what rate of return did it earn? And what remains of those savings? But heh, f___ old people for decisions that were made before you were born, amirite?
- CocaKoala 11y ago>Why did Boomers not have enough income to put savings aside? To be fair, plenty of millenials don't have enough income to put savings aside either, and they're not even getting social security benefits.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoWhich adds another grim view to this problem. Every dollar spent today to help the elderly who are poor is a dollar less for when we are elderly, and it is looking already like our situation is going to be even worse (even if you ignore the big issues like climate change).
- rconti 11y ago
- guelo 11y ago401K is a massive Wall Street ripoff and a massive failure. The disaster is just beginning.
- tosseraccount 11y agoWhat are their returns, compared to say, social security investments or private pensions?
- refurb 11y agoI know I much prefer relying on the benevolence of a corporation to correctly run a pension program so that it doesn't go bankrupt and leave me high and dry. Much better than controlling my own retirement.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- caskance 11y agoNo matter how much social security is, some people will manage to spend so extravagantly that it is not enough. An anecdote of one such person is not very convincing.
- MrMullen 11y agoWhy don't these people move to a place where it is much cheaper to live? Costa Rica, Panama, and Mexico all come to mind. Living in the US is expensive and you can live much cheaper in other countries and have the adventure of living in another country. https://internationalliving.com/countries/costa-rica/cost-of-living-in-costa-rica/ https://internationalliving.com/countries/costa-rica/cost-of...
- mmagin 11y agoDo the countries you mention want immigrants who are not likely to benefit their economy significantly and who probably don't have fluency in the local language?
- MrMullen 11y agoCosta Rica and Panama happily take America retirees. America retirees have a guarantee income, they don't cause trouble and health care is affordable in those countries. The retirees should learn spanish but there is no reason they could not stay in their own enclaves, if they had too.
- aianus 11y agoYes, there are plenty of tropical countries with visa categories specifically for retired westerners. The requirements are often super-lenient (in Thailand you need to show a bank balance of $25,000 or $2,000 a month in income and you can stay as long as you want on a retiree visa).
- jkot 11y ago> she pulled into the Town & Country Family Restaurant to take the edge off her appetite .... After much consideration, she ordered the prime rib special and an iced tea — expensive at $21.36, I guess that is really bad for US.
- Afforess 11y agoTerrible in terms of frugality. The article suggests she saved leftovers and used it for 3 meals total. However, that is still $7 a meal, very pricey. It's not terribly hard to have $1 (or less!) meals if you grocery shop and cook for yourself.
- roymurdock 11y agoHere's a breakdown of the US 2015 combined (Federal, State, Local) government spend: Total Spend: 6.18tn Total Revenue: 6.08tn Healthcare: 1.32tn (21.3%) Pension: 1.20tn (19.7%) Education: 0.93tn (14.8%) Defense: 0.80tn (13.1%) Welfare: 0.50tn (8.2%) Other*: 1.43tn (23.1%) *Other = Protection, Transportation, General Government, Interest Currently, social security is taking in ~$74bn less in payroll taxes than it pays out in benefits. The $2.83tn fund is invested in federal debt that pays 3.4% interest. So the interest payment (from the Federal government) of $96.2b is enough to cover the deficit. By 2020, interest will no longer be enough to cover the deficit between revenue in from taxes and expenditures out to retirees. At that point, the SS fund will need to start redeeming treasuries for cash. The federal government will then need to issue new debt and/or raise taxes to cover SS treasury bond redemptions. If the Federal Reserve follows through in its quest to raise interest rates and inflation, it will be relatively expensive to raise the $2.83tn in debt that we will need to fund SS through 2029, when it is projected to completely deplete its reserves of treasury notes. At this point, SS will only be able to pay out 75% of promised benefits given the current tax rate and demographic trends. Healthcare expenses lean heavily towards the old but are funded by the working age population. What happens as the birth rate decreases and the average individual lives longer? Expenses increase for the working-age population. I'm less concerned about spend on education (which is broken) than I am about how we plan to fund our health care and pension systems. The only feasible way I can see is through increased taxation. I just started working last year. Hell of a time to enter the work force! Overall it seems to me like we are paying an increasing amount of our federal budget on the older population than we anticipated we would need to and that we did not adequately provision for.
- creshal 11y agoHealthcare spending is at least as broken as education: The US health care system is 50-100% more expensive per capita as comparable European systems, yet less capable. There's lots of savings potential here.
- unprepare 11y agoI'm not saying i believe it but the counterargument i've heard to this is that the US also funds the most medical research. I havent seen anyone clearly explain how more expensive bandaids trickle down into the pockets of researchers, but nevertheless it is a common counterargument to the US spending much more than other countries on healthcare
- pcardh0 11y agoObviously we need more immigration to solve this problem. A larger pool of unskilled labor would increase wages. As everyone knows, when you increase the supply, the price always rises.
- tosseraccount 11y agoImmigration system as ponzi scheme to pay for old people?
- robertcorey 11y agoShe made several major financial mistakes in this article. 21.36 would have gotten her a months worth of beans and rice. But we shouldn't write people off for making poor financial choices. Maybe SS payments could be offered in the form of room and board for those struggling to manage their cashflow.
- nadezhda18 11y agoso agree she would benefit much more from learning how to save money than from having more money
- nikdaheratik 11y agoAnd there were parts of the article where she lived off of rice and milk. It's not the $20 meal that's costing her, but the higher cost of living from living in an RV + the unfixed employment income and the fact that she doesn't have a lifetime of savings to fall back on.
- brandonmenc 11y agoA cautionary tale for the child-free. multi-generational households are one way to assuage this problem.
- stcredzero 11y agoBill Staines – A Cowboys Hard Times Well, I once was a cowboy, and I used to run wild. And I rodeoed, wrangled, and rambled in style. But I'm too old for horses, too old for the show, And I'm too young for Heaven; now where shall I go? You young whipper-snappers might think that's quaint. But get ye into the position of manager, guru, or entrepreneur, or this can happen to a coder too.
- pcardh0 11y agoI think she should explore the lucrative career of drug mule. She already has all of the equipment for the job and she is pretty low in the profiling category. If she gets caught, the housing and food problems go away. Sounds like a Win/Win/Win situation.
- Mikeb85 11y agoI was going to write a post about how you can't have a great social net as well as low-tax laissez-faire economy. But this article paints a portrait of a woman who never saved, made many bad decisions, spends too much, and, even when faced with poverty, continues to try to "have it all". Maybe it's commendable, I've always thought it would be fun to be a ski bum or something (and I have taken 6 months off at a time before to go travel, camp, ski, etc...). But if I were to make that choice, it would be just that - my choice, and I certainly wouldn't complain about the consequences.
- jdhzzz 11y agoI stopped reading when I read: "Eight in 10 Americans say they will work well into their 60s or skip retirement entirely." Uhm, the system is kind of designed that way. Why is alarming that most will work "well into their 60's"? How do 1 of 5 get by without working well into their 60s? Sign me up.