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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 thes
by kafkaesq 11y ago
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 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.
- kafkaesq 11y agoSocial security !== basic income. See my clarification above about this.
- knicholes 11y agoI find it unfair that I'm expected to make sacrifices while I'm young to ensure a comfortable retirement and also have to pay for other's retirements because they failed to do so.
- bamboo_7 11y agoIf you're making these sacrifices now, your retirement will be an entirely different experience from someone on Social Security. Also, retirement planning is a luxury. Not all have the means to set anything aside.
- MrMullen 11y agoYou do not want to live in a country where old poor people eat out of trash cans.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoLife is unfair. Plan accordingly.
- lukev 11y agoWhy? Why is that? Say you encountered a local situation where you meet someone in real danger, and for some contrived reason only you are able to help them (say, they knock at the door of your remote house during a blizzard or something, if it helps to make it concrete.) The majority of society would say it is your ethical duty to help a person in such a circumstance, even at moderate inconvenience to yourself. You wouldn't necessarily be expected to sacrifice your own safety, or even your own fortune; but in general, most people would frown on your choice of a fancier car or a European vacation over someone else's life, in this kind of local, specific scenario. So what makes that ethical obligation go away, just because it can't be pinned on any specific individual? Why does this ethical logic apply in a 1:1 scenario, but not in the many:many situation we find in society? It does. And that is the basic ethical argument behind government welfare. There may be room for discussion over how dire someone's straits must be before it's ethically mandatory to step in and help; fair enough. Maybe a "working senior" qualifies, maybe they don't. But that doesn't change the underlying point. Your life is _not_ just your own. You live in a society, and that comes along with ethical obligations, both in direct circumstances of your life and indirect social issues. We as a society shouldn't abandon a physically or mentally handicapped person to the streets anymore than we should walk whistling past someone lying on the road, injured by a hit-and-run. Existence as human beings, and humans in society in particular, does impose moral obligations.
- kasey_junk 11y agoYou 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.
- s_q_b 11y agoSocial Security worked well, before cost of living overtook the benefits provided.
- kasey_junk 11y agoYet most of the "viable" basic income schemes I've seen provide benefits at the social security level or less.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoCost 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 be done, its simply a policy decision.
- tamana 11y agoThe answer is that SS age gets pushed back along with average lifespan
- toomuchtodo 11y agoThe 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 amount of income taxed, only Social Security) The answer is you increase basic social safety nets that have little marginal cost (there's enough food to feed everyone; distribution is the problem).
- big_youth 11y agoWell she gets $1200 a month from social security, which is already essentially a basic income for old folks.
- sliverstorm 11y agoShe is mostly living her own dream though: After her retirement in 2007, she had planned on selling the double-wide to finance a lifelong dream: touring the nation from behind the wheel of Big Foot. Yes, she is working while she does it, but it sounds like she's migratory by choice.
- gozur88 11y agoYeah, it's hard for me to have too much sympathy for people like this. Living in an RV is expensive once you include depreciation on the vehicle. If she'd kept the trailer she would have been comfortable enough on Social Security.
- Quinner 11y agoThat exists, it's called Social Security.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoYou do know you're talking about a generation that essentially had every opportunity to provide for themsleves, but squandered decades of prosperity out of their own selfishness, most easily seen in the recent $4 TRILLION spent on war as the domestic infrastructure crumbles, medical care costs skyrocketing, and the largest ideological gap in politics according to some scholars?
- kafkaesq 11y agoAnd how do you think your own generation will be judged, in decades hence?
- 6stringmerc 11y agoProbably akin to The Enlightenment following the Dark Ages, provided my generation can revise the programming of selfishness, greed, and war-mongering international meddling that was presented by our elders. It's honestly not a high bar to clear. It just takes a revision of principles that is deployed through action (and voting).
- Spooky23 11y agoIt's really a indictment of basic income as a concept. She's 79, gets social security, medicare, and a small pension. She has $50,000 in credit card debt, and drives around the country in an RV. Why do you feel sorry for her? How much more are you supposed to give her? When she can't travel anymore, she has no assets and will be able to get a subsidized senior apartment. When she can't care for herself, it will be tough without family, but she'll get a nursing care of some sort through Medicaid.
- kafkaesq 11y agoWhy do you feel sorry for her? Because she's a human being. ...she'll get a nursing care of some sort through Medicaid. Having seen what "nursing care of some sort" look like close hand, for friends and extended family members -- it's not something I'd wish on anyone, even my worse enemies.
- Shivetya 11y agoDid you read all these stories? Yes we have people in financial trouble but damn if they don't all keep digging the hole deeper and deeper. RVs, or any large vehicle purchase, are not wise uses of limited incomes. RVs are money pits even for those well off enough to keep them going all year. Each story was the same, things go wrong and then they double down on making bad choices. Basic income isn't going to save these people, it might just make some less mobile, so they will be out of sight and people won't feel guilty any more. We already transfer a fortune from the young to old in this country, doubled down on it with the prescription acts during the Bush presidency and then doubled down again with the ACA during Obama's presidency. We cannot save everyone, especially when they keep repeating the same mistakes. Want to help those with limited money, the solution is not to give them more money. The solution is to get the government off their backs. When their income gets below a certain threshold we need to back off the taxes, fees, and similar, they pay or go to jail for or lose property for. I have no problem fixing their medical needs but the last thing that will help is to promote their continued wandering which forever prevents them from establishing themselves.