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Translation: Singapore's government is failing its elderly generation. A very small percentage are able to keep working and supporting themselves for a few more

Translation: Singapore's government is failing its elderly generation. A very small percentage are able to keep working and supporting themselves for a few more months / years by learning how to program, in probably the most basic sense. Everyone else is unable to find work but unable to receive retirement benefits that they've paid for during their working years in taxes. This circumstance is due to either corruption or ineptitude, or both. This will probably be a more prominent story in the US soon as well. Save your money as best you can and don't count on governments to fulfill their promises. When I was growing up, the retirement age in the US was 65. Now it's 66 and will soon be 67. By the time I retire, it will probably be higher. It's blamed on the population living longer, yet the average lifespan has been decreasing recently. The government failed (or ignored) the fairly obvious result of modern medicine making people live longer and did not plan for it, and continues to not plan for it other than cutting benefits. How many 66 year old programmers do you know?

chrisco255 7y ago
The average lifespan decreased by something like 0.1 years. It's a slight dip in an otherwise upward trend in life expectancy and it's mostly due to opioid crisis. At any rate, I fully expect social security benefits to be lowered by 2030 as we are approaching an inflection point in expenditures versus S.S. taxes taken in.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
Let's make sure social security is around forever, and available for those that actually need it. We can slightly increase taxes and slightly reduce benefits for wealthy people to keep social security working basically forever. I'm fortunate to be a highly compensated engineer. If I'm making say $250k a year, I could pay a little bit more in taxes to help the system be sustainable, and also more likely to be there if I do need it. Taxes for this benefit are capped at $8,240 or 6.2% of salary up to $132,900 [1]. The reason taxes are capped is because benefits are capped. My company could pay a bit more in payroll taxes and they wouldn't care, they'd love to hire 5 more experienced and well compensated engineers like me. There's a similar issue on social security wages - let's say I accumulate $5 million in assets at retirement, I'm going to be earning a pretty good amount of income even when not working, so you could reduce my social security (maybe via extra taxes?). People grumble about that money, "it's mine, I paid for it my whole career" - and you did pay for it in taxes. But things like social security also serve as a crucial part of our weaker societal safety net in America. I want it to be there for people that need it. I probably won't need it in retirement, but most people will. If I do lose all my money, or say I wasn't as lucky in my life and was hurt or not able to accumulate so much wealth, I want it to be there - for me and others. [1] https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-tax-limit https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-tax-limit
- tcbawo 7y ago
  The US has a culture that believes that only suckers pay taxes, the willingness/desire to defer problems to future generations, and the inability to capture meaningful revenue from the extremely small percentage of the population that reaps the lion's share of the benefits of the economy.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    The US gets more tax revenue from rich people than most Western European countries. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-taxes-are-unusually-progressive-government-spending-is-not; https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-... https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/us-taxes-really-are-unusually-progressive/252917/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/us-taxe... > Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005. US Social Security also pays out more than most Western European countries.
    - tcbawo 7y ago
      The US tax system is regressive by taxing earned income differently than capital gains. It also gives the truly wealthy an opportunity to indefinitely defer or avoid realizing gains. The "progressive" US tax code only targets high income/upper middle class individuals.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        Taxing capital gains differently than income is a regressive element, one the US tax code shares with nearly every other country in the OECD. Overall our capital gains tax rates are on the higher end: https://taxfoundation.org/us-taxpayers-face-6th-highest-top-marginal-capital-gains-tax-rate-oecd https://taxfoundation.org/us-taxpayers-face-6th-highest-top-.... But the overall tax system is progressive.
arbuge 7y ago
> It's blamed on the population living longer, yet the average lifespan has been decreasing recently. The government failed (or ignored) the fairly obvious result of modern medicine making people live longer and did not plan for it Contradiction.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
Singaporean pensions are defined contribution: what you put in plus interest is exactly what you get out. So corruption is not the issue, but people falling through the cracks is.
fiblye 7y ago
You can blame it all on incompetent governments, but that’s taking the easy path. With endless inflation as a reality, the only way to support retirement is to basically build a pyramid scheme. For every old person who retires, you need multiple young people to work to support them. Seeing as how Singapore’s fertility rate is only about half of the replacement rate, that’s not possible. The elderly today have a few people falling through the cracks. The elderly 50 years from now will have nothing to their names and no family to support them. They’re truly fucked.
- rayiner 7y ago
  It has nothing to do with inflation. Retirement savings are capital, but production requires labor. The mechanics of retirement are just a proxy for diverting production from working young people to non-working old people, and that’s true whether you have private retirement savings, tax-funded retirement, or traditional family arrangements where children care for elderly parents. In any of those systems, if the older generation is much bigger than the young generation, you have a problem.

chrisco255 7y ago

The average lifespan decreased by something like 0.1 years. It's a slight dip in an otherwise upward trend in life expectancy and it's mostly due to opioid crisis. At any rate, I fully expect social security benefits to be lowered by 2030 as we are approaching an inflection point in expenditures versus S.S. taxes taken in.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

NotSammyHagar 7y ago

Let's make sure social security is around forever, and available for those that actually need it. We can slightly increase taxes and slightly reduce benefits for wealthy people to keep social security working basically forever. I'm fortunate to be a highly compensated engineer. If I'm making say $250k a year, I could pay a little bit more in taxes to help the system be sustainable, and also more likely to be there if I do need it. Taxes for this benefit are capped at $8,240 or 6.2% of salary up to $132,900 [1]. The reason taxes are capped is because benefits are capped. My company could pay a bit more in payroll taxes and they wouldn't care, they'd love to hire 5 more experienced and well compensated engineers like me. There's a similar issue on social security wages - let's say I accumulate $5 million in assets at retirement, I'm going to be earning a pretty good amount of income even when not working, so you could reduce my social security (maybe via extra taxes?). People grumble about that money, "it's mine, I paid for it my whole career" - and you did pay for it in taxes. But things like social security also serve as a crucial part of our weaker societal safety net in America. I want it to be there for people that need it. I probably won't need it in retirement, but most people will. If I do lose all my money, or say I wasn't as lucky in my life and was hurt or not able to accumulate so much wealth, I want it to be there - for me and others. [1] https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-tax-limit https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-tax-limit

tcbawo 7y ago
The US has a culture that believes that only suckers pay taxes, the willingness/desire to defer problems to future generations, and the inability to capture meaningful revenue from the extremely small percentage of the population that reaps the lion's share of the benefits of the economy.
- rayiner 7y ago
  The US gets more tax revenue from rich people than most Western European countries. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-taxes-are-unusually-progressive-government-spending-is-not; https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-... https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/us-taxes-really-are-unusually-progressive/252917/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/us-taxe... > Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005. US Social Security also pays out more than most Western European countries.
  - tcbawo 7y ago
    The US tax system is regressive by taxing earned income differently than capital gains. It also gives the truly wealthy an opportunity to indefinitely defer or avoid realizing gains. The "progressive" US tax code only targets high income/upper middle class individuals.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      Taxing capital gains differently than income is a regressive element, one the US tax code shares with nearly every other country in the OECD. Overall our capital gains tax rates are on the higher end: https://taxfoundation.org/us-taxpayers-face-6th-highest-top-marginal-capital-gains-tax-rate-oecd https://taxfoundation.org/us-taxpayers-face-6th-highest-top-.... But the overall tax system is progressive.

arbuge 7y ago

> It's blamed on the population living longer, yet the average lifespan has been decreasing recently. The government failed (or ignored) the fairly obvious result of modern medicine making people live longer and did not plan for it Contradiction.

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

Singaporean pensions are defined contribution: what you put in plus interest is exactly what you get out. So corruption is not the issue, but people falling through the cracks is.

fiblye 7y ago

You can blame it all on incompetent governments, but that’s taking the easy path. With endless inflation as a reality, the only way to support retirement is to basically build a pyramid scheme. For every old person who retires, you need multiple young people to work to support them. Seeing as how Singapore’s fertility rate is only about half of the replacement rate, that’s not possible. The elderly today have a few people falling through the cracks. The elderly 50 years from now will have nothing to their names and no family to support them. They’re truly fucked.

rayiner 7y ago
It has nothing to do with inflation. Retirement savings are capital, but production requires labor. The mechanics of retirement are just a proxy for diverting production from working young people to non-working old people, and that’s true whether you have private retirement savings, tax-funded retirement, or traditional family arrangements where children care for elderly parents. In any of those systems, if the older generation is much bigger than the young generation, you have a problem.