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Exactly. The primary retirement asset of baby boomers is their house. The seconardy retirement asset is their 401k/investments. One of the reasons why housing p

Exactly. The primary retirement asset of baby boomers is their house. The seconardy retirement asset is their 401k/investments. One of the reasons why housing prices and stock prices have to go up. It's a political imperative. As a corollary, population has to go up as well.

hakfoo 3y ago
I wish we could "de-dollarise" sectors of the economy. When it comes to money, we manage to miss the application problem. The classic "people don't want a drill, they want a hole." I don't want $n,000,000 net worth at age 60. I want to be assured I will have food, housing, and health care. Maybe what we need is a system where, instead of paying out Social Security in dollars, you get a ticket to a subsidized retirement community. Then you eliminate the moral hazard where if you let the stock or real estate markets fail, allowing defective assets to fail, Grandpa starves.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  ok but the other people who have enough to support themselves want $n,000,000 of net worth at age 60 and evaluate their literal worth as a person and success at life accordingly, and the people who are okay with just the safety net, I would guess, are mostly the ones who don't have the first option above
- nradov 3y ago
  Your "ticket" is just another form of fiat currency, a dollar by another name. And what happens if you retire only to find the retirement community is full and the government hasn't allocated sufficient subsidies to build more? Just because you have a ticket there's no guarantee you will receive the services you were promised.
  - hakfoo 3y ago
    The 'ticket' was poetic language. I'm pretty sure we have some snappy actuaries who can give us a pretty good estimate of how many 60-year-olds there will be in 2050. If done right, it might produce more services than just giving people bags of dollars and expecting them to fight over available retirement home space.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I don't want $n,000,000 net worth at age 60. I want to be assured I will have food, housing, and health care. Maybe what we need is a system where, instead of paying out Social Security in dollars, you get a ticket to a subsidized retirement community. That... doesn't really help anything. > Then you eliminate the moral hazard where if you let the stock or real estate markets fail, allowing defective assets to fail, Grandpa starves. Except it doesn't. If Grandpa qualifies for social security (not everyone does) and if the benefits are sufficient to pay for necessities, ticket vs. dollars doesn't matter: stock or real estate collapse doesn’t causs starvation, because sociak security covers it. (In reality, its already a mix of dollars and tickets, since social security is dollars but medicare is more like a ticket.) OTOH, if as is generally the case now, the benefits are too low, distributing them via a subsidy for inadequate minimal support doesn’t relieve that problem any more than the dollars did.

hakfoo 3y ago

I wish we could "de-dollarise" sectors of the economy. When it comes to money, we manage to miss the application problem. The classic "people don't want a drill, they want a hole." I don't want $n,000,000 net worth at age 60. I want to be assured I will have food, housing, and health care. Maybe what we need is a system where, instead of paying out Social Security in dollars, you get a ticket to a subsidized retirement community. Then you eliminate the moral hazard where if you let the stock or real estate markets fail, allowing defective assets to fail, Grandpa starves.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
ok but the other people who have enough to support themselves want $n,000,000 of net worth at age 60 and evaluate their literal worth as a person and success at life accordingly, and the people who are okay with just the safety net, I would guess, are mostly the ones who don't have the first option above
nradov 3y ago
Your "ticket" is just another form of fiat currency, a dollar by another name. And what happens if you retire only to find the retirement community is full and the government hasn't allocated sufficient subsidies to build more? Just because you have a ticket there's no guarantee you will receive the services you were promised.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  The 'ticket' was poetic language. I'm pretty sure we have some snappy actuaries who can give us a pretty good estimate of how many 60-year-olds there will be in 2050. If done right, it might produce more services than just giving people bags of dollars and expecting them to fight over available retirement home space.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> I don't want $n,000,000 net worth at age 60. I want to be assured I will have food, housing, and health care. Maybe what we need is a system where, instead of paying out Social Security in dollars, you get a ticket to a subsidized retirement community. That... doesn't really help anything. > Then you eliminate the moral hazard where if you let the stock or real estate markets fail, allowing defective assets to fail, Grandpa starves. Except it doesn't. If Grandpa qualifies for social security (not everyone does) and if the benefits are sufficient to pay for necessities, ticket vs. dollars doesn't matter: stock or real estate collapse doesn’t causs starvation, because sociak security covers it. (In reality, its already a mix of dollars and tickets, since social security is dollars but medicare is more like a ticket.) OTOH, if as is generally the case now, the benefits are too low, distributing them via a subsidy for inadequate minimal support doesn’t relieve that problem any more than the dollars did.