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Humans need a constant supply of resources and shelter to survive. There is no "system" which avoids this inconvenient fact. In the absence of any "system" at a
by dralley 1y ago
Humans need a constant supply of resources and shelter to survive. There is no "system" which avoids this inconvenient fact. In the absence of any "system" at all, you would still need to constantly work for survival - and in fact you'd just die as soon as you were no longer able to do so due to illness or injury much less old age.
In other words if there were no "system" there would be no such concept as "retirement" in the first place.
We all wish that we could spend our best years doing whatever we want. That doesn't mathematically work out, though. European social safety nets are pretty damn generous all things considered. Plenty of vacation days, especially compared to the US. It's not like it's impossible to use those well during your "best years".
- tredre3 1y agoThe "system" would fall apart if people didn't work for at least half their lives, true, but it is absolutely not true that we need people to work until they're 70.
- dralley 1y agoNot with current population growth curves being what they are.
- broken-kebab 1y agoYes, Western societies are coming to rude awakening: birthrate matters for everyone. Social support for elderly cannot be built on pension funds when there's not enough young hands in economy
- FranzFerdiNaN 1y agoPlanned immigration can easily solve this. But we rather crash and burn and work till we are 70+ than let “those people” in.
- account42 1y agoIn practice, immigration adds a lot of welfare receivers so ends up doing the opposite. It's not a coincidence that we are seeing supposed multiple advanced civilization talking about increasing the retirement age at a time of unprecedented levels of immigration.
- incompatible 1y agoI haven't worked for a long time. If others were like me, I suppose the system that exists now would fall apart, but really, I don't consume a lot.
- SoftTalker 1y agoRight, but you need food every day and shelter and clothes. Someone’s paying for that, if not you yourself.
- nradov 1y agoIf not 70 then what should the retirement age be? Please show your work.
- bdangubic 1y agofind me a 69-year old that you want as your co-worker… I’ll wait… :)
- nradov 1y agoWhat a weird comment. I've had several co-workers in that age range. They were fine. What's your point? And what does that have to do with the financial realities of limited government budgets?
- antisthenes 1y agoWell, what is half their lives anyway? Let's say you live to 80, half your life is 40 years. You only start working a decent job around ~22 years (4 year college degree). 22+40 = 62, pretty close to 70 already. Assuming some people die early, so others have to pick up the slack, some people work part time, etc. and you end up pretty damn close to 70.
- incompatible 1y agoI don't think we need nearly as much as most people think. How much is being taken by the wealthy from the workers already? How much effort goes on the work of maintaining and protecting the system of inequality? How many people are already doing nothing when they would be willing to work?
- toomuchtodo 1y agoThese are the right questions to be asking. Suboptimal system configuration problems.
- dralley 1y agoYou can absolutely raise taxes on the wealthy and close loopholes (we should do those things) but it's not gonna fix the massive hole that is social spending in the budget of nearly every western nation. It's more structural than that.
- samus 1y agoThe loopholes just make it easier to funnel money away from the taxman. It's still possible due to how capitalism works and not fixable unless we go for something equivalent to nationalizing big companies.
- scotty79 1y agoYou could mandate that money transfers go through banks and tax the transfers. Let's see how rich can get richer without transferring their money.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoYou can also tax where the asset ownership is recorded. Property records, securities records, etc. If it isn’t recorded with a public body where taxes can be assessed, it isn’t recognized. Wealth must exist on the books somewhere.
- wkat4242 1y agoThat's true, I would never ever consider moving to the US for that reason alone. Our vacations are very generous and I always struggle to use them all up. I get about a month and a half effectively (if I take them all consecutively with weekends in between)
- djtango 1y agoWhen I worked at bigco the US employees were remunerated a lot better but they only got 10 days off a year and were pressured to not take off more than 5...
- wkat4242 1y agoYeah I don't really care about money as long as I have enough to live. Work life balance is much more important. Also, in countries with high wages, expenses like rent are also much higher. Except for goods that are roughly the same everywhere. I live in a low wage country in Europe but I don't have nor need a car (I hate driving). That helps a lot as it's a huge money sink for fuel, parking, maintenance and insurance. I have unlimited public transport for 20€ per month. But yeah we have US employees too
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoThat sounds great. In which country is that?
- wkat4242 1y agoSpain. Oh and healthcare is also free here.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoI know the Spanish healthcare is free(I'm from Europe) but isn't the jobs market in Spain also not that great? Except maybe in Barcelona or Madrid where CoL is as much as northern Europe but at lower wages? At least that's what I heard from the Spanish expats who left.
- braaaahp 1y agoSure. But given automation we need a lot less labor than 100 years ago. Some studies suggest (sorry am mobile right now, don’t have links) in the US automation has been able produce the average persons essentials entirely since the 1950s. But we still were taught growing up to put on the show of going to work. At great resource cost and ecological destruction now threatening everyone in deference to memes of long dead laborers and rich who would often be able to shoot anyone that didn’t work hard enough without repercussion. We do not live in the 1900s or even 1800s. And how much stuff? New 80” TVs and iPhones every year? We’ve been conditioned by salesmen who also probably didn’t produce anything but emotional demand. Sure let’s keep living in the Newspeak of the rich media class, and ossified politicians; we’ve always been at war with line go down. Your same old copy paste “don’t rock the boat” euphemism is thought ending nonsense. It’s capitulation not discovery of options.
- oezi 1y agoRetirement and old age are expensive due to the cost of medical care and nursing care. If people wouldn't need those then it would be possible to retire much earlier.
- js8 1y agoI don't see the problem. So medical and nursing care is expensive. We can change the society so that relatively more people work in those fields. Instead, we are cutting on those services. It's just a thinly disguised attack on the elderly.
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- galactus 1y agoWhen you state that "European social safety nets are pretty damn generous" it seems to imply that someone else, rather than the Europeans themselves, is being generous and footing the bill.
- KPGv2 1y agoI don't think it implies such a thing: definition "generous": • (of a person) showing a readiness to give more of something, as money or time, than is strictly necessary or expected: she was generous with her money. • showing kindness toward others: it was generous of them to ask her along. • (of a thing) larger or more plentiful than is usual or necessary: a generous sprinkle of pepper.
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- mchanson 1y agoYeah. And creating those resources cost less and less with less human labor every year.
- csomar 1y agoWhat a pile of .... Humans have lived for 2 millions years, had no system and were just fine and survived the freaking ice age.