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All of this is by design. You get: - Lower taxes for the ultra-wealthy - People working longer to make the ultra-wealthy slightly wealthier; and - Younger pe

by jmyeet 1y ago

All of this is by design. You get: - Lower taxes for the ultra-wealthy - People working longer to make the ultra-wealthy slightly wealthier; and - Younger people getting padi less, again making the ultra-wealthy slightly more wealthy. The entire policy and government appratus of the US in particular is designed as a massive wealth transfer from the poor and young to the old and wealthy. There is no reason why the wealthiest countries on earth can't afford to let people who are 60 years old retire. Other than of course the wealthy would have to pay slightly more in taxes. I can't find it now but I saw an article talking about all the social and policy ideas that unwittingly got tested in the Covid pandemic. The effects of giving money to poor people (it's not the moral hazard it's made out to be), how schools increase the spread of disease and a whole host of others.

lenerdenator 1y ago
> There is no reason why the wealthiest countries on earth can't afford to let people who are 60 years old retire. There is, though. The 60+ year-olds wanting to retire spent the last four-to-six decades racking up a metric crapload of public and private debt. Not only did they spend a lot, they seriously weakened the ability for revenues to cover said debts. Severe bureaucratic handicapping of revenue agencies, means that an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars in tax go uncollected every year in the United States alone [1]. Imagine what the federal deficit looks like if the US had to borrow a few hundred billion less each year. It's far from zero, but it's better than it looks now. Retirement isn't a right, it's a math problem. For most of human history, if you lived long enough to get too old to do labor, you were expected to do something (usually helping with childrearing or teaching skills to younger generations) in order to lessen the burden of your existence to others, mainly your family. Now that most labor isn't actually physical and people are living longer, there's less excuse for doing nothing for 10+ years off of savings besides just wanting to. Unfortunately, given the size of deficits in lots of Western nations and the stagnating wages of the younger generations, those retirement accounts are becoming more attractive as a way to pay off debt that the people holding those accounts created. [1] https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-forgoes-hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars-each-year-due-to-unpaid-taxes/ https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-forgoes-hundr...
- Buttons840 1y ago
  > Retirement isn't a right Society decides what people's rights are. Why should we not decide that retirement is a right? The wealthy not paying a wealth tax is not a right.
  - SchemaLoad 1y ago
    The math still has to check out. Yes I agree getting rid of the ultra wealthy improves the situation a lot and should be done. But at some point you still have too many retired people for the working population to support. At that point it's going to have to be considered that a 60 year old is still perfectly capable of working low physical demand jobs rather than spending 10-30 years on cruise ships.
    - Buttons840 1y ago
      Has technology improved our productivity in recently decades? How come a people with ever improving productivity can no longer support retired people?
      - SchemaLoad 1y ago
        Partially went to rich peoples yachts and space programs, partially impacted by an aging population/declining birth rates, and partially went to the fact people consume more stuff and live longer.
    - jmyeet 1y ago
      Social security spending is currently about $1.5T a year, with receipts slightly lower than that and reserves of ~$3T [1]. US corporate profits are around $4 trillion a year [2]. I view that $4T as the exploitation of surplus labor value. Put another way: it wouldn't exist if it wasn't for labor. A mere 10% of that would make a significant difference to Social Security. As for your contention that a 60 year old is capable of working. Doing what? The prospects are already dire for people who are laid off in their 50s. You want them to be cashiers at Safeway at minimum wage? Minimum wage isn't even a living wage. Many of these people have done physically demanding but completely necessary jobs their entire lives. Their bodies can be wrecked. I don't know your circumstances but generally speaking I see a lot of "tech-hubris" on HN. People who skew younger and are very privileged to work in tech. The hubris part is being young, many think this will go on forever. The reality is ageism is rampant in tech. The other part is thinking you won't be impacted by automation (and AI). Will you be bagging groceries until you're 67-69 because Amazon made an AI that now does your job? [1]: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/assets.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/assets.html [2]: https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_corporate_profits_quarterly https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_corporate_profits_quarterl...
xyzzy123 1y ago
> how schools increase the spread of disease I would want to think hard about the second-order effects of preventing transmission of regular school colds & flus before trying to suppress them, which would be that people would miss out on training their immune systems while they are young & resilient. It would be nice to get sick less often and environmental suppression in schools seems like such an obvious win... but I don't have enough understanding to know if it would really be a good thing one way or the other.

by jmyeet 1y ago

lenerdenator 1y ago

> There is no reason why the wealthiest countries on earth can't afford to let people who are 60 years old retire. There is, though. The 60+ year-olds wanting to retire spent the last four-to-six decades racking up a metric crapload of public and private debt. Not only did they spend a lot, they seriously weakened the ability for revenues to cover said debts. Severe bureaucratic handicapping of revenue agencies, means that an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars in tax go uncollected every year in the United States alone [1]. Imagine what the federal deficit looks like if the US had to borrow a few hundred billion less each year. It's far from zero, but it's better than it looks now. Retirement isn't a right, it's a math problem. For most of human history, if you lived long enough to get too old to do labor, you were expected to do something (usually helping with childrearing or teaching skills to younger generations) in order to lessen the burden of your existence to others, mainly your family. Now that most labor isn't actually physical and people are living longer, there's less excuse for doing nothing for 10+ years off of savings besides just wanting to. Unfortunately, given the size of deficits in lots of Western nations and the stagnating wages of the younger generations, those retirement accounts are becoming more attractive as a way to pay off debt that the people holding those accounts created. [1] https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-forgoes-hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars-each-year-due-to-unpaid-taxes/ https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-forgoes-hundr...

Buttons840 1y ago
> Retirement isn't a right Society decides what people's rights are. Why should we not decide that retirement is a right? The wealthy not paying a wealth tax is not a right.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  The math still has to check out. Yes I agree getting rid of the ultra wealthy improves the situation a lot and should be done. But at some point you still have too many retired people for the working population to support. At that point it's going to have to be considered that a 60 year old is still perfectly capable of working low physical demand jobs rather than spending 10-30 years on cruise ships.
  - Buttons840 1y ago
    Has technology improved our productivity in recently decades? How come a people with ever improving productivity can no longer support retired people?
    - SchemaLoad 1y ago
      Partially went to rich peoples yachts and space programs, partially impacted by an aging population/declining birth rates, and partially went to the fact people consume more stuff and live longer.
  - jmyeet 1y ago
    Social security spending is currently about $1.5T a year, with receipts slightly lower than that and reserves of ~$3T [1]. US corporate profits are around $4 trillion a year [2]. I view that $4T as the exploitation of surplus labor value. Put another way: it wouldn't exist if it wasn't for labor. A mere 10% of that would make a significant difference to Social Security. As for your contention that a 60 year old is capable of working. Doing what? The prospects are already dire for people who are laid off in their 50s. You want them to be cashiers at Safeway at minimum wage? Minimum wage isn't even a living wage. Many of these people have done physically demanding but completely necessary jobs their entire lives. Their bodies can be wrecked. I don't know your circumstances but generally speaking I see a lot of "tech-hubris" on HN. People who skew younger and are very privileged to work in tech. The hubris part is being young, many think this will go on forever. The reality is ageism is rampant in tech. The other part is thinking you won't be impacted by automation (and AI). Will you be bagging groceries until you're 67-69 because Amazon made an AI that now does your job? [1]: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/assets.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/assets.html [2]: https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_corporate_profits_quarterly https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_corporate_profits_quarterl...

xyzzy123 1y ago

> how schools increase the spread of disease I would want to think hard about the second-order effects of preventing transmission of regular school colds & flus before trying to suppress them, which would be that people would miss out on training their immune systems while they are young & resilient. It would be nice to get sick less often and environmental suppression in schools seems like such an obvious win... but I don't have enough understanding to know if it would really be a good thing one way or the other.