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The CPF sounds pretty clever. It covers a major individual cost and need (retirement, medical, housing) instead of just throwing it into a tax. It makes the gov
by ecshafer 8mo ago
The CPF sounds pretty clever. It covers a major individual cost and need (retirement, medical, housing) instead of just throwing it into a tax. It makes the government money. This sounds like a win win kind of policy.
- foxyv 8mo agoWhy does the government get to decide when we retire?
- paxys 8mo agoYou can retire whenever you want. The government decides when to start funding it. As for why - the same reason why they get to decide what side of the road you drive on and what laws you follow. They rule the patch of land you were born on, and if you don't like it you can either participate in the system (assuming it's a democracy) or leave.
- foxyv 8mo agoThis boils down to a "Might makes right" claim. It doesn't answer the question why. Only how.
- paxys 8mo agoWhat question do you want answered exactly? Why we have governments and not anarchy?
- foxyv 8mo agoWhy does the government get to decide when we retire?
- paxys 8mo agoLike I said, they don't. You can retire today. They decide when you get access to a national retirement plan. Citizens of the country vote for that plan and how it is implemented.
- foxyv 8mo agoI personally could retire today. Most people can't. There is no referendum I remember where we decided to raise the retirement age. It seems like our government just kind of decided to do so.
- seanmcdirmid 8mo agoCouldn’t you say the same thing about social security or pensions? There is a lot of economic forces that direct people to work until a certain age, the government controlling a benefit is only one of them. As to why, you’ll need to dissect representative democracies in Singapore’s case.
- rayiner 8mo ago[flagged]
- foxyv 8mo agoYou apparently know very little about me. Edit: Although, when my time comes as it inevitably will, I think the wilderness would be a nice place to do it. Maybe in a tree.
- jonahx 8mo agoIt definitely answers why. You are asking for an appeal to some moral justification. But there isn't one, and it doesn't matter. That's the whole point of "might makes right".
- foxyv 8mo agoIn an attempt to steelman, you are saying: "There is no moral justification for the government setting a retirement age, but they are able to. So it doesn't matter."
- philwelch 8mo agoThe government doesn’t set the retirement age. You can retire whenever you want. There are no laws against a 50 year old retiring and living off his own savings, nor against a 70 year old continuing to work. There is a minimum age to collect old age benefits from the government. The justification for that should be obvious.
- mothballed 8mo agoBut the CPF isn't represented as benefits from the government. It's represented and claimed to be your own savings that you have set aside. At gamed bond rates where the government skims off the top.
- foxyv 8mo agoThe choice between working and starving to death is not a choice. If your savings have been taken by the government, then you don't have a choice. The justification is to force people to work until they are too old to do so. Then steal whatever they have left with medical bills and price hikes on necessities.
- philwelch 8mo agoAnd if I was emperor, I would abolish payroll taxes and phase out Social Security. Unfortunately, we live in a democracy.
- itemize123 8mo agoso the country can be productive? so it can have resources to fulfil duties to citizens?
- cryptonector 8mo agoThe real question is not why the government gets to set the retirement age. Of course it gets to set it IF it's involved in paying for people's retirements! The real question is why governments insist on euphemistic names ("forced savings") that imply the opposite of the reality of the programs. And why people put up with such financial repression schemes. The answer to the first question is to keep people from being too upset too suddenly, too many all at once. The answer to the latter is that the people usually don't get a say in these things. For Singapore this program probably makes a great deal of sense since Singapore is singularly vulnerable given its location in the world. To build what they did they probably needed these sorts of policies. I suspect most Singaporeans don't mind all that much, though I don't know. We would very much mind this sort of thing here in the U.S. though!
- ecshafer 8mo agoThe government decides when we can retire and they help us out. You can stop working today if you want, Government shouldn't pay you for it for no reason. Your duty as a citizen is to work and build your nation, eventually the government pays back that service with benefits.
- foxyv 8mo agoThis isn't something the government gives you. It is something they have confiscated and held on to. > Your duty as a citizen is to work and build your nation What about the duty of the trust fund babies and idle wealthy? What about the duty of the capital owners? Why is the retirement age going up instead of down as productivity increases?
- sam1714 8mo agoNot for the majority of retirement savings in the US, where Social Security makes up only about 25%. In the case of 401(k)s/DC plans and private pensions/DB plans, the government allowed savings without "confiscation," i.e. immediate taxation. They gave us the benefit of deferred taxation if you wait until retirement age.
- foxyv 8mo agoWhat about the people who do not make enough to save and all their money goes to inflated living expenses? When do they get to retire?
- scottLobster 8mo agoThey get Social Security and Medicare, which while insufficient for many these days is a lot more than they would have gotten 100 years ago. No one is going to argue that the system is perfect or can't be improved. Good people get screwed over all the time and always will, the most we can try to do is minimize that population.
- 8mo ago
- coldtea 8mo agoIt doesn't (you can retire early), but it does decide part of what you will need to be saving and how. And the reason it decides that, apart from "because it can", is because many societies have seen what happens when it's left to individuals to take care of this, and they fuck it up in massive numbers, and the outcome of that then fucks up society.
- foxyv 8mo agoIt is really easy to "Fuck it up" when greedy assholes jack up the price of necessities like food, shelter, and medical care. 66% of bankruptcies are due to medical costs. We should just socialize necessities like food, shelter, and medical care so there is no chance of "Fucking it up." That would cover the possibility of disability as well. It sounds to me like we have built a system to exploit people as much as possible. Treating them like farm animals.
- lotsofpulp 8mo ago>We should just socialize necessities like food, shelter, and medical care so there is no chance of "Fucking it up." How does socializing work if there are insufficient workers relative to non workers? I.e. the supply of food/shelter/medical care is insufficient to meet the demand?
- foxyv 8mo agoWhy would there be insufficient workers relative to non-workers? Socializing health care, shelter, and food does not lead to a worker shortage. In fact, having a healthier and taken care of population leads to prosperity in general. In addition, it leads to reduced costs. Countries with socialized medicine pay a fraction of what America does for better health outcomes.
- lotsofpulp 8mo ago>Why would there be insufficient workers relative to non-workers? The total fertility rate and the trends of that rate of basically every country, especially the ones with socialized medicine. https://www.populationpyramid.net/norway/2025/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/norway/2025/
- stackbutterflow 8mo agoThis question cannot be asked in good faith on a user board. It requires an 800 pages book on politics, history, philosophy, economics to be properly answerered and it would barely scratch the surface. You might as well ask similar questions about most basic laws and concepts behind how western societies work.
- foxyv 8mo agoYes, you should be asking similar questions about most basic laws and concepts behind how western society works.
- stackbutterflow 8mo agoWe should each ask ourselves such questions and review our view on them from time to time during our life because they're important, but mostly by doing our own research and self study. But asking point-blank strangers such a vague question is putting an unfair burden on them. There's maybe a few hundred people worldwide who could casually drop a proper answer to your question while casually browsing hn. I believe it'd be more fair to start answering your own question to show how far you are in your intellectual journey on that topic.
- foxyv 8mo agoMy own answer is this. We have created a system of exploitation where we extract value from people's labor and transfer it to an oligarchicy that is slowly increasing in power. Governments are captured by that ruling class and are unwilling to do anything that threatens them. In addition, they are slowly reducing the rights and social mobility of the middle and lower class in order to expand the power and capital of the oligarchy. Any money that is possessed by the working classes is then taxed in the form of increased living expenses or directly by the government until they can barely afford the necessities that allow them to continue working. Once they are no longer able to do so, they are discarded and allowed to die of preventable illness, starvation, drug use or exposure.
- jcranmer 8mo agoThe government doesn't decide when you retire. The government decides when it is willing to pay you to be retired.
- foxyv 8mo agoSocial security is an entitlement. They have taken money from your paycheck to fund it. In fact, they have taken more from your paycheck than they will pay back to you in order to pay for an aging population. The extra goes to bonds which the government then uses to reduce inflation when they decide to invade random countries or bail out a bank. Now, why does the government get to decide when I retire with my own money?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- drivebyhooting 8mo agoExcept for the part where citizens get low returns and are forced to work their whole lives accruing minimal benefit. How is being a serf win win?
- butterbomb 8mo agoPeople don’t believe me when I tell them that there’s a large portion of even the American population that will happily accept the simplicity and safety of serfdom.
- 3rodents 8mo agoI can’t speak for Singaporeans and every government has their detractors but the Singaporeans I’ve known loved their system and hated the western systems they were exposed to. They would laugh if you tried to describe their life as serfdom when compared to a life in the U.S. or Europe.
- InkCanon 8mo agoI'll be blunt and say most Singaporeans have a very poor idea of how these policies work. Another major one - virtually all Singaporeans believe they own their houses, and it is a point of pride and financial security. Most houses are on 99 year leases, but the idea that is deeply lodged is that this is longer than you can live so this is inconsequential. While this is true if they only cared about living in it, houses have huge financial/investment value to Singaporeans. Despite the iron mathematical law that these houses must depreciate their lease value, most Singaporeans believe house prices will continue to rise based on historical trends. The math just doesn't work out.
- delta_p_delta_x 8mo agoI think Singaporeans have a decent idea, and given their quality of lives, they have no problems with the trade-offs. If they do, they leave. And many go back, because the trade-offs in the West are even worse. > Despite the iron mathematical law that these houses must depreciate their lease value SERS means that houses slated to be torn down are resold back to the government at near-market rates excluding the effect of the 99-year leasehold. In Singapore, the government owns everything, even ostensibly 'freehold' land. If they want to run an MRT line under your house, and they need to tear your house down to get to it, they will force you to sell your house and your land to them. Has happened before, will absolutely happen again. It's an island city-state smaller than London. There is literally no space anywhere else.
- ww520 8mo agoIt’s not a win win policy. The citizens lose massive amount of their money to government on the bond yield delta. It preys on people not knowing the effect of long term compound interest. Edit: in fact interest delta is how banks make their huge profits except the government here does it by force.
- cm2012 8mo agoThe average person does not make meaningful interest or investment income, its not practical to on individual small salaries.
- Aurornis 8mo agoIn this case the citizens are forced to save, but the interest they're given is less than what they would have earned by saving the same amount on their own. Also, the average person in the United States does have meaningful investments toward retirement age.
- accurrent 8mo agoThis assumes citizens actually putp a lions share of their money into more risky investmemt vehicles. For reference, this may not be the case with a large swathes of our older population. Bank rates, t bills and bonds here are generally lower than cpf. If you are a high income earner the contribution is capped and combined with low taxes this is not a bad thing.
- initramfs2 8mo agoWhat's your source on the yield delta? In fact if you bought regular Singapore government t bills you will actually get a lower rate than the CPF rate. And neither do banks and saving plans give higher rates.
- Aurornis 8mo ago> instead of just throwing it into a tax. It makes the government money It is a tax, but with extra steps. The reason it makes the government money is because they’re collecting the extra interest that citizens would have earned if they were free to invest it on their own.
- eru 8mo agoAlas, actually not: you can actually invest your CPF by yourself, and most people lose money compared to leaving it with the Gahmen.
- initramfs2 8mo agoThe CPF funds actually remain in your account, and the interest goes back to you. 1. The interest is guaranteed unlike a regular investment, and 2. I'm interested to know what to invest in to get better interest than CPF, because that's a very legit benchmark here, so please tell me if you find something that has guaranteed returns + higher interest.
- everforward 8mo agoTo me it sounds like a tax structured in a strange way so it doesn't obviously read as a tax. It's essentially a forced loan to the government at subpar rates. The "tax" is the delta between what the government pays out for the bonds vs what a bond of equivalent risk in the free market would have paid. The magnitude of the investment also probably makes it impractical for anyone but the very wealthy to retire before that starts paying out. Most other countries have lower rates on their retirement schemes, which makes it feasible for more people to live on their savings for a few years before the government retirement scheme kicks in. E.g. in the US it's pretty feasible for the upper middle/lower upper classes to retire a few years before Social Security kicks in, especially if they're willing to live frugally.
- gruez 8mo ago>It's essentially a forced loan to the government at subpar rates. The "tax" is the delta between what the government pays out for the bonds vs what a bond of equivalent risk in the free market would have paid. Yeah there's even a term for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoIt’s almost impossible for an upper middle class couple to retire in the US before their 65 unless they have some type of government provided or private company provided health insurance like teachers, police officers, military etc. It’s about $25K a year for a decent plan which is doable. But you have to hope that Republicans - and yes this is a political issue - don’t successfully kill the ACA and make it impossible to get insurance at any cost if you have a pre-existing condition. If you are old - you will develop a pre-existing condition. My parents are 83 and 81 and retired at 57/55. But my mom was a teacher who still gets benefits through the government and my dad gets benefits from the one factory that didn’t shut down in our hometown. I’m 51 and even if I could retire early financially, I wouldn’t do it and stay in the US. Play the smallest fiddle for us. I “retired my wife” at 44 in 2020 8 years into our marriage when I did a slight transition to an industry where remote work with travel is the norm (cloud consulting + app dev) and we have traveled a lot including doing stints as “digital nomads”. We are staying in one of the countries that we might retire to as a Plan B for six weeks starting next week. Even now that we moved to state tax free Florida and my wife hasn’t had to work in six years, she keeps a current CDL because she can get a job as a school bus driver easily for the benefits and someone will pay me for independent consulting if I lose my job.
- zozbot234 8mo ago> It covers a major individual cost and need (retirement, medical, housing) instead of just throwing it into a tax. Forced saving makes it a tax. It's essentially no different than payroll taxes in the U.S. that fund Social Security. Buying government bonds is still marginally better accounting than a complete Ponzi scam like Social Security in the U.S., but even that ultimately amounts to the same thing - the government is paying itself, so it's a wash.
- paulddraper 8mo agoIt’s analogous to the US, where you put money into social security and then withdraw later. The only question is whether the fund is running at a surplus or not. The US has raided its fund to finance other government programs, and then will have to pay it back via tax revenues.
- eru 8mo agoThere's another clever bit: In times of economic distress the government lowers the employer contribution part of CPF. That effectively gives everyone a wage cut to help employment, but without people complaining too much about it. The government is disciplined enough to raise the rate again later.
- cryptonector 8mo agoNo, it's a total loss for the citizen because even if they can use that money for "(retirement, medical, housing)" the interest paid is much too low. Forced savings programs aren't actually "savings" for the people on whom the programs are forced!! "Forced savings" is a euphemism for "we're taking your money and calling it savings based on the idea that we're going to invest it well, though you won't see much of any gains, and there might not be any gains to speak of".