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Why does the government get to decide when we retire?
by foxyv 8mo ago
Why 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]