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this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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Social Security has each generation depend on the next generation paying for its retirement. That's kind of what happened historically, when kids took care of aging parents. Problem is that everyone else's kids pay for your retirement, which means that your incentive to do the work of raising kids goes away; Social Security puts the load on people who have kids to turn them into the next generation of productive workers. It's great if you never raise kids, but it's a pretty raw deal if you do raise kids.
It also deals poorly with scenarios where the population pyramid inverts -- like, birth rates fall off and such. Then suddenly instead of lots of kids supporting a few older people's retirement, you have a lot of retirees expecting a few younger people to pay for their retirement.
I'd kinda favor 401(k)s or something more like that; that has each generation fund its own retirement, rather than relying on the next. That way, the payments in are proportional to the size of the population cohort, rather than proportional to the size of some other population cohort (like, the next generation).
I'd rather not have to rely on market gambling to survive in my old age. Many people probably agreed with you until about 2008, when a LOT of retirees lost most of their retirement money during the recession and a lot of really old people went back to work. It was pretty bad, and I'll never forget it.
Not that it matters. I can barely afford to live week to week now, let alone save money for retirement. I'll probably just die, I guess. 🤷♀️
This is a true statement but misleading.
Social Security deductions from worker's paychecks just go into the general government coffers, not specific savings for Social Security recipients. The government spends this regularly, and separately takes part of the money out of the general coffers and pays today's Social Security recipients. For decades the government has spent the Social Security surplus on non-Social Security stuff. If it hadn't, there would be plenty of money in the Social Security "savings account" without having to reduce benefits to future Social Security recipients.
Al Gore was going to set this up in the year 2000. Instead Florida couldn't count votes cast properly and we had President George W. Bush.
Properly depending on whose side you were on.
I would say it was properly done for its intended purpose. Unfortunately.
SS is insurance you cannot outlive. 401K’s only work for the middle class and up that are able to out save living and medical costs. They are not the same thing and do not work as a replacement.
I think it more closely follows social insurance than simply asking for a handout from everyone else's kids. Afterall, you are paying into it until you are eligible, and when you are eligible, a person just one year younger than you is supporting you. Saying that it's just "kids" paying into it makes it seem like we all stop paying into Social Security when we turn 25. I agree that the onus falls to the next generation in so much that it is their burden to pay into, but making it seem like we are forcing them into baby farms to push out kids to pay for our retirement is a bit dramatic. The population would have to take a pretty drastic nosedive over one generation to cause the system to collapse for the current retired generation, and the population numbers of the US don't support that line of logic.
The biggest issue that we are running into with Social Security is the Wage Base Limit that stops the payment of Social Security tax after you are taxed a certain amount. It adjusts for inflation each year, which is great, but it doesn't adjust for the disparity in wealth. Sure, the average person makes a certain amount per year, but that average doesn't mean anything anymore when it's the smallest percentage of earners in America. There are too many that don't pay up to the cap due to their low wage, and too many that make more than the cap and don't pay any more, and so we are left with a shrinking bank of fund as the wealth disparity increases each year. If we want to fix Social Security, we don't need to set up "generation funds", we need to abolish the Wage Base Limit and force everyone to pay in the 6.8% they owe, instead of just relying on the bottom 60% of Americans to do what they can.
As far as 401(k) goes, those are dependant on a volatile market, and often struggle to meet inflation, making them just slightly better than hiding your money in a mattress, but if you hide it in your mattress you don't have to pay a fee if there is a medical emergency you needs the funds for. 401(k) is great for people with true disposable income in the excess of thousands a month, but there aren't enough of those people around anymore, and they aren't the ones that will rely on Social Security, anyway.
I think more importantly, it suggests having children is necessary. And it is not. I say that as a loving parent.
It doesn’t require having children, but working population growth in general. Some of that is people having children, some is immigration, some of that is increasing workers by raising retirement age
Endless population growth is both unnecessary and harmful to the environment. That's one of the reasons we only had one child. One child replaces two of us.
That’s not the topic of discussion. Funding of social security is designed around increasing working population, regardless of whether that’s desirable in other ways
While I also think the wage cap should be lifted, it won’t have as big an effect as you expect. Remember ss is somewhat progressive (higher income get less percentage return), ss benefits on the high end are subject to income tax, and that benefits are also capped to match the wage cap. High earners are putting in more for less getting back, at least to some extent
If you raise the wage cap, there’s an argument the benefits should increase for higher earners as well. Remember this is not welfare, it’s meant to be a social insurance program, which has implications
lol your entire premise is that everyone is selfish
Weirdly, I usually only hear selfish people make that suggestion.
What a strange attempt at gaslighting.
Feel free to find me the altruistic people who believe everyone is selfish.