I have no idea how many of the poorly educated people in America could do better, but I am COMPLETELY confident that I could. If others want to opt in to the socialist system, I’m fine with that. But I’d like to have the option to opt out of it myself.
Risky investments outperform, on average, less risky investments. Duh. Some people behave as though this were their personal discovery, and the government’s financial analysts need to be brought up to speed.
COMPLETELY confident? Would your stocks have outperformed U.S. Treasuries during the 20-year period beginning 1963? Or is your financial prognostication so extraordinary that you can guarantee a perpetually soaring stock market from now on? Is a Dow-Jones Industrial Average of 100,000 once again just around the corner? A trillion dollars in new money will be injected into the market annually in a privatization scheme; do you think this might affect market parameters?
Regardless of SocSec privatization details, the government will want and need to be involved: it won’t want you to get a tax break if your investment is in Aunt Mabel’s Bar and Brothel. In the present kleptocratic environment is anyone ready to raise their hand and state they believe the investment regimes imposed by Congress will be fully objective with no influence from lobbyists?
If we were in the Pit, there are all sorts of things you could do differently. For example: implying how you’d speak about something/someone in the Pit. But we aren’t. So don’t.
No idea? This impresses me as wilfull ignorance. Imagine the average person you encounter on the street, or at the store, realize that half the people are as stupid or stupider than them, and convince yourself that they - who are likely to be among those most dependent upon SS - are able to reliably save and intelligently invest.
And I’m not sure what type of society you imagine, where each individual gets to opt out of selected programs he/she disagrees with. Not one I wish to be part of.
Your position is entirely unrealistic and selfish.
Gee, where would YOU get those ideas from?
I read a lot! 
Incredibly, incredibly hard.
People who don’t have enough food almost never die from starvation directly. They get weaker and weaker until something comes along and kills them. The flu, pneumonia, etc. That’s what’s going to be on the death certificate (if there’s a death certificate at all). And since adequately fed people are dying from these same diseases at the same time, even the best records aren’t going to provide the kind of data the more anal retentive types might wish for.
Look at the difficulties in counting the deaths of the Irish Potato Famine. Which had a relatively decent documentation for the era. You have to use statistical methods to approximate the Famine death toll. It looks like a million+ people died, but it’s not an official, nailed down, precise value. And that’s for one event, in one era, in one small region.
And another thing: The presumption that all old people had family to feed them or local charities, etc. is just ridiculous. What sort of retro rose colored glasses leads someone to think this? For a lot of people life was “… poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Thinking that things were all so much better “back then” ignores reality.
Incredibly, incredibly hard.
People who don’t have enough food almost never die from starvation directly. They get weaker and weaker until something comes along and kills them. The flu, pneumonia, etc. That’s what’s going to be on the death certificate (if there’s a death certificate at all). And since adequately fed people are dying from these same diseases at the same time, even the best records aren’t going to provide the kind of data the more anal retentive types might wish for.
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I don’t see why it is hard. If people were weakened by starvation to the point that they died of pneumonia or whatever, then the overall death rate would have gone up. I have seen no reason to believe that mortality rates increased during the Great Depression.
Der Trihs’ statement is straightforwardly false. Millions did not die of starvation, directly or indirectly, during the Great Depression.
Regards,
Shodan
I really, really, hate to support Shodan’s claim, but this is, after all, The Straight Dope. ‘Fighting ignorance’, and all that.
Smithsonian dot com says, ‘Great Depression Had Little Effect on Death Rates.’
However:
So factors such as better sanitation and better health care may have counteracted the negative effects of the Great Depression. And the New Deal was instituted. So Socialist programs such as investing in infrastructure, and providing Relief (assistance to the poor) was likely responsible for helping to keep people alive.
In fact (as the paper cited upthread shows) they declined a bit.
It’s high time for him either to admit this or cite evidence that supports his view.
They may not have died, it’s true.
Can you say they didn’t suffer? Because I think that’s what this will come down to. How comfortable will you be watching old people suffer? Because suffer they will, without a social safety net.
Graph of death rates by age in the '20s~'30s. One could possibly tease out an improvement for older folks as the SSA began to take hold, but the cause/effect lags make the data difficult to suss. “Millions starved” is kind of difficult to support, though.
I think it pretty settled that millions died of starvation during the Great Depression. Have you never heard of the Stalinist purges?
(Oh - you meant starved in America!) 
So you say all these absolute horrible things are absolutely positively going to happen and then when asked how do you that they are going to happen you basically say, “How do I know. I can’t see the future.” 
So can you see into the future or not?
Well, if you’re 45, your ex-husband would have to be quite a bit older than you before he’d be eligible to collect Social Security. If alimony wasn’t possible, yeah you’d have get a job at Target or Burger King or something.
But when you reach SS’s Full Retirement Age, you’d be eligible for spousal benefits on your ex-husband’s account, so long as you were married at least 10 years and haven’t remarried.