Slice of the SS pie combines multiple dimensions:
In the other thread, I thought you were suggesting that we should all get the same number of healthy years at our respective full benefits.
But it sounds like in this thread you are suggesting we all get the same average payout from SS. Asking the broader question “Do any of us deserve more?”
Totally unrelated question, but how did two sets of identical twins be mixed up? If one set is AA, and the other is BB, then it would be pretty clear, pretty early on, that a family of AB and a family of AB are each consisting of sons who don’t look like each other at all, far from identical. Both mothers would say, “my identical twins…aren’t.”
Here the question is open ended. My personal take is not to aim for flat nor to accept gross structural inequities. Or that matter the extreme degrees of wealth inequality we increasingly have, which is a different discussion (had before).
Specific to SS I’d be content with a less inequitable set up. It doesn’t need to be a major tool of income redistribution from the wealthier to the poorer; but it shouldn’t be functioning to redistribute from the poorer to the wealthier.
This story has a bit more detail about the “how,” but presumably, they and their families simply assumed they were fraternal, not identical.
It’s not clear what you are asking. Given that life is unfair, should Social Security be the vehicle to address inequity? given your higher socio-economic status, should Social Security award you more benefits? or given Social Security exists, should you personally accept or deny benefits?
The government is not rewarding you for doing “a job that our society values.” Most everyone pays Social Security taxes and benefits are largely untethered from the social value of the job performed. Social Security is a form of universal insurance, not a program to reduce wealth inequality. The government is giving you money because it does not trust you to plan for old age, and for most people, that assumption is probably correct.
I suggest the regressive effect of awarding more benefits to people of higher socio-economic status is a political compromise for what is on the whole a progressive tax, not a feature worth defending.
You appear to be concerned about privilege and desert, but have not explained why these are relevant. The mere fact that you have survived to old age and qualify for old age benefits is itself an instance of “life is unfair.” I don’t think you can determine how much you deserve benefits by trying to quantify how much of your current status is due to external influences and how much is due to your own personal choices. Personal choices are shaped by external influences and vice versa. I don’t think the distinction is practical or useful at scale without changing the fundamental purpose of Social Security. Do we really want the government deciding the measure of each man’s worth?
I think Carnagie has a point, to the extent that it matters what you are planning on doing with the money. I also think Rousseau has a point, in that the purpose of public policy should be ensuring human dignity. To synthesize these two competing philosophies, I say you “should” get the “spoils” regardless of socio-economic background, because the program is designed to raise the floor, not lower the roof. But then it matters what you do with the money, and that’s where socio-economic status acts as a very fuzzy proxy. Do you need the money to live with dignity? Most people of a higher socio-economic status don’t need the money, in a naive model (in reality, the opportunity cost of Social Security is less money toward retirement). If you need the money, take it; you don’t, consider donating (or, if you think the government does a good job distributing wealth, decline the benefits).
~Max
See the other thread. Right now SS is not only not progressive; it is regressive. For SS I’d just look to have be at least neutral.
But that discussion is best there. This is a more general subject.
If you are making a more general point, outside of receiving welfare benefits, I am having trouble seeing it. ‘Since my success is partly attributable to social advantages and luck, I have a somewhat weaker moral claim to rewards that further inequality.’ How general is this intuition (for it is not a complete argument)? Does dependence on luck reduce desert? Does dependence on social structures create debt? Does benefiting from privilege generate obligations? Does acknowledgment of contingency imply redistribution? Why? In what domains? Whatever the principle, it needs a clear boundary, or it risks making ordinary activities morally questionable in the same way you are questioning Social Security.
~Max
Okay. Sorry that you do not get the OP?
I readily admit that I am not staking out a side to argue; I argue instead that neither the current inequity standard nor equality of outcome is best. And that the first step to determining what is, if not best then least poor, is recognizing that: there is in fact nothing close to equality of opportunity; that there will be unequal outcomes due both to unequal opportunities (etc.) and to differences in effort and abilities; that it can’t ever be completely fair; and that we have capacity to try to make it at least a bit less unfair.
If that is not a coherent OP to you, well then, give this thread a pass I guess?
You are, of course, free to take or leave any position as you see fit. However, my view is that if you confine yourself to these uncontroversial truisms, you completely walk back your OP and vindicate Roderick_Femm’s post. Compare, verbatim:
~Max
Nah.
The key parts were the belief that they would still have been achievable if “I had the will and tenacity to achieve them” - the overattribution to native abilities for what is achieved - and that therefore systemically having wealth shifted to them via the inequities of how SS works out, actuarially, is just. The context was pushing back to any plan that including them getting less as a result: “For what am I being penalized?”
To be clear - not ragging on that poster. I don’t think it is clear what the right point of balance is. But I do think most overestimate how much of what they have is by virtue of native talent and grit. They ain’t nothing but they also are not usually sufficient.
Some might, but some might not. By that I mean there are certain people of such natural brilliance and drive that they might indeed have been successful almost regardless of their circumstances. The literally almost could not fail. Obviously, these type of people are few and far between. There are other people who are run of the mill fuckups, dull, and unimaginative who nevertheless still manage to be generally successful due to favorable life circumstances. Both could attribute their success to their native talent and grit, but that would be only true for the first group, while the second group could be described as having achieved success despite their flaws.
Successful people in the first group type are an inspiration, successful people in the second group are intensely annoying in their complacency and delusion.
The general principle is “self serving attribution bias”: my successes are due to my talent or effort; my failures are bad luck and things that are unfair.
I’m trying to make the OPs premise a bit less of a less abstract “life is unfair” discussion.
IOW, who decides what’s “fair” and how do they decide it (in a way that’s actually fair and not self serving)?
Take it a step at a time because what is “fair” depends on what comes before. Accept these?
There is in fact nothing close to equality of opportunity.
Unequal outcomes occur due both to unequal opportunities (etc.) and to differences in effort and abilities. With equal opportunity some will thrive and some will flounder, native abilities and grit matter. But they are often insufficient.
Fair is a value judgement and a hard call for me; grossly unfair is less hard to spot. So for example, I think it is fair that creators of new things and services get rewarded and don’t know exactly how much reward is fair, but I am very comfortable saying that having 14% of wealth (and thus power) in America concentrated in the top 0.1% is unfair.
I can recognize that social security functioning regressively is unfair.
Who decides? We each do in our own minds and collectively as a society by who we elect on what platforms at all levels. How? By thinking about it, discussing it, arguing about it, voting, and by the policies that then follow. When they are possible to happen.
I recognize that most are unlikely to vote against their own self interest though.
None of those premises imply that a relatively well-off recipient does not deserve his benefits.
Consider your earlier baseball analogy. Ty Cobb, for example, would never have achieved what he did if he was born Black. Does that mean we should rename the Ty Cobb scholarship to the Oscar Charleston scholarship? No; it’s unfair that some people are born on second base, but those who steal home deserve their reward. It is not a contradiction to say life is unfair and that those with an unfair advantage deserve their spoils, unless spoils are awarded for a contrary purpose such as distributive justice.
~Max
There was a euphemism, “born on third base think you scored a triple”, but I don’t remember a baseball analogy; certainly nothing related to your Ty Cobb question.
As an aging adult I’ve found it extremely valuable to reflect on how much of my success was due to external factors (genetics, environment, etc.). As you said in this thread, or maybe the other, it helps inform what policies we support. I think doing this subjectively is sufficient; whether it is 30%, 10%, or 0% (for those, like @steronz, that don’t believe in freewill).
The Steelman of this argument is, of course, the famous ‘twin studies’. Most of the time, with identical DNA and very similar upbringing, the results are pretty close, but not always, and more often than you might think, they aren’t. Nobody lives the same life as anyone else, even those with identical DNA, of the same age and gender, in the same family. One twin gets run over by a bus, the other doesn’t. The one that got run over by a bus had to recover for 6 months in a hospital and experiences chronic pain for the rest of their life. Outcome between the twins sharply diverges. And that’s just an obvious scenario, subtle differences can cause differences to accumulate; in this case the butterfly effect can happen. Maybe dad says something flippant in a passive-aggressive tone to one twin while helping the twin with his homework, and the other twin is somewhere else doing something else. The twin dad berated has a crisis in confidence as a result, that follows him through the rest of his life. Or maybe he brushes it off and it has no effect, all depending on the impact on the crucial timeline of personal development.
The mere fact that you have survived to old age and qualify for old age benefits is itself an instance of “life is unfair.
And perhaps not in the way I think you may be implying. Getting old is the worst thing that ever happens to most people. Social Security is no gold watch for a job well done, nor is it even meager compensation for all the time that was stolen from the aged from a lifetime of toiling for sustenance. It is money doled out to the now-useless because their kids don’t want to be burdened with the cost of caring for them. And those kids are also expecting an inheritance, so pops’ savings can’t be touched!