Non-nice person checking in. I oppose any government handout to the old because getting old is the goal. You’re supposed to stay alive and get old. You don’t wake up old one day. If you don’t save for your retirement, you don’t get to have a retirement, same as with everything else in life. I don’t see the big deal.
Right, but seniors had their entire lives before that to provide for themselves.
If I want to go on vacation next week and I fail to save enough money to go, should the government pay for my vacation? If you say no, then please explain how retirement (i.e., a permanent vacation) is any different.
And if you end up cheated out of your pension or your investment collapses, you should starve ?
I can’t help but wonder how much of this indifference to the elderly is motivated by the fact that they are typically too infirm to pick up weapons and rob rather than starve.
I’m afraid I don’t understand your question. If someone wrongfully takes something from another person, the person can sue in court to regain possession of the something.
If a person decides to put all of their eggs in one basket and then drops the basket, I don’t see why anyone else has an obligation to replace the eggs. (Note that putting all of one’s eggs in a single basket is just one example of using a bad investment strategy. The larger point is that a person bears the risk of their particular investment strategy, so they have have to starve if they choose a strategy with starvation as one possible outcome.)
It is true social security benefits the wealthy more than the poor…in many ways.
Not only do the wealthy pay less (as a percent of income), they collect more due to living longer.
Plus, for years there’s been a surplus…some years quite a sizeable one. This was just rolled into the kitty and used for the same expenditures taxes go for: roads, programs, military, nasa, ect, enabeling less OTHER taxes be charged.
Now that the surplus is going to become a deficit, you can be damn sure the republicans want social security aborted. The tax saving gravy train is running low and they figure nows the time to pull the plug or the wealthy might be having to pony up more.
I also think they’re hoping to give the markets a jump by the people’s retirement investing.
Yes, because ordinary people have SUCH a record of success against giant companies in court. And because no one has ever found a legal loophole that let them cheat people and legally get away with it. And because they can still pull money out of the ether after the same people who grabbed the pension funds ran the company into the ground. :rolleyes:
Because the alternative is general social decay and disaster. Because anyone can make mistakes. Because investments can fail unpredictably, with no fault of the people who invested.
And if we take that kind ruthless viewpoint as ethical, I’m sure you won’t mind if those starving people kill you and take your food and money to survive - or simply eat you. If other people have no obligation to show any respect for your life and welfare, then you have no obligation to show any to them in return, after all.
Of course, I’m sure you will weasel out of the logical implications of your beliefs, since what you really mean is that you have no obligation to anyone else, not the other way around. You’ll demand the right to screw over anyone you can, ignore the consequences, and have society protect you from the consequence. You and those like you want one way anarchy.
Isn’t the idea of externalising costs or risks while retaining benefits directly responsible for a lot of destructive actions? Doesn’t it encourage people to take risky investments, since even if they fail, someone else will foot the bill?
For that matter, if investments can “fail unpredictably, with no fault of the people who invested”, why should we believe that letting the government take our money, invest it, and give it back in 50 years is any safer than doing it ourselves?
You really don’t see any difference between failing to sacrifice your own property to save someone from their own mistakes, and killing someone to take something that isn’t yours?
There’s a large difference between removing all risk, and between simply keeping people from freezing and starving to death. And if it’s risky investments you are worried about, without some sort of safety net you can expect plenty of people to take extreme risks ( and commit crimes for that matter ) out of sheer desperation.
Because the government is far wealthier, reliable and broader based than any individual’s investments, and because if it falls that money won’t be worth anything, anyway.
“Mistakes” has nothing to do with it; again, people can lose money through no fault of their own. And yes, I see no difference between condemning someone to death for your own profit and them returning the favor. If other people’s lives don’t matter, why should yours ?
And yes, this is about profit, and not about “keeping what’s yours”; everyone benefits from society. This is about people who want to benefit from society and give nothing back in return; parasites and predators.
Can you cite one example of someone being “screwed out of a pension”? Also, read up on ERISA and the PBGC. You are railing against something that doesn’t happen.
I’m not sure how you make the logical leap from “the government not making sure everyone can retire” to “social decay and disaster.” That is absolutely mind-boggling to me. Do you really think that poor people would kill me if there were no social security? Also, it is not a logical implication of my belief that I be OK with poor people killing me if they didn’t save for retirement. That is idiotic.
It also shows what you truly think of poor people. You think the rest of society is essentialy held hostage by them–either we have welfare and social security or they hurt us. I don’t think that’s the case. I think if we treat all people as human beings (which means they have a choice in how they conduct their lives and get to (or have to) live with the consequences of those choices) then society as a whole is better off.
Wow. You believe that rich people benefit from society and want to give nothing back in return. You also believe that society should give something to poor people, for which poor people need not give anything to society. And then you say the rich people are the parasites and predators. That is unbelievable.
In a capitalist society, the rich people became rich because other people gave money to the rich person in exchange for something the people found more valuable than the money. So the richest person has given the most to society (barring those who inherited their wealth, which is a tiny number of people, and their relatives gave something to society). The unproductive that just get handouts from government are the parasites.
That is exactly why Social Security is and should be invested in T-bills, about the safest investment there is.
People who screw up and lose their investments are going to suffer. We’re not talking about guaranteeing no losses, we’re just talking about guaranteeing a roof over their head and food on the table. Is that too much, even if the person had been poor all his life and was not able to save a lot?
That isn’t really relevant to the question of why the government should put itself in charge of your investment, unless there is something stopping a private investor buying T-bills on their own.
As an aside, I have a problem with the federal government forcing people to invest their money in financing the federal government’s debt, for a return set by the federal government. If a different type of investment becomes a better option, I do not trust the government to act in the investor’s interests at the expense of reducing their own ability to raise capital.