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There Is a Significant Need for Retirement Savings in the US (apolloacademy.com)
27 points by FigurativeVoid 5 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 99 comments


The working class in America (specifically the lower segment) is surprisingly opposed to social protections, which is strange considering they live in the wealthiest country in the world while also being the most unprotected among Western democracies.

Social protections are something that not even conservative parties in Europe can challenge (at least for now, we’ll see if the US trend spreads there though).

As a European who has spent a decade in the US and has always had a speech for expanding the social safety net (and, BTW, I’m on the fortunate side of US society), it seems impossible to me that some people will ever understand this, especially and shockingly, those who need it the most.


Poverty in America is a moral failure and why would you give money to people who are immoral?


This is the center of every issue in America that people need to understand. Poverty is seen as personal failure. You were lazy or a bad person thus you are poor. By that token, the rich are moral, just, and what we should aspire to be. But the biggest Trump supporters are the biggest consumers of welfare and social services, how can that be? It's not their fault! It's the blacks,immigrants,gays,trans,dems and whatever boogeyman we need that are causing their suffering. Vote for us and we'll solve that and you too can be rich and powerful.


This is largely a legacy of reconstruction as well. To prevent the lower class uniting based upon their shared class the upper classes pushed division based upon their differences.


I have some extended family members who have never worked a day in their lives by exploiting social services. Not surprisingly, their (now grown) children are doing the same thing. I don't judge people using it, nor do I consider it a purely moral issue, but I'm also not going to adopt a black-and-white view and just pretend this sort of stuff doesn't happen.


No one is saying it doesn't happen so I don't see what the point in your statement is.


I was picking up on the context of poverty, social services, and morality. In some cases, people end up in poverty due to laziness and an unwillingness to work. They then choose to (in my mind) misappropriate social service funds to maintain that lifestyle.

While I generally agree we shouldn't look at all poverty from this lens, I'm simply pointing out that in some cases it's warranted.


I agree but in your attempts to find nuance, you are missing the forest for the trees. Poverty doesn't mean you are lazy and unwilling to work and rich doesn't mean you are a genius leader who everyone should look to emulate but it is those two beliefs that underpin most of the political problems in America.


> I agree but in your attempts to find nuance, you are missing the forest for the trees.

No, because I agree with:

> Poverty doesn't mean you are lazy and unwilling to work and rich doesn't mean you are a genius

I think we are just talking past each other. You didn't think my nuance was necessary, and that's OK.


That's fair.


How would this work in practice? Indifferent case worker?


IDK about never in their life, but I have in-laws who got a sympathetic doctor to declare them permanently disabled around the time of the 2008 financial crisis, at which point their lack of education and skills had rendered them unemployable.


I've been disconnected from them for a long time (necessary as they routinely tried to grift me). However, from my recollection, there was a whole scheme they used that started with getting "hurt" in a commercial space. They would then sue the business while simultaneously getting a crooked doctor to sign off on some new disability they "got" from the incident.

They could have actually sustained a decent lifestyle had they not routinely decided to drop large chunks of the settlement money at Vegas.


Whose money would you give, mine or yours?


Well, I don't see your name on it.


> it seems impossible to me that some people will ever understand this, especially and shockingly, those who need it the most.

After many years of denying it, I've come to the realization that to solve social welfare in the United States we need to first solve racism and religion. So I agree it seems impossible.


What do you mean when you say we need to "solve religion?" I don't mean my question to come across as combative or challenging, I just don't understand what you have in mind.


What I mean is we have issues with racial/ethnic/religious tolerance in the United States, and it's impossible to divorce politics from it. When it comes to social programs, the lines of support of/opposition to policy can be drawn pretty cleanly around identity.

We can't "solve" social problems with welfare unless we "solve" the problem of identity, where we can't even agree whether its the role of government to provide (or just fund!) services if there's a large group of people who believe such support is an attack on their ethnic identity, or something they have a religious opposition to.


There is a significant minority of conservative religious people in the US who see any kind of government-provided social-welfare benefit program as an unwelcome infringement on the proper domain of the church.


Some 12yos think Jesus is just like Santa. They think this amazing analogy exposes all of society to be idiots. Everyone else is indoctrinated. But not them.


> The working class in America (specifically the lower segment) is surprisingly opposed to social protections

Probably because we stopped distinguishing between the hard working poor and the indolent poor, among other reasons.

Nobody trusts the government not to throw the money away giving it to their friends who administer NGOs, or staff up huge offices of administrators, or give it away to encourage lifestyles the majority disapprove of strongly enough that they’re willing to go without themselves to prevent it.


> The working class in America (specifically the lower segment) is surprisingly opposed to social protections

It is not that they are opposed to social protections. It is just that the Republican party has succeeded in distracting them with more important topics: Guns and Jesus.


> the Republican party has succeeded in distracting them with more important topics: Guns and Jesus

Trump voters were not significantly moved by these sells. The pushes were immigration and anti-wokeness, the latter intentionally ambiguously defined. (Compare Graham’s earlier works to this self-congratulatory nonsense [1].)

[1] https://paulgraham.com/woke.html


If you want to generalize across multiple election, GOP shifts their focus to the "values and cultural issues" of the moment, to get working-class Americans to vote against their own self-interest.

In the past, it was gay marriage and abortion; today, it's trans kids and DEI. Once these issues dominate the conversation, little attention is paid to the real priorities and actions of GOP and the Billionaires that bankroll them: cutting funds to Medicaid, food stamps and other welfare programs, cuts to health insurance subsidies, cuts to education, cuts to medical research funding, cuts to development assistance to the poorest in the world and so on, all to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.


I think that's a one-way analysis excluding the Democrats, who also pivot to these issues.

Democrats have agency as well, and the ability to prioritize bread and butter issues over things like DEI or trans issues. I think their self-image as defenders of the vulnerable binds them to positions that are generally unpopular, and the GOP exploits this.

I think both parties suffer from a form of oppositional defiant disorder, where they have to stake out opposite claims. If one party says the sky is blue, the other has to disagree.


You are absolutely right, engaging GOP on these topics plays into their hands, and this is the Democratic party's key mistake.


I think a lot of people are just opposed to the proposed solutions.

They don't decrease poverty. They increase dependence on the government, and they are funded by money that is taken from you at gun point.


Hot take. I for one, am, and will always be, forever grateful for government cheese.


Stuffed crust pizza is a heck of a drug.


> (specifically the lower segment) is surprisingly opposed to social protections

They are already in a weak social position and were taught that asking for any kind of protection or assistance is a bad thing. The last thing you want when society is already looking down on you is give more reasons for it.


There's certainly a cultural element that a certain sector of society has been enabling to prey on. That's why Bernie Sanders was so important; for the first time, someone was telling all of these struggling workers that they weren't the problem and didn't have to be ashamed.


> working class in America (specifically the lower segment) is surprisingly opposed to social protections

A lot of social protections for them were shams. Worker retraining after signing NAFTA, for example. Unions that turn into hereditary job pools outsiders can’t break into. Hell, public-school taxes for universities they can’t afford because their public-school teachers couldn’t teach their kids math.


I don't really know how to tell you this delicately, but you're in an information bubble.

If you have to go reaching back 30 years to a jobs program for an example of a sham social protection program, they are probably in great shape (a jobs training program isn't even really a social protection).

I know some unions have nepotism problems with jobs in the union (which is different than union jobs). I wonder if they are particularly worse than other political arenas though, where many value loyalty and control more than merit. And, of course, unions are not social protection programs. They are a response to the lack of social protections.

School funding isn't even tangentially related to social protections.


I’m relating what I hear from Trump voters.

> School funding isn't even tangentially related to social protections

It’s a benefit paid for collectively. It’s not a social protection, but it’s definitely a social programme. You’re seeing the DoE attacked in the same swipe as Medicaid because they’re political similar to the right.


But many other social protections - the comparatively huge ones - are ones that workers value a lot: Unemployment Insurance, Disability benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.

But unfortunately many workers have taken those as a given and therefore untouchable, rather than a societal choice.


In order to save, you need to earn enough to do so.

The average salary in the U.S. is $66,622, and the average household income is $80,610.

The average housing cost is $2,715 per month, or $32,580 a year. Average food costs for a single person are around $9,000 a year. Average total utility costs are $7,200. Average healthcare costs per person are $14,570. Average car ownership costs are $12,182 per year.

These average expenses total $75532 per year, meaning the average single person with an average salary is $8910 in debt. You can do the math for the average two-car household yourself.

And we haven't even accounted for taxes. Or the costs of raising a child.

Now, admittedly, this average person/average houshold most likely does not exist. But simply looking at averages points out the problem that most people are already stretched financially too thin to stock away something for retirement.

Over half the United States population earns less than $100k a year, and the median income for all earners (the middle point, right smack in the middle of all earners of all ages and genders) is roughly $40k.

I'm sure all you folks earning over $150k a year with stock options are doing fine, but realize you guys are in the top 20% of income earners in the U.S. whether you feel like you are or not.


66k/80k for income sounds like a median, whereas $2,715 sounds like a mean housing cost.

A quick search found between $1,500-$2,000 a month for median rent prices. If you adjust for a $1,600 rent, your above person is left with 3k, before considering that all the other expenditures are absolutely insane.

Options: - Live in a city, ditch the car. This gives you a $2,600 rent budget under the same other expenses. - Eat less expensive food. $9,000/year (>$8/meal) for food for a single person is high. No takeout.

People like to pretend the situation is worse than it is - some people have it bad, but tighten your purse and live less lavishly. Work on getting a better job (if you need to or can), and when you make more money don't increase expenses.


I think it takes a bit of a mindset shift. If your salary is $X, you can't start your expense plan with how much your apartment costs. There are expenses A. that are ironclad-mandatory, in that you must make them or you're really fucking yourself: Taxes and debt interest are examples. They need to come out of your salary before any other calculations are done. Your actual income (that you can spend) is $X-A. Then you have B. expenses that you have to pay, but you have at least theoretical control of by shopping around, like the cost of your apartment, cars, child care, groceries, and so on. Those come out next. Then, you have C. discretionary spending, everything left over. Often this is zero or negative :(

Too many people put retirement savings in bucket C, where it actually should be considered bucket A. It needs to come out before you even consider anything else. Your money left over after taxes, paying interest, AND savings, is what you have left to decide whether you can afford this apartment or that car.


I think there are a lot of people for whom this is true, but also a lot of people for whom this is terrible advice. Your not likely to reach retirement age if you take your retirement savings out before your apartment or food and wind up evicted or starving.


No, but if doing that leads people to conclude that they need to move in with roommates, that might be preferable. Roommates are certainly a great way to reduce expenses. It has downsides but it is what many poor people in other countries do naturally.


Roommates, or if you're just getting started what I did could be reasonable, live with parents for a bit longer. Saved quite a lot in a year since they didn't have me pay rent, and got my first raise right around when I moved out.

And on GGP's mindset shift: Right away I put what my parents thought was an unusually high percent into my 401k, with the reasoning that if I never saw it then I'll never miss it. And it worked. I only see the amount that actually goes into my bank account and have managed all my costs based on that.


I wish I had done that automatic contribution years ago at my first couple of jobs. I thought it didn't matter and I could hardly afford it, and I would make a lot more in subsequent years. In a way I was right but my lifestyle could have been better, cheaper, and healthier. Spending more money didn't help my social life like I thought it would.


I think you've overstated housing costs, as crazy as that sounds. The places with really high rent pay more and also see people get with roommates. So the average rent/mortgage is not the same as the average person's housing expenses.

Most people cannot afford to save a lot of money for retirement, especially while paying into Social Security or other government programs. But that has never been possible in the entire world, and it generally still isn't. Even in cases where it was, such as the boomers, it still didn't really happen. To be fair the boomers fully expected that their taxes would go toward Social Security in their old age.


Americans will do anything but remove the cap on taxing income over $176k.

It's a bizarrely unique American notion that those who can most afford it are given the exemption and the burden falls to those who can least afford it. And that those who profit most from the system are given a pass on having to actually pay for it.


Income over $176k is definitely taxed, at progressively higher marginal rates. If you won the lottery you'd lose half of the jackpot to taxes. Only one specific type of tax has a cap, not that the buckets really mean anything. Courts have found that Social Security is not an entitlement, it is a welfare program. You can collect more than you ever paid in, and be denied benefits for arbitrary reasons. However, practically speaking, they treat it like an entitlement in that paying in more money generally increases the amount of your benefits, up to a limit. If people were to be denied benefits on a large scale, then people paying into it might vote to eliminate it.


> Americans will do anything but remove the cap on taxing income over $176k.

Point taken, but just to be clear to folks who aren’t familiar with American taxes, this cap is only for “social security tax” and does not apply to federal income taxes.


Because the system views the people who need support as disposable. The system doesn't need them.


This problem is unsolvable, because we don't want to solve it. Social Security is under attack, while keeping 23 million people out of poverty and being one of the most efficient value transfer and benefits system in the world. We don't want to raise taxes to improve funding for it. Wall Street is chomping at the bit to get access to worker retirement funds. Pensions are unpalatable, even though they could be accomplished with Australia's superannuation model, and are necessary for workers to get investment cashflow to obtain exposure and fiduciary management of the investments.

The wheels will keep coming off the cart.

https://www.gao.gov/financial-security-older-americans

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia


It's not only social security though.

Broadly, wages are too low relative to living expenses, so people can't save on their own.

There's probably an argument that social security actually subsidizes low wages, as is often made with Medicaid. That isn't to say that we shouldn't have social security -- it's that it should be funded by corporate profits, shareholder returns, and executive pay.


in the USA, most expenses related to raising a family got increasingly expensive, probably because aggressive business models saw that those are "essential" so people will have to pay. That is the logic that got us to plus-fifty percent of household income going to rent and food here in California. The investors in rental units are making a fortune. It is uncontrolled predatory capitalism playing out.


The only reason we are in this situation is extreme wealth inequality. And the only way to fix it is to tax the wealthy appropriately.

We are currently taxing the young when they already are struggling on every front as compared to the previous generations. This problem will only get worse.


What a just society would do would be to add taxes to the wealthy and raise income for the poor, slowly and gently transferring wealth from the rich to the poor in a way that doesn't destroy the system.

The fact that not only are we not doing that but that we are violently opposed to doing that is a fair weather barometer of our current justice quotient.


Should we really be taxing young people more when those young people are not propagating due to high housing costs, etc?


Social Security only applies to the first ~$176k of your income (inflation adjusted annually). What percentage of young people are at that income level? This is not young vs old, but the median vs the very wealthy.

https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/maxtax.html


> Social Security only applies to the first ~$176k of your income. What percentage of young people are at that income level

I think they’re saying most young people make less than $176k.


No, but that's the whole point of progressive taxation. The old and wealthy who voted us into this mess should be the ones to pay for the solution.


We should directly address high housing costs by allowing housing to be built.


17-20% fewer construction workers: Great Recession's lasting scar on housing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43269017

Insurance and Taxes Now Cost More Than Mortgages for Many Homeowners - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42499267

It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41259229

Like retirement savings, there is no will to directly address this problem.


Intentional or not, this is a bad misdirection. Young people do not have enough income to tax. Those making half a million or more can bear a sharp increase in their tax burden.


> Wall Street is chomping at the bit to get access to worker retirement funds.

What do you mean by this? My 401k is.... publicly traded stocks? What am I missing?


Private equity. Only ~4300 US companies are public, so money managers want to juice management fees by expanding accessibility into alternative asset classes.

Private equity to lobby Trump for access to savers’ retirement funds - https://www.ft.com/content/dddd1752-789a-40b6-9aa8-d7cf6f408... | https://archive.today/HrDgt

The stock market is shrinking and Jamie Dimon is worried - https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/09/investing/premarket-stocks-tr...

Shrinking public markets mean growth in private markets - https://fsinvestments.com/fs-insights/chart-of-the-week-2024...

Interesting fact: As of the end of 2024, the Magnificent Seven stocks made up 35.4% of the S&P 500's value.


I remember when "privatizing social security" was considered a horrifying prospect under the W Bush administration and became unpopular very quickly. I'm not so optimistic this time around.


He's talking about social security revenue. Obviously, the government is much better at this than your 401k plan even though they pissed away decades of surpluses by buying treasuries with them that would require the government to massively increase future taxes to ever be able to pay those back (let alone with interest). Instead, he would prefer, I suspect, that social security withholdings be increased, taxes increased, all so that 23 million people can continue to receive poverty-level checks of $1950 a month, though you won't be allowed to collect yours until you're 70 or older.

Social security doesn't work though, unless there are a dozen workers paying into it for every retiree, and no one's having enough children for that to ever be the case again.


    > and no one's having enough children for that to ever be the case again.
Immigration, increase the threshold, means tested distributions, lots of ways to solve this.


Generally, most pro-social-security people say that all of those are not necessary, not just some.

However, take a look at your first item. How are these immigrants going to pay into social-security exactly, when there isn't a large jobs base to be had? Part of the de-industrialization that the United States underwent was predicated on the notion that if our population was going to shrink anyway, we didn't need that. Now with all those jobs gone and famously "never coming back", bringing in more immigrants to short up a defunct pyramid scheme seems sort of silly.

And as for your second item, where you say "just pay more in" doesn't much jibe with "means tested distribution" where if the government deems you too rich to need it, you don't get it. It really is just welfare at that point, and not a mandatory retirement program we'll all enrolled in. No one has time for that nonsense. Do you have any faith that when the next Trump is in office (which surely will be the case in a few decades, if not much sooner), that you will make the cut for "means tested distributions"? How is that any different than just cutting social security from everyone, if it were to become policy?


OP is talking about Social Security, not your 401(k).


> We don't want to raise taxes to improve funding for it

Key word: “for it.” We’re apparently fine raising taxes if we just call them tariffs.


> We’re apparently fine raising taxes if we just call them tariffs.

Of course, because the current tariff strategy is intended to be a regressive sales tax targeting the broad populace who is already being extracted from, to avoid income tax increases.

Edit: It's also about control it appears.

Trump Press Sec Accidentally Blurts Out Real Goal of His Tariff Scam - https://newrepublic.com/article/192391/trump-press-sec-accid...

> Then press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters directly that if Canada wants to avoid tariffs in the future, it should become the fifty-first U.S. state. She revealed it: Trump’s tariffs aren’t about fentanyl or any supposed unfair treatment of the U.S. They’re about forcing Canada, with no justification whatsoever, to submit to his will.

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3ljnnnf5hvh23


"Pensions are unpalatable". You don't have pensions in the USA? Meaning like an account into which you can put pretax money and in exchange you can't take it out until later in your life (but can invest it)?


A "pension" means an employer-funded pool of money that pays out fixed payments after a certain age. What you're describing exists (somewhat unevenly) in the US, but it's employee funded. The employee must take active steps to contribute, which means they lose part of their income until they retire and there may or may not be employer contributions. People who can't afford to contribute, or put it off for a few years (most people) end up with insufficient funds at retirement, which becomes a social problem.


Those aren't, and never were, pensions. Few pension programs exist anymore, they were (almost) all replaced with retirement accounts starting I don't even know when, but finishing by the mid 1980s. The pension programs were all going bankrupt due to various reasons (bad economy, American industrial collapse, etc) but mostly demographic implosion.


Pensions are still common with government jobs.

> The pension programs were all going bankrupt due to various reasons

And my state is having this problem right now.


We have tax advantaged retirement accounts, which have weird contribution rules that assumed companies would replace spending they were doing on pensions with contributions to these accounts (spoiler alert: didn't happen) that keep contributions limited to pretty low levels unless your employer kicks in huge amounts, which almost none do (that is, there are limits on what you can contribute, and separate limits on what your employer can contribute, and the latter is significantly higher). Also some of them require your employer to have such a program, or else you can't participate, which further limits your max contributions if yours doesn't.

Further, since individual contributions aren't mandatory, that money is freed up for zero-sum competition over things like good schools for your kids (that is, housing in good districts) so if you don't choose "defect" and spend the money instead of saving it, your family's overall worse off than it would be if everyone had to contribute.

Also, a tax-advantaged savings/investment account isn't the same thing as a pension.


we have a concept called a 401k (and for non-profits a 403b). You contribute some % of your paycheck and your employer matches some amount of that (potentially with a vesting schedule)

The money can be invested, and then at some age (55.5 i believe?) you can access the money without being taxed. There is a maximum you can contribute per year etc etc.

I am not old enough to ever have had a pension option in my entire life, but I believe 401Ks are overall worse, because pensions come w/ some amount of guaranteed payout + someone managing the fund to ensure that happens. a 401K can go to zero, and you can forget to contribute (and most of the money is your own money anyways)


> The money can be invested, and then at some age (55.5 i believe?) you can access the money without being taxed. There is a maximum you can contribute per year etc etc.

Not quite - you're given a tax benefit (i.e., not taxed) on your contributions when you contribute them, but when you withdraw funds you pay income tax. If you withdraw before the 'retirement age' (55.5, as you say) then you pay an additional penalty.

The idea being that you would be in a higher tax bracket during your earning years, but in retirement you'd be theoretically in a lower tax bracket, therefore would get some tax savings. Additionally, since the tax savings is taken off of the 'top' of the bracket when you contribute and when you withdraw its added to the 'bottom'.

There's also Roth contributions (where you get no benefit now, but don't pay taxes on gains later when you withdraw), but not all plans offer this.


Pensions are not under your control. mostly they were good but once in a while the company you worked for, for 30 years went bankrupt and then you found out the penson was in company stock so not only were you out your job/income you also lost your retirement. In response to that we now have laws about what pensons can invest in - but that means their returns are terrible and so they are not a good roi.

more people have access to a 401k today than ever had a pension as well.


> You contribute some % of your paycheck and your employer matches some amount of that (potentially with a vesting schedule)

This is actually completely optional, many employers do not. For example mine does not do any matching or contributions

> The money can be invested, and then at some age (55.5 i believe?) you can access the money without being taxed. There is a maximum you can contribute per year etc etc.

So the tax side of this depends on if the 401k was done as Roth or traditional. Traditional IRAs are tax advantaged but not tax free. Contributions are pre-tax from the employee's paycheck. Roth on the other hand is post tax and tax free on withdrawal (assuming no penalties).


The pensions I had in mind (UK) don't have any guaranteed payout and can go to zero. We don't have to have anyone "managing" them, and I for one think that's a good thing.


We don’t have traditional defined-benefit pensions, or not outside of the public sector.


> We don’t have traditional defined-benefit pensions, or not outside of the public sector.

That's a fairly popular belief, but even now (well, as of March 2023), several decades after the general move against them, 15% of private sector workers have access to a defined-benefit pension plan.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/15-percent-of-private-indu...


America has been sacrificed at the altar of short-term profit.


I think we should revisit the policy of an actual forced savings account - rather than the bad proxies for it: social security, home equity, 401k.

The general population is not smart enough to understand a 401k and raids it as soon as they can.

The Obama administration was big on the “gentle nudge” policies - so that for example they would enroll you in retirement, but you could opt out, but I don’t think that’s strong enough.


Forced savings is someone else saving for you. How would you feel if I ran your savings and then screwed it up? Or if you had a once in a lifetime investment opportunity and I wouldn't let you dip into your savings? Or a once in a lifetime calamity and I said no, you can't touch it?

Firstly you'd rightfully realize that whatever I said they weren't your savings, rather it was my money that I was agreeing to let you have at some future date. Secondly I would come to the same realization.


Social Security isn’t a savings or investment program.


It's a Rosevelte scheme. (Some people incorrectly call it a Ponzi scheme)


Indeed. It’s some god awful combination of welfare, savings, and insurance. It needs clarification.


>I think we should revisit the policy of an actual forced savings account - rather than the bad proxies for it: social security, home equity, 401k.

I think social security is a far better setup than forced savings account. The fact that it's much harder to raid, that it's not really 'your money' locked up somewhere is a big reason why it has lasted as long as it has.


> The fact that it's much harder to raid...

Unless you're the government and can 'borrow' the money, from yourself, as part of some creative accounting scheme. Thanks Reagan.

https://www.fedsmith.com/2013/10/11/ronald-reagan-and-the-gr...


Social security is simply paying out current obligations with current receipts. There is no savings or investment.


All those stupid genpop people raiding their 401ks. Why can’t they be smart like me and have more money so they don’t need to do that?


Are you suggesting that most cases of accessing a 401k early are prudent and unavoidable?


Removing that money from contention over things like housing would be great. As it is, you either save for retirement and send you kids to worse schools than you could if you spent it instead, because other people are choosing to bid up housing rather than save for retirement, or you join them and don't have enough for retirement.


"Forced savings account" is a bad proxy for a public pension. Why, for instance, do I need to bear the risk that I might live to 100, and therefore have to save for living to 100 even though statistically I'll probably die before 85?

A public pension is a "forced savings account" that pools a whole bunch of risks together across the entire population. It's forced savings plus an insurance policy.

Now someone will probably say that everyone should be forced to save with a private account and also forced to carry "old age insurance" or something, but hopefully people can see that's just a public pension but worse, because you're at the mercy of middle men and grifters.


Because pooling risk is also pooling reward and about 30-40% of the US population doesn’t work.


There is a significant need for a lower cost of living and wage increases to even entertain the notion of retirement savings first. Get back to me when you solve that problem first.


The interest income on money created by fractional reserve banking should be used for this instead of making rich bankers richer.


A significant number of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Hard to save without having the $$.


[flagged]


> People voted to transfer wealth to the rich, reduce benefits for the masses cut taxes for the rich, scammy corporations, general immunity for the crony rich who are exploiting the government, customers, and employees.

Not only that. They also voted for economic structures that make it easier for the wealthy-and-powerful to take advantage of the less-wealthy-and-powerful. Healthcare is tied to your job. Housing costs 40% of take home pay. Worker protections are constantly under attack. Regulatory capture is everywhere. Oligopoly is everywhere; every minor crisis is an excuse to raise prices, which of course never come down, and because the CPI doesn't include wages it gets hand-waved away as "inflation" instead of being correctly identified as declining consumer surplus. Employment is at-will; if you don't keep your head down and dedicate your life to your job, and to making new kids who can dedicate their future lives to their future jobs, there is a nonzero risk of lifelong misery for you and your family.

And this time around people went even further. A popular majority eagerly voted for authoritarianism, more or less explicitly in service of breaking down cultural resistance to those economic structures.

Most politicians are just trying to grab and hold onto whatever they can before the ship sinks. They only differ in whether they are accelerationists actively trying to sink the ship faster, or denialists allowing it to sink while quietly enjoying their hoard of grabbed stuff and making a weak show of trying to fix things for appearances.


i don't think they have been for a while.




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