Hacker News Reader

Comment by dreamdu5t | Hacker News Reader

While I agree with your sentiment, I do not agree that it is my responsibility to take care of your parents. I want to take care of mine, and socializing these costs just means I'm forced to pay for your parents at the expense of mine. There is no replacement for the family unit. Obviously I feel differently about people who have no family, but that is the exception not the norm.

View on HN

Not socializing these costs means externalizing them. Should we all chip in to take care of this very social issue or should we just accept the costs in the form of living in a dysfunctional society with all the ramifications of huge numbers of poor elderly folks? We bear the costs as a society one way or the other.

It seems what you're saying is: you just wish every elderly person just had a wealthy enough family that could comfortably take care of them. But that's completely useless fantasy talk.

You're pretty confident that you and/or your savings will live to take care of your parents. What if you get hit by a bus? Or lose your ability to work? Isn't that what a social safety net is for?

For most of us with dependents, that's what private life insurance is for. The social safety net is for people too poor or irresponsible to have life insurance.

Do people not understand the safety part of the safety net? It's not there because you expect to fail, it's there for if you happen to. I don't keep a fire extinguisher in my kitchen because I expect to set it on fire, but rather I want to be able to stop a fire should one ignite. If you're reliant on a safety net, then you've failed at what you were trying to do.

What does that have to do with what I said? Why do you think I mentioned life insurance?

Not every elderly is a parent.

Which a cynic would say means they had an opportunity to save tons of money over the course of their life (relative to those who paid for having kids).

Since everyone has 2 parents, essentially, it is absolutely trivial to work out a fair welfare scheme. This is much easier than most welfare systems.

Please explain this fair welfare scheme which is trivial to work out, because I'm not seeing how "every person has two parents" leads directly to it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com