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Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

I have never believed in retirement, nor have I ever thought that I would get social security or that any magical financial system would allow me to "retire."

I would like, in my later life, to maybe step down into more scholarly pursuits. But I'm sure I'll still be doing something for revenue.

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Isn't it funny? The idea that you could spend you entire professional career at, say, GM, retire at 65, and live out your years on a comfortable pension + social security, seems so amazingly quaint and outdated. I can hardly believe that that was the universal expectation in this country just a few short decades ago, but my elders insist it was true. Nobody in my peer group (millenials, I think we're called) seriously thinks they are going to see any of the money we are paying into social security. Pension? What's that again?

On the other hand, the expectation that we are going to be working forever seems to have made us dwell a lot more on what job fulfillment actually means, which is probably a good thing--not too many people I know are willing to put up with the sort of "deferred happiness" model that prevailed in earlier generations.

Historically speaking, as in, over the past several thousand years, what was your best retirement plan? Loving children. Are we returning to that world?

To be honest, though, I think things are not as bleak as we think. We are fantastically, fantastically wealthy, overflowing with technology and the tech keeps coming and growing. We are not poorer than our parents; we are substantially wealthier but we have accumulated a proportionally greater load of parasitic loss and bad commitments, and a proportionally greater idea of what we "should" be able to afford. (It is no win to be twice as wealthy as your parents if you try to spend three times as much.) Defined-benefit plans will have to come to be seen as a peculiarly-20th-century delusion, as will the idea that the government is an unlimited charge card.

We are fantastically wealthy, but we have a gigantic parasitic entity that sucks most of our surplus wealth away and burns it in endless pointless wars and in building bridges to nowhere and similar things.

I could not tell whether you were talking about Government or about Wall Street. :)

There's a difference?

I hope this attitude about not expecting to see any of the money you're paying into social security ends soon. You're paying money in and so you should get it back when you're older. If this young generation gives up on getting their money back then their fears will come true. It's politics. You get what you collectively ask for. Bottom line: don't lower your expectations. Demand, and you should get.

>Demand, and you should get.

The mentality of a mugger.

...if you take the last phrase completely out of context.

It is completely within the context of what you wrote in reality. Money is taken from some people and given to other people. There is no moral difference between the mugger's threat to shoot you for not forking over and the government's threat to take your property or throw you in jail for not forking over. And the recipient/beneficiary of the theft is a thief, even if you/they are too gutless to do your/their own threatening. Maybe you are one of those idiots who actually believes in the "Social Security Trust Fund" and you get your own money back; but that belief does not make it true.

There is no moral difference between the mugger's threat to shoot you for not forking over and the government's threat to take your property or throw you in jail for not forking over.

The difference is that the government's actions are based on laws, which were passed by elected representatives and thus indirectly by the public. Not "forking over" to the government is the same as not paying a debt and claiming that you didn't personally agree to contracts being actually binding.

Maybe you're one of those idiots who actually believe you can have a functioning society without rules that everyone has to adher to even if they personally don't agree with all of them, but that belief does not make it true.

There is a big difference between laws against actual crimes (mala in se) and pure redistribution, ie robbing some to pay others, which is all welfare and social security are.

Bullshit. Welfare and social security are A) a form of insurance against misfortune (which anyone can suffer) and B) the result of a consensus that a humane, civilized society should not let anyone starve, freeze or die of easily curable diseases no matter who they are.

There is no moral difference between the mugger's threat to shoot you for not forking over and the government's threat to take your property or throw you in jail for not forking over.

I usually don't bother responding to this sort of tripe, but it's so easy to prove you wrong that I couldn't resist.

The difference is that, if you really feel that taxes are such an injustice, you are free to leave. Voila, end of problem. Would that I had had that option when I was robbed at gunpoint at couple years ago.

Seriously, put your money where your mouth is and light out for that splendid anarchic paradise you and your ilk dream of so fervently. No one is stopping you and you wouldn't be missed.

What's that? There's no WalMart or fire department in Mogadishu? Bummer...

And where exactly will this money come from without making it even worse for the next generation?

In the end, money is a fiction. It's all about allocating the benefits from current production.

Social security schemes and government-guaranteed pensions mean that the government (=the voters) decides how much each currently productive worker has to give away, and how much each retiree gets.

Private retirement funds mean that for each retiree, the amount of money earned from their own former productivity which they relinquished into their retirements fund AND the amount of money they acquired otherwise and put there AND the management of the fund AND other economical factors influencing it decide how much that retiree is allowed to take away from those currently productive.

Finally, the millenia-old "retirement plan=loving children" means that how much each retiree gets depends on how many children they were able to have, how many of those survived, how productive they are, and how much they're willing to give up according to their character, how much they love their parents or how much social pressure towards supporting your parents there is.

Bernard Madoff.

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