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Comment by biesnecker | Hacker News Reader

I read this very differently -- if $5/day makes up a significant portion of your safety net spending, then you have much larger problems than the $5 delta your latte is causing. It's not that $5/day doesn't matter to anyone, it's that the people for whom it matters are facing much larger systemic issues that we're ignoring while shaming people for the smallest of luxuries.

edit: missing word

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I agree with your interpretation.

With apologies to Helder Câmara - "When I tell the poor to save money on a latte they call me a saint, when I ask why the poor cannot afford a latte they call me a Communist."

Okay, I can appreciate that observation. But I don't think that the advice to individuals to stop worrying about luxury daily coffee spending follows from that.

However bad the system is, frivolous spending will not help things. However good the system is, it could never bear everyone spending frivolously forever.

So there is really no point to complaining, just aim for a frugal life style because no matter how good or bad the system is this will give you, individually, the best results.

If you are 20 years old and you start putting away $5/day and have 500k in the bank at 60. Who can argue with that. In fact they should pass a law to make this mandatory on everyone. It would greatly improve the lives of literally everyone.

If you’re not free to spend the money in the bank then you don’t really own it.

And so what? That's 1800 tax on you per year. Say it was charged as something like a tax. Nothing that most people in the Western world would be effected significantly by.

> And so what?

What you propose is not much different from the social security many countries levy.

Typically it’s not an economic efficient way of saving. The absurdity of the forced savings proposal becomes apparent if you cannot afford a life saving operation at age 59 because you cannot access your savings. Please don’t try to add exceptions now. Forced savings is just a bad idea.

Okay. Your argument only becomes valid after the fact that all that money that would have been spent on things like coffee is retained. In most cases people would simply not have that money. Not to mention that if you have some guaranteed amount of money coming to you at some point it should be possible to get a loan using that as collateral. And I would like to see examples of forced savings where any of the supposed issues actually manifest compared to what we have now where we literally have millions of people with no savings and retirement ages that keep increasing.

Almost 30 percent of households have less than $1,000 saved, MagnifyMoney finds, though the amount varies drastically by age. As of June 2018, millennials have less saved than baby boomers, because older Americans have had over three decades longer to save and larger salaries to work with.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/how-much-money-americans-hav...

Here's how Americans' median savings breaks down by age:

    Millennials (born 1981-1998): $2,430
    Gen X (born 1965-1980): $15,780
    Baby Boomers and older (born before 1964): $24,280

In fact I could see something like this really putting a dent on all the privilege in America where African Americans and other minorities basically have no savings... and no potential for ever accumulating any real wealth. When grandma or grandpa can send their grandson to college or put a down payment on their house or give them a business loan, that's an actual difference in people's lives.

Even in the "capitalist hellhole" that is the US, you can get a lifesaving operation even if it bankrupts you, and then you still get social security payments after. and you can borrow money from your 401k.

What do you think Social Security is?

An unsustainable ponzi scheme? :)

It's perfectly sustainable and returns are not guaranteed. You may get 1000x what you put in by living to 130, or you may get nothing by living to 60. But at least you're entitled to some safety net in your old age.

Debunked—on record—to Paul Ryan's eternal shame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNCZHAQnfGU

It was a joke, I forgot the </s>

An insurance program for which you pay premiums while you're working, and which may later pay you a monthly amount based on your income while working, your age when you start receiving it, and a few other things.

Also, a way to reduce homelessness and poverty among (primarily) the elderly by providing them with money to live on rather than letting them die of exposure on someone's porch then paying to haul away the corpses.

For those truly opposed to it imagine not only having to have the occasional dead body hauled away but then being charged for that haulage because hey, big government is bad and why should you have to pay for dead bodies being hauled away when they're not on your porch?

A lie. I think it's an outright lie. The SSA passed in 1983 has proven that point, has it not?

Sure, but if you had affordable education and housing and healthcare, and real wage growth that kept up with productivity increases, you'd have millions in the bank AND you'd have a latte every day.

what would it take to make that happen? what would it take to make this happen? it's funny people are happy to let creditors tax everyone at 20% (like a shitty credit card with a 2k limit is what's used to buy lattes), but bring up generating real wealth for a huge percentage of the population that has nothing, and oh noes this is against everything we stand for. this is why we can't have nice things. minimum income, yes, forced savings, no. yes i would like 2k per month for free, but no i don't want to save 2k per year so i can have 500k when i am 60.

> What would it take to make that happen?

Dismantling the capitalist system and giving workers control of the means of production? Or at least taxing capital at the same rate as income? I'm not entirely sure in which direction your sarcasm is running, but if that's what you're proposing, count me in.

Edit: nevermind, your edit makes it clear that we disagree here.

> Dismantling the capitalist system and giving workers control of the means of production?

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but what empirical evidence have we ever had that shows "you'd have millions in the bank AND you'd have a latte every day" is the result of dismantling capitalism?

Which one does an individual have control over?

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