Comment by Aunche | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aunche | Hacker News Reader

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How can you tell if someone is actually too old and frail to work rather than just pretending, especially with invisible issues like chronic pain? It's easier just to declare a retirement age.

>But it simply makes no sense that we essentially have UBI for able-bodied workers who are 65, but not those who are 35.

Someone who is 65 most likely has already paid their contributions to society. Compare how Norway and the Gulf states distribute their oil wealth. Norway reinvests it and only hands it out to those of retirement age. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait meanwhile guarantee a job where you don't even have to show up, which basically is the same as UBI. As a result, thesr nations are completely dependent on foreign labor.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-20/workers-p...

> It's easier just to declare a retirement age.

I think that's a fair argument. But 65 is probably way too young as a threshold in this day and age. I happen to know a lot of 65-ish Americans, because that's right around my parents' age. And the vast majority of them are still capable of working.

Which isn't to say that they're not enjoying retirement. But they most certainly don't need to be retired. I'm happy for them if they can support themselves. But I don't think public finances need to subsidize healthy people's cross-country RV trips.

But should your life be dedicated to work forever while you’re able bodied? What about having some fun while you’re still able to? Most people in the US don’t even take vacations like those in software do. I don’t think my own parents have left the country in 30 years. The only reason they ever left was due to military service. Otherwise, they could never afford it anyway.

UBI is interesting but it’d never scale to the same level as social security benefits. Many people in the US live off of just social security and maybe a tiny bit of retirement funds.

If you gave out social security to everyone, we’d have a massive amount of people quitting work (potentially forever). Wouldn’t like be financially sustainable unless we overhaul the entire system and have extremely straight forward taxation without deductions, special treatment, different brackets for different types of income, etc.

In your mind people should work until every last drop of productivity is squeezed out of them?

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