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Comment by balderdash | Hacker News Reader

I honestly feel for this person, but the pragmatist in me kind of thinks of this as the expected outcome. You have a person that sounds like they never pursued a career/ was working minimum wage jobs their whole life, never planned for their retirement, decided to live in a relatively high cost area, has health conditions, and their partner seems to make below minimum wage - isn't a subsistence situation sort of to be expected?

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Expected? Yes. Tolerated? No. Someone who contributed to the system their whole life shouldn't be left out in the cold.

they have already been compensated for their contributions though, sounds like they re-contributed them instead of saving some for later

My point is that it should not be up to an individual to save for their own retirement (right to exist after they are no longer useful as a laborer). If someone works their whole life, society should sequester some of the profit they generate and keep it to pay for them to life fairly comfortably until they die. That's the idea behind social security.

Hell, even if someone doesn't spend their whole life working we should still afford them that comfort. But to spend your whole life working and consuming and helping push forward the engine of the economy to only be left out in the cold is a real gut punch.

They are already getting taken care of. They chose to live in a high cost of living area. You don't get to complain that you retired in NYC or SF and Social Security doesn't pay your rent.

I never understood this kind of thinking. When 50-60% of humanity live in urban areas why is this an argument that people use? Should people live in cities and then move out to the country when they retire? Shouldn't the answer to this be to make these cities more affordable by building additional housing?

For housing in a city, it makes sense to me to always increase supply such that every place in the USA costs the same. This allows people to move freely, it allows people to congregate with other smart people and have "intellectual density", it allows wealthy investors to live next to struggling bohemian artists, and allows the average Joe to experience all of this just by virtue of existing in that place. I understand there are constraints on land but it's bizarre to me that people have accepted the idea that these places are just naturally "HCOL" locations and not that they have been homogenized and sanitized into this type of place.

> They chose to live in a high cost of living area.

Millions of people are born in HCOL areas and make their lives there. We shouldn't ask them to leave.

Yes, you should build more housing. But if you're retired, you have to deal with the situation you have now.

> Millions of people are born in HCOL areas and make their lives there. We shouldn't ask them to leave.

then they should make more money

You are describing how the should operate given the current situation and assuming it doesn't change. I am saying the current situation is bad and needs to change. I think that what you are saying is unproductive because it gives off the impression that you think that "bad things are good/acceptable, actually".

> then they should make more money

Like this, this is such an incredibly simplistic response that it feels more naive even than a statement like "everyone should be able to live in a big city". If everyone simultaneously makes more money it just changes who is priced out. The current game is zero-sum, I am saying it should not be.

Perhaps the most common US scenario is that minimal bills and income are so close, you'd have to set aside funds from food, utils, rent, etc. Right behind that are folks with income being 80% of minimum bills.

After three decades of working closely with folks of every possible income bracket, I found maybe 1 in 15 had income so high that they could afford to save for retirement.

> After three decades of working closely with folks of every possible income bracket, I found maybe 1 in 15 had income so high that they could afford to save for retirement.

How can this be the case? What decisions are being made that 14 / 15 people across tax brackets can’t save?

I suspect, it’s not 1/15 can afford, but can afford without making trade offs. Budgeting and self discipline are very hard.

Antidotally - just look around, people wearing $300 foam shower sandals, new trucks towing dirt bikes/jet skis, dinking $6 coffees, and the talking on their iPhones etc. these are not people worried about saving

I think it's easy to poo-poo people spending their income on a bunch of material stuff, especially as someone who hardly consumes and saves my money neurotically.

But in the US we are indoctrinated to believe that conspicuous consumption is the best thing we can do for our country. Saving hurts our economy and spending drives it forward. Every mainstream economist talks about savings rates like they are a bad thing.

The system has been engineered to simultaneously require people to save a majority of each paycheck in order to live well after they are no longer useful as laborers, but also we are constantly told to spend spend spend.

I say this just because I don't think that it is productive to place the blame on individuals within the system instead of the system itself. I think your analysis is correct though.

> just look around, people wearing $300 foam shower sandals, new trucks towing dirt bikes/jet skis, dinking $6 coffees, and the talking on their iPhones etc. these are not people worried about saving

That's a picture which doesn't well represent the folks I've known, associated with and worked with.

Out in the public tho, I can see where spendy folks would be the ones that register in our awareness.

iPhones are really not that expensive, even if you spend $1000 on an iPhone, it's something that's useful to you in everyday life

I have a $150 phone and it's constantly slowing me down and wasting my time. When I switch apps 4GB RAM + 3GB swap is not enough to keep the other apps open, so I lose what I was writing on Reddit if I quickly respond to a text message

It doesn't have a lot of extra features like a good touchscreen (have to frequently select the correct candidate word), good GPS, NFC, OLED screen (actually I don't miss this as much as I thought)

I will buy a more expensive phone next time, maybe a discounted previous flagship

Off the top of my head, I can get a new LG V50 for under $200 on ebay. There are tons of phones around $150 with far better specs.

As for usability, iPhones are too limited for my use. I use apps that need root and others are sideloaded. I typically load alternate firmware (Not the current one tho. That was a mistake, I think). Many $200 android device are fast and capable but zero iPhones are.

Do iPhones come with preloaded carrier crapware like Androids do? I hope not and for that I'd give iPhones a plug.

If I were to use an iPhone I would jailbreak it on the first day.

> How can this be the case?

Jobs with degrees pay just a bit more than a family's responsible spending on expenses. We had news stories for ages about people in degree-req positions on food stamps/SNAP. The state resolved that by opting out of food assistance programs.

> How can this be the case? What decisions are being made that 14 / 15 people across tax brackets can’t save?

This isn't the correct grouping. It was that 1 in 15 were in one of the tax brackets, where savings was possible with disciplined spending.

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