Hacker News Reader

Comment by gabereiser | Hacker News Reader

I’m 100% on board with this if this means people will be able to actually save for a sabbatical. The reasons why pensions existed to begin with is that workers were pretty poor savers. Then the biggest pension generation voted that it’s pensions for me but not for thee and changed everything to 401k/IRA/Big Mattress and turned it back on the worker to figure out. All while keeping wages down as the world costs increase. One of the best things you can do is live debt free. Even if that means living in an RV or on a boat or tiny house or grandmas basement. Live debt free. Don’t become entangled in needing to work to survive. Living paycheck to paycheck because Bank of Pain needs their flesh.

View on HN

Living debt free feels great, and is a huge privilege. Debt is perhaps the biggest economic driver humans have invented. It gives people leverage they would not otherwise have. College. Small business. Home improvement. Of course there is the downside of usury, payday loans, cc debt, medical debt, inflated education expenses, and all the other troubles caused by debt. But well-chosen debt can be a godsend.

Especially when it's interest free - thanks, BNPL startups and venture capital! I appreciate interest free loans at your expense.

Defined-benefit plans do not work. Maybe you can pick out some arbitrary 20/30/40 year window where they did, but with current demographics and projects demographic changes the math just doesn't add up.

At least with defined-contribution plans you are able to save for yourself rather than just hoping your retirement fund is still there in 50 years and having to save for yourself on top of that.

>Defined-benefit plans do not work.

Or at least they were generally oriented towards multi-decade employment with the government or a large manufacturing company. There were pension fund protections put in place over time and I won't personally regret having a modest payout from a long-ago employer whose pension fund has made it through a couple acquisitions.

But defined benefit pensions are another case of tying important benefits to an employer which people shouldn't generally favor, especially today. It's nice having a small lottery ticket I was probably only vaguely aware of at the time but it's not really good policy.

>Then the biggest pension generation voted that it’s pensions for me but not for thee and changed everything to 401k/IRA/Big Mattress and turned it back on the worker to figure out.

With very low cost target date retirement funds and near free index funds, there is no difference other than cutting out middlemen defined benefit pension fund administrators. All the money is going to the same place, backed by the same federal government.

The bigger problem is that while it is easy to vote more money into existence, it is not easy to vote more labor and materials into existence.

The idea of the post is based on the fact that this period would be covered by the same social security fund that covers retirements right now in most of social-democratic european systems, so you don't need to save for sabbatical the same way you don't need to save for retirement under these conditions.

I’m aware, and I’m 100% behind it. It’s the right move. For Poland, for mental health, for invigorating the workforce. I complain about the US system because it’s sooo backwards and it’s what I know. It’s also being used to model other European efforts to eliminate pensions and retirement efforts.

> Live debt free. Don’t become entangled in needing to work to survive

I don't know about you but with no debt and no income I wouldn't survive very long, as I need annoying things like food.

I never said don’t work

> Don’t become entangled in needing to work to survive

If you need to work to get food, you need to work to survive

You’re right. So don’t let it get to that point. Work and live below your means. If you are working full time and struggling to put food on the table then take a look at your debt.

Work and save so you have 2x more days not working than you do working.

Which is fair if you don't like your job or don't get intrinsic satisfaction from making more money/increasing your lifestyle.

If you're working full time and struggling to put food on your table, that probably means you're trapped in one of the various poverty traps or financial spirals like healthcare costs that plague this country. These are very hard to get out of and telling ordinary people to just be the kind of extraordinary person who can escape that situation is not just utterly useless but also counterproductive. We point to the folks that have either through extraordinary skill or effort or luck gotten out of those situations and use them to justify perpetuating broken and exploitative systems that trap people in poverty and debt by claiming that clearly people can get out. "Just take a look at your debt" is among the most infuriating things you could say to someone in that situation. Oh it's that easy is it? Just "look at my debt"?

Ive gotten enough exposure to the flip side, the lender side, of these stories to see how we (meaning literally the people I went to school with) deliberately engineer these systems to exploit you. You're not just "looking at your debt." You have to escape a system engineered by Yale lawyers and Wharton mbas and internet grifters and psychologists and marketers and financiers and salespeople and mortgage companies and private equity (who owns your land, hi appolo!) and Berkshire Hathaway (who owns your mobile home) and hospital administrator and so so so so many other people

We are all presented the same choices (granted from different levels of privilege) and we all make decisions. Health care costs are ridiculous, I agree, and people shouldn’t go broke if they get sick. That said, they shouldn’t be eating garbage and things that make them sick. You can’t complain that your finances are drained from cancer all while your whole life you ate Taco Bell and McDonalds. Choices have consequences. Debt is a result of that. There’s really only two maybe three kinds of good debt. Everything else is a salesman trying to get you roped into a payment scheme like you describe. It’s the ultimate bazaar, backed by the lawyers and justice system saying you agreed to pay. Don’t agree to pay for things. Stop buying crap off Facebook. Buy a used car instead of making payments on a new one. Love yourself and stop trying to keep up with the neighbors.

I see this take as completely out of touch. It seems like you come from an entirely different world. Have you ever had to use the McDonald's apps for deals cheap enough to afford dinner? I love to cook and it generally saves me a lot of money but I've still been put in this situation before. Not eating garbage? That's a luxury not everyone can afford. Yes, many can afford it and still do so but that isn't all that is happening.

When it comes to debt sometimes you have to. I had the option to stay where I was where I would still be making <$10/hr or take on student loan debt for a chance to have a better life. I drive a hunk of junk I paid $300 that makes me feel unsafe every time I get in it. It wobbles to hell and I have to deathgrip it to maintain control. It's probably endangering everyone on the road too. But that's what I can afford at this point in my life. Although I'd rather not own one at all because it causes a lot of financial stress to maintain.

I don't buy much beyond the essentials and it's taken me a decade of constant effort to get to even this point. I've also been incredibly fortunate in many ways. There are a lot of people much worse off.

I grew up poor, by every measure I still am. However, I don’t have the debt that others do. It’s actually cheaper to eat healthy than eat McDonald’s. I’m not talking Non-GMO, certified organic overpriced food for a guilt sale. I mean cans, beans, rice, flour, etc.

Those who are struggling are continuing to attempt to do the same thing and it isn’t working for them. If you worked hard for a decade, without getting anywhere, whose fault is that? Society for keeping you down? Or you for staying so long? Everything is constant effort. I’m not talking FIRE movement, I’m just saying you don’t need that TV. You don’t need that Apple Watch. You don’t need that Tesla. I realize making atonement for your financial troubles is going to hurt even more. The other option is, like many here, start a company. I do know that it was extremely painful for me to become debt free, it’s still a struggle not to fall into it for all the reasons you describe. I choose to ignore ads, not watch media, ignore the pressures to buy buy buy, and I’m doing fine. Not rich, but not hurting anymore.

Have you considered eating the rich?

Get your iOs-flavored socialism outs here

You should work on building up savings then.

That's what people spend their entire working lives doing, so they can retire on those savings.

And this thread is about changing that...

At a population level that's where rent increases to extract every spare cent from workers.

Sure an individual worker can earn more and spend less, but at scale if everyone does that means that the excess money is taken by land owners.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It didn’t used to be this way. Rent control helps not just renters but keeps runaway property values from occurring due to renters. Without control to keep the industry from raising rents to 99% of what you can afford, we’ll continue to see what you describe. If I know humanity, it’s that they will always find the next sucker.

I could feed my family with part-time odd jobs, not a “real job”. Still working, but less and with more freedom.

Health insurance and healthcare bills would be what made it impossible, even with no debt.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com