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Comment by rubashov | Hacker News Reader

He claims it's "ridiculous" to expect people to save responsibly. Yet it happens in east asia, and it happened historically in the west.

The story is another demo of this curiously common mentality where nobody can be held to account for their choices. You can't say that people are fat because they're slobs with no self control, no, it's fructose, fast food ads, or whatever. The education test results aren't lousy because the kids are dumb and lazy, it's the teachers.

People aren't saving enough or taking enough responsibility in general because we're seeing the end-game result of four generations with a generous public social safety net. I could fix the retirement savings problem right quick: Bring back the poor house. If you want any sort of public assistance you have to live in a big concrete dorm with rows of bunk beds and do menial labor. Make some TV shows about living in one.

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If removing the safety net would fix things, why were they ever broken enough for the safety net to be put in place in the first place?

I don't see many people thinking that social security enough will be enough to keep them from being poor. Yet many of them still don't save much on their own. You think it's simply a question of the magnitude of the negative incentive, vs the far-future nature of it?

And what if I don't want the poor house to be brought back? What if I think today's situation (if you don't save, you're slightly better off than the poor house) is better? Likewise, it used to be more common for employers to offer long-term employment with pensions. It used to be more common for families to live together across generations. I don't particularly want any of that back -- it would limit my mobility and flexibility, and I don't want to stay in one place forever -- but people are not adjusting well to the new, more independent present.

hysteria over edge cases due to scope insensitivity.

If removing the safety net would fix things, why were they ever broken enough for the safety net to be put in place in the first place?

You're assuming that's the reason it was put there in the first place. I don't think that's the case. Before modern politics, it was as effective to solicit voters with promises of free goodies as it is now to solicit corporations.

I don't particularly want any of that back -- it would limit my mobility and flexibility, and I don't want to stay in one place forever

(Not sure I know what you're arguing here, so forgive me if I've misinterpreted your point) You should be allowed to make that choice. Forcing people to "come together and find common solutions that protect us all from risk" (read: implement more taxes, have gov't take care of us) eliminates much of that choice. Not only long term choice, but the sort of short term choice you seem to be talking about (mobility and flexibility). Head over to Europe to see. High taxes, incredible benefits, and a system that makes it nearly impossible to fire workers (even private workers), makes finding work very, very difficult. Unemployment for those under 24 is over 50% in Spain and Greece, and not much better in most other EU countries.

You're assuming that's the reason it was put there in the first place. I don't think that's the case.

I'm not sure how one could read much about what conditions were like in industrialized countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and not think that's the case. Conditions were really shitty for workers and the poor for some decades. People literally used to die in the street due to lack of health care; die on the job due to nothing even approximating a concern for workplace safety; die of cold due to no heating; die of hunger due to not being able to buy or steal enough bread; etc. Much of Manhattan was full of tenement slums with high mortality rates.

Head over to Europe to see. High taxes, incredible benefits, and a system that makes it nearly impossible to fire workers (even private workers), makes finding work very, very difficult.

"Europe" does not really have one system. The best examples of social-democratic European countries are probably the Scandinavian countries, which do not generally make it hard to fire workers. In Denmark, at least, it is exceptionally easy to fire workers. But there is also a strong safety net, which is the tradeoff: it's easy to fire workers, but they won't be on the street if they get fired. A similar pro-market-but-pro-services mindset is seen in other sectors of the economy. For example, the transit system is paid for largely by taxes, but privately run by contractors who bid for the right to operate it, unlike the publicly-run U.S. transit systems.

The basic model is high tax but high flexibility. I think that actually increases freedom and individual choice considerably compared to the American model. For example, in Denmark, people who were born with congenital heart defects have the freedom to start a technology company. In the United States they do not, because employer-tied health insurance means they must work for a large employer with a group health plan (unless they're very wealthy).

This comment really nails it. Employers should have all the flexibility they need with regards to hiring/firing, but it should not mean you wind up in the street. This is part of the reasons (IIUC), that "unions" in many Scand. Countries are quite different than American ones, in that they are more guild-like cooperatives (working along with business and government) rather than largely adversarial. A model that has the right mix of policies to allow dynamism without impoverishment is what's needed (along with a periodic reassessments to make tweaks), and seems like something that's seriously worth looking at here in the US.

Good point regarding Scandinavian "unions". This distinction sometimes makes it hard to discuss work related situations with Americans unless I take a large detour around what a union up here usually does.

Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice gives the original justification/proposal of it.

Of course, the social safety net isn't generous. I'm not sure why you think that. Social security pays out enough to keep _some_ old people from abject poverty. For some unfathomable reason, you think that reintroducing that kind of suffering is a solution?

Oh, wait, I caught it - "if you want any sort of public assistance, you have to ___". On rereading what you wrote, I don't think you're interested in proposing honest solutions to solvable social problems (i.e. you're trolling).

(And...your second-paragraph rant suggests that you think that people are, by default, totally immune from advertising and group pressure. Do you really think that this is so, or is this also trolling?)

  "He claims it's "ridiculous" to expect people to save responsibly"

It's actually "she". And what she really claims is ridiculous:

  * "First, figure out when you and your spouse will be laid off or be too sick to work"

  * "Second, figure out when you will die"

  * "Fourth, earn at least 3 percent above inflation on your investments, every year"

Read the rest.

"If you want any sort of public assistance you have to live in a big concrete dorm with rows of bunk beds and do menial labor."

I like that thinking. I had a similar thought. People convicted of white collar crimes should be forced to clean public bathrooms (like on the NJ Turnpike - but you can pick your favorite wherever you live) not comfortable community service. The displaced janitor can do the community service while the felon is taking his place.

> He claims it's "ridiculous" to expect people to save responsibly. Yet it happens in east asia, and it happened historically in the west.

Social Security is the most effective anti-poverty program in the history of the US. Before SS, old people used to reliably end up destitute in far greater numbers than today. I don't believe your claim that responsible saving, to an extent to allow people to reliably retire in comfort, happened historically in the West.

I agree with you overall. However, Social Security has come to be seen by too many people as a retirement fund when it was originally designed as a type of insurance. I think it should be means-tested.

I agree, but I think that being structured as a mandatory retirement fund is a political necessity. A means-tested SS where what you put in is unrelated to what you get out would be outright welfare and unacceptable to a large portion of the American political spectrum.

Ironically, stuff like means-testing SS and removing the cap on the SS tax are just the sort of things that would keep SS solvent for decades to come, yet those who constantly criticize it on the basis that it's not sustainable would probably never accept such changes.

You can't say that people are fat because they're slobs with no self control, no, it's fructose, fast food ads, or whatever.

I'm going to accept your premise that people are fat because they are slobs with no self-control. So what now? They're doomed to have tough lives and die young? I think that if we can make healthy foods more attractive, tasty, and affordable, then we should do that.

My cousin is an Optometrist. I currently wear contacts but I do not sleep in them. I saw a commercial for contacts you could sleep in and thought that would be a nice feature to have. Turns out that's not the case. It is unhealthy to sleep in contacts, regardless the type. Those contacts were developed because some people will sleep in their contacts even when they know it is bad for their eyes. So Optometrists won't prescribe sleep-in contacts to people who wear their contacts according to the directions (it would be less healthy for the eye than what they currently do), they prescribe them to people routinely sleep in contacts which are explicitly not made for sleeping in. The sleep-in brand mitigates the damage.

In other words, if you can design around behavior it is often helpful to do so. It is difficult to get people to change, especially when it requires giving up a near-term convenience or pleasure for a long-term gain. Nagging doesn't work. If we can help people with bad habits by making it easier to make the right choices or by making the habits less bad, I think that is a good thing.

Also Optometrists will try to prescribe one-a-day contacts to overwearers people who sleep in their contacts before they try the sleep-in brand. That is another example of making the right choice (remove your contacts at night) easier (throw em in the trash, no upkeep) instead of making the wrong choice less harmful. One-a-days are relatively expensive, though, so the sleep-in contacts are another option.

Actually retirement is a modern result of societies that have gotten wealthy. No one saved at all until relatively recently. Longer lifespans and lower marginal profits from having children have made saving necessary to sustain a rich lifestyle.

How does keeping people in a poor house help them find jobs?

On a related point it doesn't seem that there is any relationship between the generosity of the safety net and savings rate. You are right about cultural attitudes being a factor but this really doesn't have anything to do with saving. Wealthy societies and classes in general are more thrifty because they can afford can be.

As is usually the case, both extremes are wrong, or rather half-right. People are fat because they lack self-control AND corporations are lining up to take advantage of said lack.

I see no abdication of individual responsibility in creating a joint retirement fund to balance risk, merely a recognition that humans are impulsive and fallible.

In east asia, and historically in the west, peoples' kids too care of them when they were too old to work. The idea of a bunch of retirees living independently at the same standard of living before they quit working, across the huge swatch of society, is completely without precedent.

That was when people were generally a lot poorer than they are now and having children had little cost beyond food. Now, that math simply doesn't work.

>He claims it's "ridiculous" to expect people to save responsibly. Yet it happens in east asia, and it happened historically in the west.

Ive worked in east asia. The retirement conditions are attrocious, and grand masses of old people get f... all, or have to work till they are 70+ to the worst McJobs.

Back to the west now:

It's not about "responsibillity" and saving and investing etc.

For one it's about inequality. A $100K a year programmer can think ahead and make "investent decisions" and "savings". A hand-to-mouth low wage worker cannot. This "be responsible" things, basically says "screw them". And no, its no less egotistical and silly when it comes from "I started poor but made it, others are just lazy etc" outliers.

Second, its about power. Again, the upper middle class can negotiate better wages, and better medical coverage or retirement / insurance packages. The poor, not so much. And even less have they the skills to evaluate invenstent options.

Third, a bad turn, a sudden costly illness, a fraud and there goes your retirement fund.

This general attitude reflects bad upon society. It basically amounts to "we're not a real society, we're a every-man-for-himself race, and screw those that couldn't make it". People that don't care if a 70 year old is working every day at a Walmart or begging for change, are not society material, in my European mind.

You got it, pal. You are not the real society. And once the USSR is gone, nothing can limit the corporate greed anymore, so more and more people will be delusioned, separated, fed to machines and thrown away for the sake of the immediate profit.

That would be valid if USSR ever given anything like tolerable life conditions for the vast majority of its population. It didn't. Something that was shit and got worse shouldn't much of a concern.

It did. You are nit even 40% close now to the living standard we had in the USSR. Top notch education for everyone, the best public transit almost for free, more than enough cheap energy, and tech even now beyond your imagination. We even had the better Internet, although not for civilians. And man, our robots had really been on the Moon :-)

Nonsense. I lived in USSR. Subsistence farming was the main source of food - i hardly remember eating anything except bread which would came from the shop, not the family plot. And yes, my parents were Ph.D.s and worked in space program - kind of people that would fly first class would they be in the USA.

We may argue a lot about capitalism vs socialism, but however dire things may end up in the U.S., no American would ever escape on a homemade raft into Cuba.

You probably lived in some different USSR.

Excellent response. I would just like to add that I've heard it pointed out many times since the 2008 financial crisis that, e.g., China's extremely high savings rates have been a drag on its economic recovery. The level of consumption required for growth can't happen if the vast majority of your population is neurotically saving every penny for retirement because they know there's no safety net.

Another point that the article makes is that these savers are rarely making "investments" that would meaningfully help the economy down the road (a possible argument against nudging them towards consumption). They're "stuffing it under the mattress," parking it in the safest investments they can find (cf. lower-middle-class America watching Glenn Beck and then rushing off to buy gold from his advertisers). Or at best, they're entrusting it to a "guy" (as described in TFA) who does roughly the same thing for them, while providing a nice placebo effect that makes them believe they're "investing."

For what it's worth, before I was a programmer I was a biology technician, living in Boston (a very expensive place to live) making 32k a year.

I still managed to max out my personal IRA as well as hit the match on my employer's 401k. Sure, I was single and living cheaply...but that's the point. Live within your means and contribute to retirement. You don't need to make 100k.

>I still managed to max out my personal IRA as well as hit the match on my employer's 401k. Sure, I was single and living cheaply...but that's the point.

The point is if you're not making enough money don't have a family? Or choose between family/kids etc and retirement?

I'm not entirely certain of your statement (grammar), but I think it may also argue for not having a family before you are financially capable of having one.

Having a family is a privilege, not a right. You should only have one when you can afford to house, clothe and feed them as well as contribute to your own retirement. You wouldn't take a vacation to Tahiti if you can't afford to buy bread for yourself to eat...why do people think it's ok to raise a family on a salary that is not sufficient?

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