They'd had better pay me, because I paid someone else, so they owe me. Especially after I paid a few pittances in property taxes for their wonderful schools.
Talking to everyday people you need to realize that many many folks count on this govt pension and Medicare to live at all when they can't work. It's not an option. Company pensions are long gone, and 401Ks are only somewhat recently starting to take hold on younger people as a must have.
401k already covers more people than pensons ever did. and that is before we account for the pre-reform cases where the pension lost it all. (Though some 401k is lost to scams)
"covers" is pulling a lot of weight here, I know a lot of folks with pretty small balances, and/or who "had" to withdraw due to medical or other emergencies. They need a govt pension, otherwise we are going to have a lot of people on the streets.
I do not know how to get data for how much people have in 401ks. I do know a lot of people didn't have a useful pension back in the day too. Government pensions are too one size fits none though. If you want to retire when you are still able to work you have to save for yourself, nobody else will take care of you like you want.
I think we are in agreement on your points, I'm only stressing that we can't take an attitude of "sucks to be you!" if Social Security "runs out of money". Many folks will need this, no matter how they got to that point.
Good luck with that. There is a generational conflict coming, and in many ways it’s already here. At some point young people are going to be asked to pay more in taxes in order to bail out social security and it’ll radicalize them more than they are already. Given the option of bail out grandma or burn down the whole system don’t be surprised when they chose to burn it down.
I think it’ll look a bit like the collapse of USSR when the state reneges on its obligations and the people have to scramble to find new ways to make ends meet.
Edit; I can’t tell if the parent comment is satire, it’s too early in the morning for me
Sorry sonny, I'm afraid I've rezoned the entire USA to basically ban building the amount of housing needed, and by the way we locked all our houses into long term mortgages at negative real interest rates you'll never see again so we will inflate away your money via the fed to pay for our house.
I'll let you lower social security, but if you want someplace to stay you'll have to pay me a gazillion dollars or perform a $10 million environmental study before you can build it -- for a house I was able to build for $30,000 under the rules of my time.
That doesn't work when the young generation rebels - gen x might side with old people, but they may also see how the system is failing in burn it. Youngers seeing the problem in 2034 will not have reason to continue it.
for that matter zoning reforn is already a thing - so their property map not be worth that much.
of course when predicting the future always use plenty of salt
Ah yeah, you got me, I do get a bit triggered by boomerisms.
As a millennial I could already see the ladder being pulled away and was luckily enough to grab on to the bottom rung. Young people are so ready to burn down the system that they’re just waiting for the opportunity to do so and I don’t blame them. At this point it only seems to be a matter of time. I try to warn boomers that they should be more sympathetic because they’re going to have to ask the young people for a bailout and as bad as it is doing deliveries for minimum wage as a young person it’s infinitely worse doing that as a old person.
Unpaid the great generation for the work they did. Do newer generations deserve payment for theft (squandering investments, privatizing, destroying education and safety nets)?
They'd had better pay me, because I paid someone else, so they owe me. Especially after I paid a few pittances in property taxes for their wonderful schools.