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Comment by chrisabrams | Hacker News Reader

I think the older generation should give way to the younger generation. After all, it is the younger generation that is required to run the world while the older retires. However, as it is currently, the older generation is robbing the younger generation. The younger generation is paying for entitlements that it knows it will never receive. That is not sustainable, fair, or in my opinion: necessary.

It should not be the governments job to manage retirement funds. That's why I said it's a power play, because if you made social security an open market with competition, you would probably see more positive support and results.

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"Probably" see better results? I don't have, nor will I fetch for, the number of people who are solely reliant on SS, but my father is one of them. And he said the exact same words as you to me when I was a sprout. Now, after some bad decisions, and health issues as a direct result of long arduous work, he is glad to have that net.

Please, don't tell me about my duties as a son, I've supported two family members through cancer, simultaneously. If/when it comes to it, he will be taken care of by me & siblings. How about the millions? who don't have children able to care for them? The streets is it? More welfare? I'd love to hear about a more sustainable option that doesn't include 'probably'.

That's great that you've recognized your duty to your family, but what happens when your children retire? What process is in place to help them? Current projects barely keep things solvent for the retiring baby boomer generation.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul isn't sustainable [1], but that's what social security is. Social security is not a guaranteed solution. If we have to raise taxes or collect additional taxes, that makes it a ponzi scheme. Cutting benefits is similar: you either lose the money now or later.

Discussion forums such as this are one of our few hopes for generating s sustainable solution. Just because a solution doesn't currently exist doesn't mean we should be complacent with how things are.

[1]: http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/22/pf/social-security-medicare/

It's not your money to 'lose', and welfare programs do not rob Peter to pay Paul. They are just that - welfare programs. Wealth redistribution. There is nothing fundamental about them that makes them pyramid schemes.

We already have a sustainable solution: admit more people to the workforce via immigration. As more of the baby boomers die off over the next `03 years, the pool of retirees collecting social security will shrink back towards the mean. You seem to be under the impression that the demographic bulge is a one-way thing.

This is not a sustainable solution.

This is kicking the can down the road.

The population of any closed system, whether country, continent, or even planet, cannot grow indefinitely. And any system that expects indefinite growth to sustain itself will invariably become exhausted when rate out exceeds rate in for a sufficient duration.

Immigration alone may be a stopgap, but it is by no means a solution.

We're not in disagreement, I'm a reluctant participant for the common good. Part of my point was, the sky was falling 40 years ago for those who blamed the previous generation and protested paying in. And the SSA is still viable today and keeping those 'boomers' off the streets. It could fail tomorrow, and it's going to take policy makers with a backbone to keep it up, but that's what we have today, as a functioning society that takes care of their elderly and infirmed. Mostly. Considering what travesties private healthcare, prisons and pension funds have gotten us, I tend to doubt an 'open market' solution is more sustainable to what we have.

IANAEconomist.

It's not a retirement fund and was never intended to be. Social Security was always envisioned as a social safety net to provide enough support to elderly people to keep them off the streets and fed, nothing more.

In that case it really ought to be means-tested, much more than it is now.

Well, find a way to stop retirees from voting then.

It should not be the governments job to manage retirement funds.

Sez you. I'd like to outsource that job to them as private financial advisers often seem to put their own interests ahead of their clients', and I really don't know how to evaluate competing investment vehicles except int he most shallow way. I'd really like to delegate that job to someone, and I'd really like to join up with enough other people to feel the same way to delegate it to the same entity and enjoy the resultant economies of scale.

If enough people decide they want government to perform some function on their behalf, and it seems like a majority of people over several generations of western democracy in multiple countries do want the government to run a pension system, then it damn well is the government's job.

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