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Comment by abledon | Hacker News Reader

How much money does one need to live in retirement? If they are doing daily exercise(1-2hr), cut out most processed foods and sugar , no alcohol , cook all their food from scratch using cheap staple ingredients , entertain themselves with books , community , local events and cut out expensive vacation plane trips (only an invention of the past century). An ‘uncomfortable’ lifestyle shift but doable for a human.

[edit] Yes for people who are permanently injured, its great we have these systems in place. But for otherwise healthy retired individuals, I think the 21st century western 'retired' lifestyle is a bit rich in comparison to what the rest of the world is living.

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Just because something's technically doable for a person doesn't mean that the government is going to be able to enforce that on a population eho was expecting a different and, more importantly, a better life than that. That's how you get rebellions or voted out of office if you're the politician trying to enact such legislation.

We have a problem in the US where no one wants to be told what to do my the government but they also expect government handouts regardless of their behavior, and this is a bipartisan issue so it's not some minority of the population that needs to be convinced

How much money does the low-taxed wealthy need that so many others need to live a paupers life style. Is there not productivity enough in our society to provide better?

What are you talking about? The wealthy are not low taxed, the US taxes the wealthy more than just about any other OECD country.

Source: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxe... Figure 2.

What are you talking about? figure 2 is a share of total tax total revenues by source. Figure 1 shows that Us total tax percentage of GDP is lower than every OECD nation out there with the only lower total tax share in the nations of Korea, Ireland, Chile and Mexico.

The figure 2 breakdown also does not distinguish between taxes on Income + "profits", and capital gains and corporate taxes where the wealthy accrue significant wealth are very low in the US...

Go read it again. The only reason the US is lower on a GDP basis is that the US does not have a VAT on goods and services (which as you know, hurts the poor much more than the rich).

i.e. the US taxes the wealthy much more than virtually any other country.

The VAT figures into the "total taxes" of figure 1 as described in the last paragraph is broken out as "goods and services" category of fig 2. This still does not change the meaning of fig 1 where the US is strongly below average taxes.

If the wealthy are the most taxed in the US, how is it what inequality of both income and wealth is massively skyrocketing in the US?

>If the wealthy are the most taxed in the US, how is it what inequality of both income and wealth is massively skyrocketing in the US?

Asset appreciation - a massive bull run in the stock and housing markets. The side effect is that those who own assets benefit far more than those who don't.

When everyone talks about Bezos making a huge amount of money this year, they're talking about his unrealized gains. If he actually tried to realize those gains into USD (at which point he'd pay taxes), his wealth would shrink very quickly as Amazon's market price dropped.

Also, VAT is a relatively regressive tax.

That reminded me of this quote from Arnold Bennet[0]:

"Nothing that really helps towards perfection costs more than is within the means of every person who reads these pages. The expenses connected with daily meditation, with the building-up of mental habits, with the practice of self-control and of cheerfulness, with the enthronement of reason over the rabble of primeval instincts--these expenses are really, you know, trifling."

[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=XKcyIXBVALsC&pg=PA99

The point is that these people worked under a contract that promised them a certain pension for a certain amount of work. Even if the amount was unrealistically high, reneging after the person has put in all the work is basically fraud, or theft of wages.

While you're right about the broken promise amounting to being defrauded, a similar argument could be made about tax payers who will be responsible for picking up the tab (Millennials, Gen Z etc.): They're going to have their wages taken for promises they never made in the first place, while also not having the same benefits enjoyed by those that came before them.

While the outcome might be similar, I think a new generation reneging on the deals for that reason might be more legitimate. But just saying "oh, we lied" or "oh, we don't feel like paying you what we agreed (e.g. by raising taxes)" is pretty bogus.

Totally doable... right up until you fall ill or start to have medical issues and you can't care for yourself.

The people being discussed here are retired and are eligible for Medicare.

You're talking humanity here abledon. Too bad that isn't what the internet wants.

unless you get injured.

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