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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

Then what are you advocating for? If people can't parlay wages into assets that can at least perform in the same ballpark as wages then "work until you drop" or "crank out kids like a pre-industrial subsistence farmer" is what you'll get.

It takes roughly a career to amass enough assets to retire on and that's with a slightly reduced standard of living in retirement.

Unless you want to assume population growth forever (seems unwise IMO) you need one average career to generate enough surplus to pay for an average retirement. So far, buying assets (usually a mix of real estate and fractional ownership of financial instruments that are ultimately backed by companies and governments) is the most efficient way we know to accomplish this goal.

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Let me run this wild idea by you real quick: What if we, as a society could somehow pool our excess wealth for distribution among the elderly and infirm who are unable to work productively. This would provide everyone with a sense of, you might say, security that benefits society as a whole.

To answer you first question/comment (because you are not as original as you think you are): That is why robust electorate, transparent public governance, and durable anti-corruption institutions are so important.

The obscene rents being in government coffers is somehow magically better than in some billionaire's bank account? You can make bullshit ideological arguments about the intrinsic goodness of one or the other all day but the fact of the matter is that any system of providing for retirement other than literally just saving up resources (which would be horrendously wasteful) and then spending them over retirement is going to necessitate contributions by currently productive members of society. Money has to flow from worker to grandma somehow. And there's always intermediaries. And they always take a cut. Maybe it's you that's not that original.

> retirement is going to necessitate contributions by currently productive members of society

That is the point.

> And there's always intermediaries. And they always take a cut.

Should they not be compensated for their productive work?

> Maybe it's you that's not that original.

That is the point.

When the Social Security trust fund runs out you're going to find out really quickly that this "wild idea" doesn't work for the same reason Marxist Communism fails in the real world: you can't get the majority of a population to genuinely and altruistically operate within that system, especially when unexpected or abnormal events occur, like the baby boom or periodic market crashes.

no. must everything be taken to an extreme, made tribal and ideological?

note the phrase "asset income being periphery", which implies an optimum. the ability to own one appreciating asset is great. owning two is probably ok in most cases. 90 is highly unlikely to provide a net social good.

Ever heard of a pension?

Edit: sorry that was a bit snarky. The point is that there are other ways to ensure people have a reasonable lifestyle once their 'working days' are over. Those schemes are probably best to be tied in some way to contributions, but they certainly don't need to be simply a savings plan, they can be a means to provide social support for those that cannot contribute to the same degree as others.

edit: oops, wasn’t talking to me but will leave the below unedited for posterity (and to show my posterior).

again, that’s a logical leap that i was careful not to make. small-time investing can have positive externalities on an economic system; industrial, mechanized investing, not so much. if we didn’t try to turn everything related to money into a get-rich-quick gambling scheme instead of the (imperfect) accounting mechanism it was originated to be, we’d be much better off, pensions and 401(k)’s included.

Kids aren't the only system of elder care capable of avoiding the "side effect" of generating bonker rents for billionares.

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