It’s a social welfare program like any other. So if politicians are “stealing” social security money, it’s not yours, it’s the beneficiaries. Similar to if they were stealing food stamps.
Like all social welfare programs it can be amended, changed, done away with, etc and it’s not “taking your money”. That money was gone when the taxes were paid.
If you want social security to be an existent and viable social welfare program when it’s time for you to receive it, vote for parties and politicians working to make that happen and punish those that don’t.
Or conversely if you don’t want that welfare program to exist vote that way.
But don’t treat social security as some bank account you’ve paid into, it’s not that.
This doesn’t work with open boarders where those who get in will eventually be allowed to vote, the US has had amnesties before. A case of the government choosing their constituents rather than the other way around.
Most people that I know my age (millennials) pretty much assume SS will have run out by the time they need it. I can only imagine gen Z would be expecting social overhaul sometime during their working careers.
Maybe that's true, but "it's not welfare, it's your money, your benefit is proportional to your investment, etc" has been the marketing since inception. It's certainly what I was taught in high school civics.
It's not that, and it cannot ever be. Any government that "saves" dollars in a social security account is lying to themselves and their citizens.
At a national level, dollars are a way of measuring the pie, they aren't the pie itself. A government can't put a trillion dollars into a savings account one year and then take it out a decade later. If they pretend to do that all they are doing is destroying a trillion dollars today and then creating it again a decade later, causing massive inflation and deflation.
A government can only save tangible items. If they spent a trillion dollars on building retirement homes and training nurses, then those will be available for purchase by private or public dollars in the future. Anybody looking at the book and saying "there's a trillion dollar deficit, we're stealing from the future" would have it completely backwards.
Isn't that only true if the government is spending that money in a way that creates wealth down the line? I think that is a very debatable notion. Not only is the government not creating that army of doctors and nurses, it's allowed the creation of a system where only a limited amount of doctors and nurses can be made privately. They are not good stewards of the money looking out for your grandkids best interest.
Yes exactly. Which is why the amount of the deficit isn't particularly relevant, it's how it's spent. For example, giving everybody COVID relief cheques makes inflation worse, but spending on green infrastructure lowers inflation in the long term.
In which case… I’ll probably have as many kids as I can afford and hope for the best at this rate.
Worth remembering the US is the longest-running country with the same constitution (Britain doesn’t have one and has changed politically in significant ways compared to the US in the last 240 years). All good things come to an end. The US is statistically overdue.
One person or one family can have all the ammo, but they are not going to be able to do much against a larger tribe.
Also, the US constitution has been amended.
That was also a canary in the coal mine moment. Amazingly the ban lasted until 1974.
Not really a canary when taxpayer funded bailouts have occurred numerous times over the existence of the US. It is just the way societies work, you just need to make sure your assets keep appreciating at at least the rate that the currency’s purchasing power is reduced.
Schools ask for $20k, government lends $20k. Schools ask for $30k, government lends $30k. $40k, $50k, $60k, $250k, why should the schools stop? Zero underwriting, zero incentives to not waste money.
Is there any legal mechanism to do something like this?
Maybe if the student signs a contract allowing the University to do so.
However, that scenario you are describing is unlikely to last beyond those people who were given the loans before student loans became dischargeable. Lenders would simply become extremely picky when giving out student loans, in the scenario where student loans are dischargeable.
Probably something along the lines of "oh, so your degree is not in CS/engineering/pre-med/<other-high-earning-potential-degree>? And you aren't taking the loan out to attend Stanford/UC/<random-Ivy-school>? And you don't have much in terms of collateral assets to be discharged in case of a bankruptcy either? Well, we cannot offer a loan, sorry". Which would essentially make student loans not an option for vast majority of students.
However, I followed the logical chain of thought of where that approach would lead. And I honestly don't want to live in a world where we reserve liberal arts and other non-STEM degree just for children of the wealthy, while the rest have to settle for "useful degrees". And I am saying that as someone who went to a college where almost everyone was doing STEM (which makes sense, given it was an engineering school).
It is probably more accurate to say that student loan debt is technically dischargeable in bankruptcy, but it is extraordinarily difficult to do so, since you need to prove undue hardship.
It did happen once in 2020 however, so it may become more common in the future.
What's all the overhead is for if professors are being paid poorly.
The ironic thing is that the former professor is an ex-CEO who had tens of millions before he ever taught a class.
"For whoever has, to him shall be given..."
The "wrong people" that OP is against subsidizing is the fraudulent higher education business in the United States. Government should subsidize some things, where markets fail (markets are just a tool, after all), but in this case we're going to be giving these universities and institutions a green light to do whatever the hell they want with tuition costs. They'll raise them again, for no real reason, because why the hell wouldn't they? Uncle Sam will pay for it.
Perhaps we should just nationalize the endowments instead.
Isn't part of the ballooning costs that student loans are easy to get and backed by the government?
What's the alternative to investing in the US economy? Are you investing in foreign stocks? Gold? Cattle?
I'm not an economist, but I would expect that if things go badly in the US, it will mean devastating recession everywhere, including China or whoever is going to be the next dominant economy, at least for a time until the global economy reorganizes itself, so I would think you're screwed either way. Maybe the transfer of economic dominance will happen gradually, in which case you may as well put your money in the US economy until there's evidence that the US has peaked, right?
Lastly, the UK doesn't have a constitution? I thought it was a "Constitutional Monarchy" which presumably implies a constitution?
(As I understand it, not being British.)
> What's the alternative to investing in the US economy? Are you investing in foreign stocks? Gold? Cattle?
A paramilitary organisation, so when governments finally collapse, you will be there ready, able to take everything you want like a candy from a child.
Rather the opposite? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
My great-great grandfather didn't have "health insurance" or "social security deductions", and neither did yours. Yet we exist as their descendants.
Evangelical advice about "death preparation" is the original "buy the cryptocurrency I already own".
I am the youthful energy of an aging empire, and so are you. I do not look forward to doing nothing. When I begin to feel the pangs of mortality - what will my character be like?
"All men die, not all men die whining."
To be born at the beginning of the longest cumulative period of R&R [0] since the beginning of recorded history is to instinctually rear children (policy influence) with a value system that revolves around "comfort" (a Permobil factory is coincidentally located next to my Amazon alma mater BNA2 [1]).
The Greatest Generation [2] survived the turmoil of their youth (fighting an "enemy" as it was reacting to stagnant, lifeless neighbors) and after becoming investor class (age 60-90), they completed their magnum opus by bringing back [3] the first extralunar beings [4] (equipment built by employing the hands/ingenuity/ambition of the youthful, inspired Boomer Generation).
To have many children and make them build spaceships is why global encyclopedias [still] call you "the Greatest".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/36%C2%B007'23.7%22N+86%C2%...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Generation
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
[4] https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/apollo-11-moon-la...
I've been hearing this my whole life, and through circumstances worse than they are now. You want high interest rates? Rampant inflation? Try the 70s and 80s. Unstable world governments? phhhhhhffft I'll grant you, a certain political party has gone off the rails, but it's otherwise same shit, different decade. And as I now near the point when it's time for the SSA to start cutting me checks (I've still got a few years), it looks like they will still do exactly that.
That said, I've always planned finances as if Social Security won't be there when I retire.