Why does the government get to decide when we retire?
As for why - the same reason why they get to decide what side of the road you drive on and what laws you follow. They rule the patch of land you were born on, and if you don't like it you can either participate in the system (assuming it's a democracy) or leave.
"There is no moral justification for the government setting a retirement age, but they are able to. So it doesn't matter."
There is a minimum age to collect old age benefits from the government. The justification for that should be obvious.
The justification is to force people to work until they are too old to do so. Then steal whatever they have left with medical bills and price hikes on necessities.
Social Security constitutionality was ruled on just months after the 'switch in time that saved 9' associated with a threatening to pack the courts and evade the checks and balances built into our "democracy." They ruled it was covered under 'general welfare' in a way that was totally historically inaccurate.
Furthermore, FDR and congress purposefully had it packaged in an omnibus style bill to evade democratic scrutiny over the individual portions, by purposefully torpedoing other aid to needy individuals if SS didn't pass, so that lawmakers wouldn't be able to vote on democratic view of SS but rather being damned in a catch-22 where they'd be accused of not helping out the needy in other ways.
Basically the whole thing was designed to not only evade democracy but also the constitution.
[] Recollections of the New Deal, by Thomas H. Eliot, pp. 102-115 (Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1991).
Actually, the justification is to prevent old people from having to work. Retirement didn't really exist until the creation of pension systems in the late 19th century, and the modern social security system was a poverty alleviation measure introduced in the 1930s. Hell, social security was initially resented by older workers because of the cover it gave employers for firing them for being too old.
To make an overly dramatic analogy, if you were kidnapped and asked why the kidnapper was able to hold you against your will, the answer is because they've chained you up and they have the gun, and so on. That's literally the answer to why. The fact that what they're doing is morally wrong is completely irrelevant.
The government makes a moral justification of a savings plan but then when we dig down to it it's all ether and really just a scheme for bond rate arbitrage for the government.
The point isn't that might makes right is false, it's that the moral justification is a facade.
The real question is why governments insist on euphemistic names ("forced savings") that imply the opposite of the reality of the programs. And why people put up with such financial repression schemes. The answer to the first question is to keep people from being too upset too suddenly, too many all at once. The answer to the latter is that the people usually don't get a say in these things.
For Singapore this program probably makes a great deal of sense since Singapore is singularly vulnerable given its location in the world. To build what they did they probably needed these sorts of policies. I suspect most Singaporeans don't mind all that much, though I don't know. We would very much mind this sort of thing here in the U.S. though!
And the reason it decides that, apart from "because it can", is because many societies have seen what happens when it's left to individuals to take care of this, and they fuck it up in massive numbers, and the outcome of that then fucks up society.
It sounds to me like we have built a system to exploit people as much as possible. Treating them like farm animals.
How does socializing work if there are insufficient workers relative to non workers? I.e. the supply of food/shelter/medical care is insufficient to meet the demand?
The total fertility rate and the trends of that rate of basically every country, especially the ones with socialized medicine.
> Your duty as a citizen is to work and build your nation
What about the duty of the trust fund babies and idle wealthy? What about the duty of the capital owners? Why is the retirement age going up instead of down as productivity increases?
In the case of 401(k)s/DC plans and private pensions/DB plans, the government allowed savings without "confiscation," i.e. immediate taxation. They gave us the benefit of deferred taxation if you wait until retirement age.
No one is going to argue that the system is perfect or can't be improved. Good people get screwed over all the time and always will, the most we can try to do is minimize that population.
The current trajectory makes my question a lot of things, including this whole "government pays back that service with benefits" as it will be some time before I ever see a penny of SSI.
A lot of our taxes in this country seem like a giant waste or are grossly inefficient at best.
It's our duty to elect people who use tax dollars wisely and to vote out officials who neglect their responsibility to the people and use tax money to enrich themselves and anyone else willing to bribe them. Our government is filled with grifters because we've failed to hold them meaningfully accountable for robbing us and failing to provide the benefits we're funding.
Many of the grifters in government have been working hard to make it difficult to hold them accountable. They disenfranchise voters, they keep us afraid and our futures uncertain, they collude against efforts to reform the system they've established for their own benefit.
Government was never going to just let us have "liberty and justice for all" the job was always on "we the people" to insist on it. We can't just pay taxes and expect everything to work out. We have to use the democracy we have to force the government to work for us and not just for themselves. If we've reached a point where that's no longer possible then it's our duty to "refresh the tree of liberty" until we have a government that works for us.
Your media platforms may be owned by the shiny billionaires, but the laws they adhere to are created and enforced by mobs of average 10-4 workers.
You might as well ask similar questions about most basic laws and concepts behind how western societies work.
There's maybe a few hundred people worldwide who could casually drop a proper answer to your question while casually browsing hn.
I believe it'd be more fair to start answering your own question to show how far you are in your intellectual journey on that topic.
Any money that is possessed by the working classes is then taxed in the form of increased living expenses or directly by the government until they can barely afford the necessities that allow them to continue working. Once they are no longer able to do so, they are discarded and allowed to die of preventable illness, starvation, drug use or exposure.
Now, why does the government get to decide when I retire with my own money?