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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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the scam is that it's considerably worse than a normal investment account.

So? It's not supposed to be. Whatever people say, it's more of a benefit than a public retirement account. After all, it's current revenues that pay for current expenditure.

When it's one of the biggest line items on a tax bill it kind of bears scrutiny. It's a 12.4% income tax that you see literally no benefit for until your sixties. This is a tremendous amount of money and I'm almost certainly going to see much less of it in my lifetime than I put in. It's the old taking from the youth. How people can defend it while shooting down UBI is beyond me.

It's the old taking from the youth.

Sort of, but everyone who lives to an old age benefits; you might well pay more in than you get out, but it exists as a safety net for everyone, so even if you find yourself impoverished at 65 you still have that security.

Not to mention certain groups get a much higher payoff than others, depending entirely on lifespan. Statistically a black man paying into social security will only collect for a few years before death, while Asian and Jewish women will get a return many times greater by living to their late 80s.

Small differences in life expectancy turn out to be huge in terms of "years lived after age 65", and the inevitable raising of SS collection age will only make that worse.

If anything, one would think the scam would be the confusing nature of sending some money every paycheck into the program, being required to have sent some amount over some number of years before being able to qualify for it but that the program is not and has never been anything like a personal account.

The scam is that after all of the smoke and mirrors you just described the money you can expect to be entitled to compares unfavorably to spending it on treasury bonds. It's billed as paying for your retirement but it's very much a wealth transfer.

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