🔥 This is why I oppose making things public institutions.
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In order to earn $100,000/year from your assets, well you're going to need a lot of assets. $2 million dollars at 5% interest would do it, for example. Lets say you've been earning $100,000 for a long time and save half of it each year, and reinvest the 5% interest. How long would it take you to have $2 million in assets?
~22/23 years, according to the compound interest calculator I just looked up (initial deposit $0, compounded monthly, deposits monthly). How plausible is that, do you think? Keep in mind I haven't accounted for tax, dunno how that affects things. 5% is probably too low a return on your asset, but saving half your income is ludicrous and obviously you won't be earning that much for 20 years.
My current investments (which are rather modest) are making 5-7% per year the last 5 years. so far this year they are on track to make 8% (still early though). I am not overly aggressive with my investments either. At my current rate, If I retire at 55 (~35 years of work) I will retire on more than I make currently.
Something that you should also consider. Most peoples income rises over their career, making it even easier to retire with more than you started your career with.
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Something smells about someone upset that they don't make more money at the beginning of their career than what they make later...
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@blakeyrat said:
The Earth in Larry Niven's Known Space universe had that implemented, and it seemed pretty on-the-ball.
That was also pretty close to a post-scarcity society.
That's not gonna happen. People here and elsewhere are already busy discussing how best to produce scarcity in areas where marginal cost has actually become negligible.
*cough*government*cough*
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People here and elsewhere are already busy discussing how best to produce scarcity in areas where marginal cost has actually become negligible.
Well, the problem is, even if there is no scarcity, if there is no exchange of goods for the work being done, then certain forms of goods cannot exist.
If there was no scarcity. I could grab anything I wanted at any time. Yet, I used that time to produce a work of art. And it was copied and there was no exchange of goods for that production. Then either art will be reserved to disposable time only (hobby), or not exist as a good for another reason.
Even when you have no scarcity, collection and refinement of the goods you need is your job. And there is opportunity cost on time spent doing so.
The only other alternative I can think of, is for the public to freely subsidize the production of art. Which means, donations or taxes.
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the histogram stops you from looking at the details too much.
That's no use to us. If we can't look at the details, we can't cherry-pick the ones we need to support our arguments. Get with the program, Chief.
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The Boomers had better watch out, as they'll be going into nursing homes soon, and those will be either very expensive (to grind as much money out of people as possible) or really horrible.
Why can't they be both?
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The only other alternative I can think of, is for the public to freely subsidize the production of art. Which means, donations or taxes.
Keep your dangerous pro-UBI arguments to yourself, you entitled millenial commie subversive.
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Keep your dangerous pro-UBI arguments to yourself, you entitled millenial commie subversive.
At what level of value does a person's work no longer justify having a guaranteed income?
My daughter made mud pies, should she get a basic income?
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coughgovernmentcough
This is why some people favor keeping government as small as possible. (Note I'm not advocating getting rid of it entirely. A certain amount of regulation is necessary, human nature being what it is. OTOH I was reading a news story just a couple days ago, in the context, I think, of Hillary Clinton and one of the most recent debates, where the phrase "light regulation of abortion" came up, and the incoherency really cracked me up. It's fascinating how people that are otherwise in favor of extensive regulation want this one thing not to be regulated at all, regardless of how many Kermit Gosnells come along.)
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I don't think you understand how Social Security works. Millenials are having their Social Security tax dollars redirected to pay for the Boomers, and not for their own futures. Why should the Boomers sit on their asses while their children and grand children pay for their standard of living for the next 40 years?
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Millenials are having their Social Security tax dollars redirected to pay for the Boomers, and not for their own futures.
Wait, are you saying that SS is a legalized Ponzi scheme? Huh.
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Not quite a Ponzi scheme, but it's closer to a pension plan. And it's a pension plan whose actuarial/demographic assumptions have been violated on a massive scale, so that it is effectively unfunded.
So the Boomers paid for the WW2 generation's retirement. The Boomers were a larger cohort than the WW2-generation, so they paid a relatively smaller share of their income for other people's retirement than the Millenials will have to, since the Boomers are a much larger cohort (the biggest single cohort ever in the history of humanity). Worse still, the Boomers are living longer than ever. So the Millenials will have to pay a higher fraction of their incomes, for longer.
But the problem isn't social security per se. It's the demographic situation. (Use the Miller-Mogdoliani theorem -- it doesn't matter how the Boomers save. What matters is that they only saved money, not value.)
Money is not value. The value the typical Boomer created in life has long been destroyed by time and decay. So the dollars in their bank, retirement, and savings accounts are effectively counterfeit. They are backed by little to no value for Millenials, who are going to have to trade their time to fund the Boomers. (Gold is not value either, and the gold standard would just introduce a different set of distortions via scarcity rent).
A similar point can be made about the newly emerging service economy. It creates little value, since any value created is immediately consumed. Consumption takes value out of the economy.
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Not quite a Ponzi scheme, but it's closer to a pension plan.
You have that exactly backwards.
And it's a pension plan whose actuarial/demographic assumptions have been violated on a massive scale, so that it is effectively unfunded.
Which is to say that all of the money was spent as soon as it was collected.
But the problem isn't social security per se.
Right. It's Medicare that's going to be the big problem.
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Money is not value. The value the typical Boomer created in life has long been destroyed by time and decay. So the dollars in their bank, retirement, and savings accounts are effectively counterfeit. They are backed by little to no value for Millenials, who are going to have to trade their time to fund the Boomers. (Gold is not value either, and the gold standard would just introduce a different set of distortions via scarcity rent).
Not true.
The money in the bank is an opportunity cost decision over buying something that builds in equity and therefore has value.
So, if, instead of a 401k, the person invested in real estate, that would have value. Because they sold something, the value they added in their working years, and did not acquire anything for it, hence the saved value, it still has value. And that value is the opportunity cost of buying something with real value.
It creates little value, since any value created is immediately consumed. Consumption takes value out of the economy.
Actually it does create value, but the value is much smaller than a company where their assets is their production capacity.
In this case, their value is the established clientele, branding, all the work done to spin up the service.
But the problem isn't social security per se. It's the demographic situation.
Yes, the problem is social security. It was designed to kick back rather than pay forward, therefore any fluctuation in demographics causes stress and failure on the system.
That's like saying, the problem isn't the design of my airplane, it will fly on a planet with less gravity or denser atmosphere.
The problem absolutely is the design. The environment (changing demographics) should be accounted for in the design, and it wasn't.
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Businesses shouldn't be regulated, it causes them to shift to crime in order to do the things they'll do anyway. And that crime is far more dangerous for the innocent poor people who are just trying to make ends meet.
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even if there is no scarcity, if there is no exchange of goods for the work being done, then certain forms of goods cannot exist.
...thus creating scarcity.
The point is, if copying is trivially cheap and easy, then creators have to figure out how to get paid for creating, not for copying.
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I suppose, next they'll have claim to our 401ks because that money hasn't been taxed, and therefore subsidized by the government.
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The point is, if copying is trivially cheap and easy, then creators have to figure out how to get paid for creating, not for copying.
Then you have merchandising.
But that requires either a patent or a trademark, another artificial scarcity.
Even if you got rid of patents and told businesses, "Just make it better", you then have the problem of consumers being lied to about who made the product.
So you have to at least protect the business's name and image.
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Kind of a false dilemma, because it assumes that conservatives think free-market is flawless.Rather than many conservatives see free-market is being flawed, but less so than other socialized markets.
At the same time, conservatives perceive progressives to imply that socialized markets are flawless, which I'd be hesitant to insinuate.
You're forgetting Rule Number One of economic debate: In a mixed economy, successes are credited to government and failures are blamed on the market.
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trademark, another artificial scarcity.
It's not "artificial scarcity" if the consumers want to know that they're getting authentic Product X from the actual brand name on the label.
Patents, yes, those fall into similar territory as copyrights, but at least they haven't undergone the perpetual extension cycle that copyright has.
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You have that exactly backwards.
No, I don't. The capital structure is entirely irrelevant to the cash-flows, which are driven by demographic need.
Which is to say that all of the money was spent as soon as it was collected.
Yes, and that would have happened under any capital structure.
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Yes, the problem is social security. It was designed to kick back rather than pay forward, therefore any fluctuation in demographics causes stress and failure on the system.
The capital structure is irrelevant. Please look up the Miller Mogdoliani theorem. Capital structure does not affect the valuation of a tax-free pension plan. Only cash-flows do. And the cash-flows are driven by demographic need.
That's like saying, the problem isn't the design of my airplane, it will fly on a planet with less gravity or denser atmosphere.
No, it's like saying, "My airplane doesn't fly anymore because of all the extra CO2 in the air." Still a cock up, but an unforseeable one.
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It's not "artificial scarcity" if the consumers want to know that they're getting authentic Product X from the actual brand name on the label.
I don't really have a point this time, just pondering.
In my case, I did assume the customer wanted brand product.
This is artificial manipulation.
If every cheerios like product could only display the same image of the product, and no branding was allowed, the customer would be at a disadvantage only because they'd be victim to quality deviation due to the producer being different.
We kind of already have something similar. Produce.
Do you care where your banana is bought from?
In this system there's no real way to compete, is there?
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No, it's like saying, "My airplane doesn't fly anymore because of all the extra CO2 in the air." Still a cock up, but an unforseeable one.
Demographics was unforeseeable when they created social security???
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Yes, it was! Do you think FDR foresaw the largest generation in human history being born a few years after he died?
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You don't have to foresee an actual event in order to foresee the possibility of an event.
That's like saying the Presidents before Lincoln shouldn't have bothered with security.
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So, if, instead of a 401k, the person invested in real estate
Bad bad bad example. 2008 isn't that far of in the past.
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No, I don't. The capital structure is entirely irrelevant to the cash-flows, which are driven by demographic need.
But the cash flows are pretty much the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Withdrawals are 100% paid for by new payments. Which is exactly what Social Security has always been.
The capital structure is irrelevant. Please look up the Miller Mogdoliani theorem.
Seems irrelevant to a government operation like Social Security, which no private firm could legally get away with.
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Yes, it was! Do you think FDR foresaw the largest generation in human history being born a few years after he died?
More that he didn't envision lifespans to outpace the retirement / payout age.
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I did assume the customer wanted brand product.
This is artificial manipulation.
It's not artificial. Brands exist to carry a reputation. If you bought a Ford, and 3 years later the engine fell out of it, you'd probably be less likely to trust Ford in the future.
If every cheerios like product could only display the same image of the product, and no branding was allowed
Now that would be artificial manipulation. You'd have to pass laws which would go against what both companies and their customers naturally want. Customers naturally want to get a good, quality product (or at least, good value in relation to cost). Companies naturally want to convince their customers that their products are the ones that are good quality. They both need brand names so that companies can market their own products and customers can tell which company produced the product they're buying.
We kind of already have something similar. Produce.
Do you care where your banana is bought from?
In this system there's no real way to compete, is there?Often, they do. What if a salmonella outbreak had recently been linked to some banana plantations in Mexico? Wouldn't customers probably want to know whether they bananas in their supermarket might've come from those banana plantations? And wouldn't the supermarkets need to determine which bananas they might've received are being recalled?
Or what if they heard that Mexican banana farmers are treated like slaves, and every year many of them die due to malnourishment, unsafe work conditions, and lack of proper medical care for injured workers? Wouldn't some customers who heard that probably want to avoid buying those bananas?
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I don't think you understand how Social Security works. Millenials are having their Social Security tax dollars redirected to pay for the Boomers, and not for their own futures.
I don't think you do. What you described is how the system has always worked.
That doesn't mean it's a particularly good system, but if Millenials don't like it, they need to stop fucking around with whatever it is they're actually doing and get involved in politics, and tell their grandparents they are going to throw them to the wolves. Which is what they'd be doing.
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But the cash flows are pretty much the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Withdrawals are 100% paid for by new payments. Which is exactly what Social Security has always been.
As long as the inflow keeps up with the payouts, it's not a problem.
Ponzi fails because it consumes members too fast.
So it should have been very foreseeable that if the payouts outpaced the inflow, that you'd have a problem.
I mean, that would be basically saying.
"I was unable to see that it could ever go red"
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It's not artificial.
It's artificial because anyone can print a label.
The protection of the brand is artificial, even if the demand for that protection exists.
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Businesses shouldn't be regulated, it causes them to shift to crime in order to do the things they'll do anyway.
I have no problem with the concept of regulation. I have worked for places that refused to set up their environment so as to protect workers' health: a factory that (at least, so I was told) lost a couple of lawsuits every year over causing RSI injuries and just paying out, because that was cheaper than whatever it would cost to prevent the situation. I knew someone who was at the the start of that process; she had injured her wrists working with vibrating cutters (trimming flash off of injection-molded parts), and management was telling her, in violation of OSHA regs, they didn't have any office work for her and she needed to go back to the factory floor.
The problem is liberals don't think that any amount of red tape is too much.
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Sorry, I guess no one got the satirical comparison.
"light regulation of abortion" came up, and the incoherency really cracked me up. It's fascinating how people that are otherwise in favor of extensive regulation want this one thing not to be regulated at all
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It's artificial because anyone can print a label.
Anyone can print a deed to a bridge in Brooklyn and sell it to you.
It's not artificial to have laws which exist to clarify that you aren't permitted to lie about things like that, and punish people who do.
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Only in the sense that anyone can print a deed to a bridge in Brooklyn that they'll sell you.
That's exactly right.
Laws are artificial. Any law is a regulation.
So is protecting trademark. It is also a regulation that creates an artificial restriction on competition necessary to keep competition healthy.
Which is what most regulation should keep in mind. Regulation should also ensure that the competition is healthy.
The reason we have anti-trust laws and other things like that.
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Now we're just arguing over the meaning of "artificial" restrictions, which is kind of dumb.
An "artificial" restriction is one that the people to whom it applies wouldn't place themselves under voluntarily. If they'd come to the consensus that a restriction was necessary and then adhere to it voluntarily, then it's not artificial. And then they'd want to punish anyone they caught not adhering to it; that's not artificial either. That is the reason of the law.
Both customers and companies want to be able to trust that the brand name printed on a label honestly represents the company which produced the label. So the consensus would be that not just "anyone" can print that label, and there need to be penalties if the wrong people do. That's not an artificial restriction.
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If they'd come to the consensus that a restriction was necessary and then adhere to it voluntarily, then it's not artificial.
When is law artificial then?
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but if Millenials don't like it, they need to stop fucking around with whatever it is they're actually doing and get involved in politics,
That's how we got the Berniebros.
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As long as the inflow keeps up with the payouts, it's not a problem.
Ponzi fails because it consumes members too fast.
So it should have been very foreseeable that if the payouts outpaced the inflow, that you'd have a problem.
For Social Security, just keep raising the age. Of course, we haven't done that. Medicare is more complicated, since it's not just a fixed transfer payment.
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When is law artificial then?
When the people to whom the law applies don't generally agree that people like them should have to follow it. But either a vocal minority, or an external group of people to whom it doesn't apply, got the law passed in order to force their opinion on everyone else.
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That's how we got the Berniebros.
I didn't mean just voting to join the Free Shit Army. They need to get real jobs in the real world, and then some of them need to start running for city council and working their way up.
I'm sure you know that, though.
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I didn't mean just voting to join the Free Shit Army. They need to get real jobs in the real world, and then some of them need to start running for city council and working their way up.
But once they've done that they'll have earned their
s and won't allow anyone to touch their entitlement programs.
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Medicare is more complicated, since it's not just a fixed transfer payment.
Part of Obamacare is to hide the cannibalism of Medicare.
The other part was a kickback to insurance companies.Finally there's the bit about pre-existing conditions to give everyone the idea that the bill is a good thing.
The biggest earmark scam of this century.
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Well, thanks for illustrating the raging retard point of view, I guess. It seems unnecessary, though, given that there's plenty of that in the original article.
On the off chance you're actually serious, do me a favor and follow this procedure:
- Google your country's total welfare expenses per year and write that down as X
- Google how many people live in your country and write that down as Y
- Calculate X/Y (I know, this is very difficult, but you can use a calculator if you know how). Write the result down as Z.
- Compare Z sum of money to what you consider the absolute bare minimum for survival for a year. You know, a roof over your head, two meals a day, no (paid) entertainment, no drugs, and dumpster diving for clothes. Just eating twice a day and sleeping under a roof and not spending a dime on anything else, ever.
- Ask yourself: Could you afford even that much of a miserable existence on Z amount of money a year? Could you afford that anywhere in your country, including the capital?
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I don't think the point is "Retired people are supposed to be poor". The point is "Young people starting their careers probably shouldn't be poorer than retired people, as a class".
Wait...what?
Young people should have less disposable income than retirees. The bigger tragedy is that it was ever the other way around.
Retired people, who should have spent their lives saving and investing money for retirement, and should have all their shit paid off, should have more fucking money than people starting their careers. The fact that anyone thinks that is wrong is entirely ass-to-front. FFS, the retirees have had a 40 year headstart on income and investment and paying shit off.
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Assuming their stats are trustworthy, it hasn't happened before, so your 'should' is either irrelevant or false.
The fact that people who have had 40 years to save and invest and have less disposable income than someone in an entry level position is horrible. If this has always been the case, then that is a damned good reason to increase financial education. It won't be hard to do, we do ~0 now, there is nowhere to go but up.
I agree that someone at the end of their career is going to be earning more than someone at the start of their career, and going to have more assets. But once they've actually retired and are living off their savings or pension, it'd be surprising for them to have more disposable income than their grandkids. Might suggest that something is fucked up with the economy the grandkids are going into.
Index funds would get you ~11.85% over the long haul. $100/month from age 25-65 gets you $979,307 at retirement age. I don't feel like doing the calculations on the other end (and to simplify them I went with 12% for the previous calculations), but if you pull off just 7% gets you nearly $70K that you can spend, without touching your principal and still allowing it to increase at the rate of inflation.
Do the calculations for yourself.
Yeah, this example is oversimplified. It still shows that the way things have been is entirely ass-to-front.
