It's probably true that people wouldn't die in the streets w/o SS or Medicare. Something will step up - mostly their children. But the quality of life of our retirees will drop immeasurably. Dying in the streets is not the only metric.

Do you really think that the younger generations (the first generation in forever to be less well-off economically than their parents) would be able to shoulder that burden?

To the point of their parents not literally dying in the street? Yes.

Does the whole family's quality of life drop considerably so CDL's BFFs can upgrade their vacation home(s)? Yes.

Idk about "literally in the street" but almshouses and such would become the norm again. Let's not sugarcoat things.

CDL, have you read any Charles Dickens?

Yeah I guess so for the olds who don't have kids. Dammit Toonces.

I think you vastly overestimate the economic ability of most of the country's households to provide for an elderly relative (or relativeS) in addition to their own needs

Like half the country struggles to just get by on their own

Old people don't eat much and rarely poop. They just need a small bedroom and access to a TV with CBS.

You don't have any experience with this do you

Either we read the same article today or I read something that basically said exactly this earlier today.

you know who else thinks that about vaccines?

The Human Health Secretary of the United States Tom Price

WAAF

Make Polio Great again

hey suzzer maybe your dad should have gone into FINANCE, ever think of that?

Ending social security is an idea so stupid it shouldn't be entertained even in a theoretical discussion. It has zero basis in reality.

I see clients on basically a daily basis who have not saved nearly enough. There's no chance in hell they'd save more if SS didn't exist. Theyre just not mentally capabale of grasping the concept of saving. And these are highly educated people for the most part. Taking it away would literally be the end of civilization.

I feel like people could save more if societal behaviors were encouraged to change. And I don't think this would be that hard of a trend to reverse.

However, pretty much nobody with any sway/power would want this since 70% of the economy is consumer spending and more saving would slow it down considerably in the short-term.

Yeah, so just have taxes pay for people's retirement. They spend it immediately. More jobs open up. What's not to like

That's fine but a larger point could be made that society would be a lot better off if we were more fiscally conservative. Whether changes were made to SS or not.

So we can invest in things that nobody's buying? I've never really been convinced

Could it?

Heh. Just my musings, not from anywhere. What article was it?

Meanwhile, in Brazil;

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-michel-temer

I think I'm starting to like this guy.

Social Security discussion ignores the factor that for those who do save for retirement, expected social security benefit is currently part of the calculation.

Other dirty little secret finance bros don't like to talk about is that retirement saving has way more to do with luck than sound financial planning even with GOAT indexing. The rate of return you get over your lifetime plays such a huge factor in how much you end up with. Lets say a 30 year old currently has $100k in their 401k. If they never invest another dollar, but the market returns 8% annually, they'll have approximately $1.5M at age 65. If instead, the market only returns 4% annually over this time period, that same 30 year old would need to contribute $15k annually to end up with the same $1.5M at age 65.

They can use UBI as part of their calculation then.

Also, this isn't a secret. Its a thing called math. People have been using math for millennia.

The math part isn't what I was referring to bot, it's the fact that finance bros never like to talk about how much luck is involved with actually ending up with a 401k that someone can adequately retire on.

CDL seems pretty ok with luck being a (the?) primary factor in determining individual economic outcomes.

While your point is fair, FWIW the worst 35-year return in the history of the Dow is ~6% annualized. Over that long of a time horizon, things even out pretty well, and savers are welcome to assume conservative returns if they'd like.

ETA: assuming reinvested dividends, obviously