“The bankers and Wall Street traders. Just because
you showed ridiculous incompetence in lending doesn’t mean that you, and the hideously exposed
like me, don’t deserve a second chance. God bless America! And its hard-working backbone! And
there’s still their pensions for next time!”
Joke attributed to George W Bush
This is ad-hoc bibliography collected mainly from mainstream (you can call it "yellow", if
you wish ;-) financial press. All recommendations expressed on this page should treated very critically.
Please read section about retirement
scams first !!! This is real danger for those close to retirement and all people already in retirement.
Sometimes scamsters represent "reputable" Wall Street companies; sometimes they are seniors
themselves and can even live in the same community and/or attend the same church. See this
short clip which provides a 6 minutes course on what is really 401K is about:
Representatives of "reputable" Wall Street firms often are peddling
some disastrous new financial instrument, the instruments that brings high fees to the institution.
If the investment it too good to be true is usually is. Stories of retirees who lost one million of
more due to financial scams promoted by slick financial advisers recently became popular topic in major
newspapers so the size of the phenomenon is probably substantial.
Published cases suggest that abuse of elderly by financial crooks is more like a rule
then exception. After all financial companies badly want fees and want to sell high fee product oblivious
to the personal circumstances and consequences of their actions on your financial wellbeing.
In any case please understand that we cannot be all robbers, there should be some victims too.
But
the natural balance between robbers and victims was distorted after Reagan due to reregulation and later
rolling back the Great Deal. Robber barons returned and they returned in quantity that will amaze future
historians. For all practical purposes 401K is taxable account, the only difference is that it is taxed
by Wall Street, not by the government. At some point the share of financial firms profits in S&P500 above
40%: we talk about crisis of overpopulation among robbers ;-)
Robert Shiller in the past made several pretty accurate forecasts of major economic events and it
might make sense to read his columns.
20100423 : time-to-replace-the-4-rule ( What a f*#cking retards those guys are. Did they ever suspect about the existence of Excel and longevity estimators? )
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking
and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow
morning."
"Over the past five years, the S&P 500 stock index has more than doubled. For the past
10 years, it has nearly quadrupled," says Orman. "If you have left your portfolios on
autopilot, that could likely mean that you now own more stock than you intend to, or
should."
Left to their own devices, your increasingly valuable stocks may have started to account for
an even larger portion of your account
... ... ...
Orman cites a recent analysis from Fidelity Investments on the retirement plans the company
handles. Fidelity estimates about 20% of savers own more stock than they'd recommend for
someone of their age.
Retirees who have the most money pay the most in taxes, according to a
recent
working paper
, but they're not necessarily rich.
"Most of the tax burden is carried by the top quintile of households,"
Anqi
Chen
, co-author and assistant director of savings research at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, told
Yahoo Money. But "it's important to keep in mind that when we think about the top quintile of households -- the top 20% -- they're
not the super wealthy."
Those in the highest quintile are mostly married couples with average combined Social Security benefits of $50,900, 401(k)/IRA
balances of $325,400, and financial wealth of $441,400. When annuitized, those assets and retirement accounts earn account
holders roughly $3,000 per month -- or $36,000 per year -- ostensibly making them middle-income earners, Chen said.
"That's some money but not a ton of money," Chen said, "and these households will have to pay about 11% [in taxes]."
(Photo: Getty)
The highest quintile pays 11.3% on their retirement income, while the top 5% is taxed at 16.4%, and the top 1% is taxed at 22.7%,
according to the analysis. Overall, retired households pay 6% in federal and state taxes on their income.
Researchers used income data from 3,419 individuals and 1,907 households included in the Health and Retirement Study, a
nationally representative longitudinal survey of older Americans. The analysis assumes the retirees follow the required minimum
distributions for their retirement accounts and consume only interest and dividends from their assets.
The heavy tax burden carried by well-off retirees demonstrates that even those who enter their golden years with the most money
are still short on savings, an ongoing problem for many Americans. Roughly 40% of the top quintile of savers are at risk of
maintaining their standard of living, meaning "taxes will make the goal even more difficult to attain," the study said.
For the majority of retired households, "taxes are negligible," Chen said, paying 0% to 1.9%. But they are far from lucky.
Those in the "bottom two-thirds of the income distribution don't have a lot in financial assets" that yield material income in
retirement, she added.
Yahoo Money sister site Cashay has a weekly newsletter.
Stephanie is a reporter for Yahoo Money and
Cashay
,
a new personal finance website. Follow her on Twitter
@SJAsymkos
.
"... If you're married and your spouse is covered by a workplace-based retirement plan but you're not, you can deduct your full IRA contribution as long as your joint AGI doesn't top $196,000 for 2020. You can take a partial tax deduction if your combined income is between $196,000 and $206,000. ..."
"... Spouses with little or no earned income for 2020 can also make an IRA contribution of up to $6,000 ($7,000 if 50 or older) as long as their spouse has sufficient earned income to cover both contributions. The contribution is tax-deductible as long as your household income doesn't exceed the limits for married couples filing jointly. ..."
There's still time to make a 2020 IRA contribution and lower your tax bill.
by:
Sandra
Block
January 13, 2021
As you get ready to tackle your 2020 tax return, make sure you haven't overlooked one of the best ways to cut your tax bill
and secure your future -- funding a traditional IRA. (There is no upfront tax break for funding a Roth IRA.)
You can actually make an IRA contribution for the 2020 tax year up until the time you file your tax return, which is due April
15, 2021. But why wait? If you have some extra income – say, from a
stimulus
check
– go ahead and deposit it into an IRA account now before you forget. You'll also give the money a little more time
to grow, which you'll appreciate when you retire.
And what about those tax savings? Well, depending on your income, you may be able to deduct your IRA contribution on your 2020
return. To contribute to a traditional IRA, you or your spouse must have earned income from a job. But, otherwise,
you
may be able to deduct contributions
to an IRA even if you or your spouse are covered by another retirement plan at
work. Plus, starting last year, seniors age 70½ and older with earned income can contribute to a traditional IRA, too.
Here's some more good news: The IRA deduction is an "above the line" adjustment to income, meaning you don't have to itemize
your deductions to claim it. It will reduce your adjusted gross income (AGI) dollar-for-dollar, lowering your tax bill. And
your lower AGI could make you eligible for other tax breaks, which are tied to income limits.
Who Qualifies
If you're single and don't participate in a retirement plan at work, you can make a tax-deductible IRA contribution for 2020
of up to $6,000 ($7,000 if you're 50 or older) regardless of your income. If you're married and your spouse is covered by a
workplace-based retirement plan but you're not, you can deduct your full IRA contribution as long as your joint AGI doesn't
top $196,000 for 2020. You can take a partial tax deduction if your combined income is between $196,000 and $206,000.
But even if you do participate in a retirement plan at work, you can still deduct up to the maximum $6,000 IRA contribution
($7,000 if you're 50 or older) if you're single and your income is $65,000 or less ($104,000 if married filing jointly). And
you can deduct some of your IRA contribution if you're single and your income is between $65,000 and $75,000, or if you're
married and your income is between $104,000 and $124,000.
Spouses with little or no earned income for 2020 can also make an IRA contribution of up to $6,000 ($7,000 if 50 or older) as
long as their spouse has sufficient earned income to cover both contributions. The contribution is tax-deductible as long as
your household income doesn't exceed the limits for married couples filing jointly.
Double Tax Break
Some low- and moderate-income taxpayers get an extra break for contributing to an IRA or other retirement account.
In addition to the usual IRA deduction, you may qualify for a Retirement Savers tax credit of up to $1,000 for contributions
to an IRA or other retirement tax plan. (A tax credit, which reduces your tax bill dollar-for-dollar, is more valuable than a
deduction, which merely reduces the amount of income that is taxed.)
The actual amount of the credit depends on your income. It ranges from 10% to 50% of the first $2,000 contributed to an IRA or
other retirement account. To be eligible, your 2020 income can't exceed $32,500 if you're single; $48,750 if you're the head
of a household with dependents; or $65,000 if you're married filing jointly. The lower your income, the higher the credit. But
you can't claim the Retirement Savers credit if you're under 18, a student, or can be claimed as a dependent on someone else's
tax return.
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@ Grieved | Dec 19 2020 6:01 utc | 135 with the rant about the Dems and Medicare for
All
The US government has been financialized like the majority of the Fortune 500. Since the
1970's the trajectory in the US has been to reduce government spending on social safety net
programs and privatize the Social Security Insurance program. While SSI was raped by
Reagan/Greenspan/Congress and taken from the independence of actuaries and made a political
budget football including false claims of being and "entitlement" program the safety net
social programs fared worse. In the early 1970's, when I was familiar with the planning for
and provision of social services like for developmental disabilities, alcoholism, mental
health, job search help, infancy care (WIC) and drug abuse, the concept of continuum of care
helped the different agencies collaborate and really help folks. Then the Fed stared changing
the rules of the way money was to be spent that developed columns of services that don't
interact/coordinate with each other as well as reducing overall low income support.
I also want to add to what you wrote earlier that humanity use to make other than the
throw-away-to-churn-the-money-mill products that were both designed and built better/to last.
It fits with our throw away food system with all that packaging and none of it refillable,
seemingly by design.....
....
....
because as I continue to write here, its all about the God of Mammon instead of the support
of the masses social structure with the underpinning of the God of Mammon way of life is
controlled by the global private financed owned elite and the support of the masses way of
life is exampled biggly currently by China.
For eight-and-a-half decades, most Republican legislators (and some Democrats) have been
trying to get rid of Social Security .
The first step in Trump's assault on Social Security's funding took effect Sept. 1st.
On Trump's orders, the IRS ordered corporations to stop withholding Social Security
contributions from paychecks, through the end of the year.
Speaking on Fox Business recently, Trump advisor Larry Kudlow said that later this year
Trump will order the IRS to continue the deferral indefinitely.
Social Security's chief actuary wrote that if Social Security is defunded, some benefits
will be reduced next year, and that benefits will disappear entirely by the end of 2023.
If you are, or if you know someone on Social Security, please pass the word!
I'm 52, won't live past 80 and have $1.6 million. 'I am tired of both the rat race and workplace
politics.' Should I retire?
More
I don't have much in savings and feel lost. What can I do? Dear Wondering in Alamo, You bring up a question I
think a lot of people have been asking themselves lately.
https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-2-1/html/r-sf.html
Start survey
U.S.
Your retirement distributions won't be taxed in these states: AARP
Ann Schmidt
,
Fox Business
•
July
31, 2020
There are 12 states that won't tax your distributions from
401(k)
plans,
IRAs or pensions, according to a recent report from
AARP
.
Of those states, nine -- Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas,
Washington and Wyoming -- don't have state income taxes.
Some states only partially tax retirement distributions, AARP reported. In Colorado, taxpayers over 65
can remove
$24,000
from
their federal AGI for their state taxes, according to AARP.
Other states have policies for taxes on retirement distributions that depend on your occupation before
retirement. For example, in Connecticut, teachers can subtract 25 percent of their retirement income from
federal AGI.
There are also 29 states that don't tax
military
retirement
income at all, AARP reported. Those states include Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho,
Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The remaining 21 states tax some or all of military retirement income, according to AARP.
One exception is in Virginia, where only recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor are exempt from
taxes on their military retirement income, AARP reported.
"... "By the Department of Labor's own admission, these are investments that are more complex, more opaque, less liquid, more difficult to value, with often higher costs than the investments that are traditionally offered through retirement plans," Roper said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. ..."
Managers of 401(k) plans now have the ability invest in private equity. In other words, your
401(k ) could soon take stakes in private companies.
The goal, according to Labor Secretary Eugene
Scalia is to allow investors to "gain access to alternative investments" and "ensure that ordinary people investing for retirement
have the opportunities they need for a secure
retirement
." The Department of Labor laid things out in a
letter that says putting 401(k) money into private-equity funds would not "violate the fiduciary's duties" of certain retirement
plan sponsors.
But some experts see a big downside.
Barbara Roper, the Director of Investor Protection
at the Consumer Federation of America, said the "significant risks" associated with private equity investments haven't been adequately
addressed.
"By the Department of Labor's own admission, these are investments that are more complex, more opaque, less liquid, more
difficult to value, with often higher costs than the investments that are traditionally offered through retirement plans," Roper
said in an interview with Yahoo Finance.
You 'could do much, much worse'
The DOL letter means that a 401(k) manager could now decide to invest in private-equity funds that previously were not accessible.
These funds traditionally have been reserved for the wealthiest traders and institutional investors. They typically come with higher
risk since private companies are not required to disclose nearly the same about of data with the SEC as public companies do.
The new rule could be tempting for average savers who may now have a roundabout way to get a piece of a company – like SpaceX
or AirBnB – that's still private. The American Investment Council, which represents the private equity industry, has
lauded the change , saying it will strengthen Americans' retirement security.
One thing that remains up in the air is how quickly the managers of the big retirement plans will embrace their new options. Companies
like Vanguard and Fidelity have not yet offered comment on the new guidelines. Another
outstanding question is whether these plans would list private-equity funds among the options for savers to choose from, or whether
private equity would simply be mixed into existing funds.
Alexis Leondis, an opinion columnist for Bloomberg,
recently asked if the move is worth the risks. “Many plan sponsors don't have the sophistication or background in alternatives
to fully understand the complicated structures of many private equity funds," she wrote.
Roper said that “the dispersion of returns in the private-equity fund space is huge, much broader than it is in the public markets.”
And while the returns for over-performing private equity funds can, indeed, beat the public markets, “if you get in a below average
fund, you could do much, much worse," she said.
An example of a big downside in private equity fund is SoftBank’s Vision fund. That fund
recently announced losses of $24 billion
after failed investments in WeWork and OneWeb.
According to
a 2018 study by the Stanford Center on Longevity, about half of American workers are saving money through a retirement plan at
work. Access to and participation in 401(k)s is much lower among younger workers.
A report from the National Institute on Retirement Security found that two-thirds of working millennials have nothing saved for
retirement.
A second rule change, over financial advice
A second change is coming soon and is expected to relax restrictions on the advice financial professionals give about their retirement
investments.
The change,
passed by the SEC last year with a compliance deadline of June 30, says brokers must act “in the best interest of the retail customer
at the time the recommendation is made, without placing your financial or other interest ahead of the retail customer’s interests.”
SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has said that the change is part of "raising the standard of conduct for broker-dealers," while he has
discussed in interviews how the best interest standard is different than a fiduciary standard.
According to the Consumer Federation of America, the move could lead to an understanding that investment advisers are not true
fiduciaries. A fiduciary is someone legally obligated to act in the best financial interests of the clients they are advising.
Roper
says that this potential new rule gives broker-dealers and investment advisers “virtually unlimited ability to act as advisers,
while simultaneously failing to regulate them accordingly.” They can now “mislead their customers into believing they are getting
trusted, best interest advice when they are actually getting investing recommendations biased by toxic conflicts of interest,” she
said.
Roper appeared as part of Yahoo Finance’s ongoing partnership with the
Funding our Future campaign, a group of organizations
advocating for increased retirement security for Americans.
Consumer Federation of America is an association of non-profit consumer organizations. More than 250 groups – from local agencies
like the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs to private groups across the country – participate in the federation.
All of these changes may not be noticed by certain savers who are often encouraged to take a “set it and forget it” approach to
their retirement.
If their 401(k) provider does end up getting involved in private equity, advocates like Roper say that "the promise of improved performance
is not necessarily met by the reality."
Ben Werschkul is a producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC.
Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) generally are minimum amounts that a retirement plan
account owner must withdraw annually starting with the year that he or she reaches 72 (70
½ if you reach 70 ½ before January 1, 2020), if later, the year in which he or
she retires. However, if the retirement plan account is an IRA or the account owner is a 5%
owner of the business sponsoring the retirement plan, the RMDs must begin once the account
holder is age 72 (70 ½ if you reach 70 ½ before January 1, 2020), regardless of
whether he or she is retired.
Retirement plan participants and IRA owners, including owners of SEP IRAs and SIMPLE IRAs,
are responsible for taking the correct amount of RMDs on time every year from their accounts,
and they face stiff penalties for failure to take RMDs.
When a retirement plan account owner or IRA owner, who dies before January 1, 2020, dies
before RMDs have begun, generally, the entire amount of the owner's benefit must be distributed
to the beneficiary who is an individual either (1) within 5 years of the owner's death, or (2)
over the life of the beneficiary starting no later than one year following the owner's death.
For defined contribution plan participants, or Individual Retirement Account owners, who die
after December 31, 2019, (with a delayed effective date for certain collectively bargained
plans), the SECURE Act requires the entire balance of the participant's account be distributed
within ten years. There is an exception for a surviving spouse, a child who has not reached the
age of majority, a disabled or chronically ill person or a person not more than ten years
younger than the employee or IRA account owner. The new 10-year rule applies regardless of
whether the participant dies before, on, or after, the required beginning date, now age 72.
The RMD rules apply to all employer sponsored retirement plans, including
profit-sharing plans, 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, and 457(b) plans. The RMD rules also apply
to traditional IRAs and IRA-based plans such as SEPs, SARSEPs, and SIMPLE IRAs.
The RMD rules also apply to Roth 401(k) accounts. However, the RMD rules do not apply to
Roth IRAs while the owner is alive.
You must take your first required minimum distribution for the year in which you turn age 72
(70 ½ if you reach 70 ½ before January 1, 2020). However, the first payment can
be delayed until April 1 of 2020 if you turn 70½ in 2019. If you reach 70½ in
2020, you have to take your first RMD by April 1 of the year after you reach the age of 72. For
all subsequent years, including the year in which you were paid the first RMD by April 1, you
must take the RMD by December 31 of the year.
A different deadline may apply to RMDs from pre-1987 contributions to a 403(b) plan (see FAQ
5 below).
Return
to List of FAQsHow is the amount of the required minimum distribution
calculated?
Generally, a RMD is calculated for each account by dividing the prior December 31 balance of
that IRA or retirement plan account by a life expectancy factor that IRS publishes in Tables in
Publication 590-B ,
Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) . Choose the life expectancy
table to use based on your situation.
Joint and
Last Survivor Table - use this if the sole beneficiary of the account is your spouse and
your spouse is more than 10 years younger than you
Uniform
Lifetime Table - use this if your spouse is not your sole beneficiary or your spouse is
not more than 10 years younger
The Decade in Retirement: Wealthy
Americans Moved Further Ahead https://nyti.ms/34pZAbD
NYT - Mark Miller - Dec. 14
... In 2010, the economy was just beginning to recover from the worst recession and
financial crisis in recent memory. The unemployment rate was high, the stock market was
coming back and millions of workers were worried that their retirement plans were ruined.
Since then, a robust economic rebound has put some Americans back on solid footing for
retirement, but progress has been uneven. Despite the gains made in employment, wage growth
has only recently begun to recover -- and remained flat for older workers. Retirement wealth
has accumulated almost exclusively among higher-income households, while middle- and
lower-income households have only held steady or lost ground, Federal Reserve data shows.
Trends in Social Security and Medicare also are troubling. The value of Social Security
benefits -- measured by the share of pre-retirement income they replace -- is falling, and
the cost of Medicare is rising.
For members of the baby boomer and Gen X generations, the odds of success are mixed. The
Employee Benefit Research Institute has developed a model that simulates the percentage of
households likely to have adequate resources to meet retirement expenses, considering
household savings, home equity and income from Social Security and pensions.
The model shows that the highest-income households have seen their odds of a successful
retirement improve sharply during this decade, and have very high odds of success.
Middle-income households, meanwhile, have seen some gains, but still have only 50-50 odds of
success. And the lowest-income households have seen their retirement prospects diminish
sharply -- among these boomers approaching retirement, their odds of success have fallen
during the decade from 26 percent to 11 percent.
"Retirement prospects improved significantly for higher-income workers who were fortunate
enough to work for employers that sponsor retirement plans," says Jack VanDerhei, the
organization's research director.
Let's consider how the retirement landscape has changed during the decade now ending.
Retirement savings: Up for the affluent
The stock market bottomed out in March 2009 -- and it has more than quadrupled since then.
Most retirement savers did not abandon equity markets during the crash, says Jean Young,
senior research associate with the Vanguard Center for Investor Research. "Some did, but the
vast majority stayed the course."
But the recovery has seen retirement wealth accumulate almost exclusively among affluent
households that had access to workplace retirement plans and the means to make contributions.
For example, Vanguard reports that the average balance for plan participants with incomes
over $150,000 in 2018 was $193,130, compared with just $22,679 for workers with income of
$30,000 to $50,000. ...
Humans have an amazing capacity to suspend disbelief, a trait that novelists, Hollywood and,
sadly, criminals, have used to notable effect. Here are some typical frauds.
Wire transfer scams: A retired businessman in his 80s was contacted by people who claimed
they wanted to do business with him. Thinking he was back in the game and investing in a real
deal, he wired them $400,000. When he discovered he'd been defrauded, he complained to the
scammers, who then passed him along to new crooks who said they could get his money back if
he would wire them $400,000 -- which he did.
Third-party scams: Some victims play an unwitting role in facilitating scammers' attempts
to defraud a third party. For example, a gentleman in his 80s gave scammers between $600,000
and $1 million from his bank accounts. After the fraud was discovered by his family and
financial institution, he lost access to his funds. But that didn't stop the scammers. They
set up a PayPal account under his name and Social Security number, convinced him to go to
TitleMax® and borrow money using his car as collateral, then had him put the funds in the
PayPal account to which they had access.
Gift card scams: Gift cards can be used to launder money without even having to
physically send the cards anywhere. A scammer convinces the victim to go to a store, get one
or several cards, and load each one up with money. Then, they have the victim scratch off a
protective strip on the back of the card to reveal its code number, take a picture of the
number, and then text the picture to a cellphone number.
Computer-hacking scams: A common ruse aimed at seniors involves a contact from someone
claiming to be a Microsoft employee. The fake Microsoft rep claims the senior's computer has
a virus or some other problem, which they're happy to fix. The senior simply needs to click
on an email link or download an attachment the rep sends them -- and pay a fee. With one
click by the victim, the scammer gains control of the victim's computer. One victim paid
about $300 -- over and over -- to the same scammers, who kept "fixing" her computer since
they could break it as often as they chose. The victim had no idea what was happening.
Door-to-door scams: A fraudster knocks on a senior's door and says her trees need to be
trimmed or gutters need to be cleaned. I know of two people who each paid a crook $30,000 to
trim the hedges at their house. No trimming took place; the criminal just hung out for a
while and reappeared to help the elderly client write a check for their services.
Transaction settlement scams: A scammer claims they need someone to act as an agent or
middleman to help settle a transaction, such as a divorce or property settlement. The victim
receives a check that looks legitimate, deposits it in their own account or a trust account,
then wires the money to the scammer. Of course, the check was fake, but the victim's real
money is gone.
Family member financial abuse: I could devote a whole article to this type of abuse.
Financial frauds within a family can be difficult to resolve. Is an elderly parent
voluntarily giving real gifts to a family member? Or is fraud involved? Without proper
documentation, financial fraud within a family can devolve into a he said/she said conflict
among siblings and others.
Even if the timing remains vague and the conditions uncertain, the government does seem to
have decided to launch a vast reform of the retirement pensions system, with the key element
being the unification of the rules applied at the moment in the various systems operating
(civil servants, private sector employees, local authority employees, self-employed, special
schemes, etc).
Let's make it clear: setting up a universal system is in itself an excellent thing, and a
reform of this type is long overdue in France. The young generations, particularly those who
have gone through multiple changes in status (private and public employees, self-employed,
working abroad, etc), frequently have no idea of the retirement rights which they have
accumulated. This situation is a source of unbearable uncertainties and economic anxiety,
whereas our retirement system is globally well financed.
But, having announced this aim of clarification and unification of rights, the truth is that
we have not said very much. There are in effect many ways of unifying the rules. Now there is
no guarantee that those in power are capable of generating a viable consensus in this respect.
The principle of justice invoked by the government seems simple and plausible: one Euro
contributed should give rise to the same rights to retirement, no matter what the scheme, and
the level of salary or of earned income. The problem is that this principle amounts to making
the inequalities in income as they exist at present sacrosanct, including when they are of
mammoth proportions (under-paid piece work for some, excessive salaries for others), and to
perpetuating them at the age of retirement and dependency which is in no way particularly
"fair".
Aware of the difficulty, the High Commissioner Jean-Paul Delevoye's Plan stipulates that a
quarter of the contributions will continue to be allocated to "solidarity', that is to say, for
example, to subsidies for children and interruptions of career, or to finance a minimum
retirement pension for the lowest salaries. The difficulty is that the way this calculation has
been made is highly controversial. In particular, this estimate purely and simply takes no
account of social inequalities in life expectancy. For example, if a low wage earner spends 10
years in retirement while a highly-paid manager spends 20 years, we have forgotten to take into
account the fact that a large share of the contributions of the low wage earner serves in
practice to pay the retirement of the highly-paid manager (which is in no way compensated for
by the allowance for strenuous and tedious work)
More generally, there are naturally multiple parameters to be fixed to define what one
considers to be "solidarity". The government's proposals are respectable but they are far from
being the only ones possible. It is essential that a broad public debate take place and that
alternative proposals should emerge. The Delevoye Plan for example provides for a replacement
rate equal to 85% for a full career (43 years of contributions) at Minimum Wage level. This
rate would then very rapidly fall to 70%, to only 1.5 Smic (Minimum Wage) before stabilising at
this precise level of 70% until approximately 7 Smic ( 120,000 Euros gross annual salary). This
is one possible choice, but there are others. One could thus imagine that the replacement rate
would go gradually from 85% of the Smic to 75%-80% around 1.5 – 2 Smic, before gradually
falling to around 50%-60%, approximately 5-7 Smic.
Similarly the government's project provides for a financing of the system by a retirement
contribution of which the global rate would be fixed at 28.1% on all the gross incomes below
120,000 Euros per annum, before falling suddenly to only 2.8% beyond this threshold. The
official justification is that retirement rights in the new system would be capped at this wage
level. The Delevoye Report goes as far as congratulating themselves because the super-managers
will nevertheless be subject to this contribution (which will not be capped) of 2.8%, to mark
their solidarity with the older generations. In passing, once again no account is taken of the
salaries between 100,000 Euros and 200,000 Euros which usually correspond to very long life
expectancies and which benefit greatly from the contributions paid by the lower waged with
shorter life expectancies. In any event, this contribution of 2.8% to solidarity by those
earning over 120,000 Euros is much too low, particularly given the levels of remuneration;
their very legitimacy is open to challenge.
More generally it is perhaps time to abandon the old idea according to which reduction of
inequalities should be left to income tax, while the retirement schemes should content
themselves with reproducing them. In a world in which fabulous salaries and questions of
retirement and dependency have taken on a new importance, the most legible norms of justice
could be that all levels of salary (including the highest) should finance the retirement scheme
at the same rates (even if the pensions themselves are capped) while leaving to income tax the
task of applying higher levels to the top incomes
To be clear: the present government has a big problem with the very concept of social
justice. As everyone knows, it has chosen from the outset to grant huge fiscal gifts to the
richest (suppression of the wealth tax (the ISF), the flat tax on dividends and incomes). If
today it does not demand a significant effort from the most privileged it will have
considerable difficulty in convincing the public that its pension reform is well-founded.
It seems like barely a quarter goes by without Wells Fargo being exposed for some abusive
practices, like opening millions of fake credit card accounts, or selling customers of its auto
loans insurance that they didn't really need (but that the company insisted they did).
In the
latest violation,
the New York
Times
reports that Wells Fargo continued to charge overdraft and other charges to customers
even after closing their accounts for one of a myriad reasons.
The paper used Xavier Einaudi, a small business owner who banked with Wells, as its primary
example.
A few months back, the bank informed Einaudi that it would be closing all 13 of
the checking accounts he had with the bank related to his roofing company, CRV Construction.
When asked why it was closing the accounts, it replied that the issue was "confidential".
Anyway, Einaudi went to his local Wells branch and picked up a check compensating him for the
contents of the accounts. One June 27, the bank said, the accounts would go defunct, and no more
transactions would be allowed.
As it turns out, that wasn't exactly the case.
Shortly after the closure date, Einaudi realized that Wells had kept some of the accounts active
with a zero balance. Meaning that some of Einaudi's payments to vendors like his insurer and his
Google advertising accounts continued from the empty accounts. But this time, each transaction was
accompanied by a $35 overdraft fee.
By the time Einaudi realized what was going on, he had wracked up thousands of dollars
in overdraft fees.
Payments to his insurer, to Google for online advertising and to a provider of project
management software were paid out of the empty accounts in July. Each time, the bank charged Mr.
Einaudi a $35 overdraft fee
Mr. Einaudi called the bank's customer service line. He went to his local branch. Nobody
could help him. "They told me, 'The accounts are closed out - we cannot do anything.'"
This left Einaudi in an untenable position: The accounts were technically closed, but he was
still being hit with overdraft fees that nobody at the bank could make stop.
By the middle
of July, he owed the bank nearly $1,500.
Fortunately for him, Einaudi wasn't alone with this problem.
Xavier Einaudi
As it turns out, Wells has failed to address these complaints from customers and
employees, including one in the bank's debt-collection department who grew concerned
after being
hit by an estimated $100,000 in overdraft fees
over eight months.
Customers say the
bank should wipe these fees, since they were unfairly and arbitrarily charged on accounts that the
bank had deliberately closed without its customers requests.
It's not clear, exactly, how many customers have been affected by this glitch. But many angry
customers have filed complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Robust discussions about the issue have continued on websites like Reddit and Quora, while some
have expressed their misgivings with Wells.
"I don't even know what happened,"
he said.
According to the NYT,
Einaudi's problem stems from the way Wells' computer system
processes closed accounts:
Accounts that customers believe to be closed can, in fact, stay
open for months past their closure date if there's a balance, even if the balance is negative (from
fees charged by the bank).
And each time a transaction involving these accounts happens, the banks tacks on a fee.
Since the financial crisis, Wells has paid more than $15 billion in settlements to resolve
investigations into its misdeeds, including the ones described above.
With more of these
scandals surfacing, who is going to step up and take the top job at Wells, particularly when you'd
be liable to be blindsided by scandals like these, that hurt ordinary Americans.
Let them bill you after you close your account. If they pressure
you to pay, or threaten your credit rating, then
sue Wells
Fargo in your local small claims court for the maximum amount
.
If you get a judgement, bill them. If they don't pay, take your
judgement to your local sheriff and have them do a "Till tap" on
them. That means the sheriff goes in and takes the money out of a
teller's drawer to satisfy the judgement.
If thousands of people do this...well, you can just imagine.
Whatever you do Brer' Rabbit,
never stick the little red
straw of a can of insulating foam into an ATM card slot!
Good advice. But with all that digitizations come so many
events that require these actions and they rely on the fact
that some people cannot spend unlimited amounts of time on
these things.
A banking ombudsman would not go astray. As
people register their stuff, patterns emerge a lot earlier and
maybe can be addressed.
Fck I hate banks, the only thing they do is move ones and zeros
around, and the can't even do that without ripping people off.
But wait till the globalists have their way and society becomes
cashless , stuff like this going to be nothing compared to what
the banksters and government is going to be able to do to your
life.
Wells Fargo can be force merged with Bank of America and dissolved
over a number of years out of public view and under Fed oversight.
There is vat over employment in the banking sector and an overall
staffing cut of 30% is long overdue.
It is the same with Commerz
and Deutsche Banks. Given the power of technology politicians are
trying to force banks to carry far more employees than can
economically be employed.
Online and robo banking will eventually lead to most branches
being closed and most employees released.
Stone walling this simply makes the crime, pain, and inevitable
dislocation ever worse.
I, too, got my money away from these thieves this year. My
annuity with my employer locked me into not being able to rollover
any of my money unless I had a break in service for and entire
year. Now that I am of a certain age, I was able to to rollover
after only eight weeks which I was able to do during recovery
after a job related surgery.
I have been waiting to do this
for four years since I found a rap sheet on these guys. If I
counted correctly, since 2000, the banks that were the
predecessors and Wells as we know it today have stolen, or been
fined and had to pay back $43bn!!!! That is 43,000 million for
****'s sake. What is it going to task to get rid of these
thieves?
I have a friend that works at Wells Fargo. She said since Warren
Buffet took control the whole place is going to hell. Buffet keeps
screaming the employees have to do better. Make more profits or
hit the door. So the management has to skin the sheeple in order
to keep their jobs.
I had a neighbor a while ago who worked in Wells' mortgage
division. I don't know what his job was called, but he was the
guy people called when they first got a foreclosure notice and
wanted to work out a way to keep their homes.
He told me
Wells kept track of who paid right at the deadline, usually the
15th of the month, rather than on or by the 1st like people do
when they aren't strapped for cash. He said when they got
payments on the 14th, say, they'd "drawer" them, or put them in
a drawer until the 16th. Then they'd enter the payments as
late, assess a late payment fee, and deduct that from the
payment. So the borrower hadn't actually made a full payment
that month; they were $35 short, or whatever the fee was.
Oh, no, they didn't tell the borrower.
So after a few years of that, the borrower would be a full
payment or two behind. And then the foreclosure would kick in,
and then these confused people would call my former neighbor.
He asked me to guess how many months, on average, the people
who called him were behind on their mortgage. I thought,
"Well, they're getting their first notice of looming
foreclosure, I'm kind of naive, uh...6 months?"
He laughed at me. "Try, 30 months," he said. I was
gobsmacked. Wells found it to their advantage to have these
people 2-1/2 years behind on their mortgage payments before
getting around to foreclosing? He said yes, it was worth it to
them to have them living in the property and taking care of it
for Wells Fargo.
Oh, I had this conversation with him while I was refinancing
my little starter home at the time.
It was 2002.
They were pulling this **** in
2002 and it wasn't new
then.
It only took what, 5 more years for the Finance
Sector to almost destroy itself and the rest of us?
If they jailed the people at Wells for this, it'd stop.
However, the fully criminalized DOJ, speaking through AG Eric
Holder, declared these people too critical to the banking system
to work under threat of arrest.
Yet another issue is that annuities can be complex financial contracts, and hard for an
average person to evaluate. How long do you pay into the annuity? When does it start paying
out? Does it pay our for a fixed period, or over the rest of one's life? Are the payouts
adjusted for inflation? How large a commission is being charged by the seller? Does the annuity
include a minimum payout if you die soon--which could be left to one's heirs? What happens if
the company that sold you the annuity goes broke a decade or two in the future? How will the
tax code treat income from annuities in the future? In the past, some annuities were not an
especially good financial deal, in the sense that someone with the discipline to withdraw money
from their retirement accounts in a slow-and-steady way have a high probability of ending up
better off than someone who purchased a life annuity.
Looking for a risk-free place to park some savings? You could open a
garden-variety savings account, but your interest might be microscopic. A
high-interest or high-yield savings account
is smarter, but an even better
option is a certificate of deposit, or CD.
While the top rates on high-yield savings accounts are currently topping 2%, you
can find CDs paying more than 3%. But to earn that kind of interest, you better
believe that you're going to have to give the bank something in return.
How CDs work
When you put your money into a CD, you agree to let the bank hold it for a
certain period of time.
So, here's the not-so-fine print with CDs: You'll have to agree to let the bank
hold on to your money for months or years. That's called the CD's term.
You might choose to stash your money away in six-month, two-year or five-year
CDs. Normally, the longer the term, the higher the interest rate.
The potential payout from a long-term CD might be very enticing. Who doesn't want
to earn better returns?
But you may have to lock your money away for a loooooooong time.
If some
financial emergency
comes along and you need to get at your money, tapping
your CDs could be costly.
You'll face penalties if you try to withdraw money from your CDs too early.
Yeah, we know -- we said at the beginning that CDs were
risk-free.
That's
true in one sense: You can put up to $250,000 in CDs and will never lose that
money as long as your account is with a bank insured by FDIC or a credit union
insured by NCUA.
But if you go back on your bargain with the institution and need to withdraw your
money early, you'll face the risk of penalties. The rules vary, but generally
you'll have to give up a chunk of your interest.
For example, if you close out a one-year CD too soon, you could say goodbye to
six months' worth of interest. If you've had the CD only two months, the penalty
would eat into your original deposit amount. Ouch!
The early withdrawal penalty for a five-year CD might be a
full year
of
interest.
Another risk is that
interest rates might rise
while you've got your money locked up, and your
savings will miss out on the opportunity to earn better returns.
A CD ladder can help you take advantage of rising interest rates.
All of that describes the workings of a traditional CD. There are other
varieties that allow you to make withdrawals more easily ("liquid" CDs) or
take advantage of rising interest rates ("bump-up" CDs).
To get some of that flexibility, you might have to accept a lower interest
rate when you open the account.
But there is a trick that can allow you to grab onto rising rates using just
plain-vanilla, regular CDs. It's called
laddering
.
You divide your investment across staggered CDs so that every year you have
CDs that are maturing.
This way, you can enjoy the higher initial interest rates from longer-term
CDs, and also have regular opportunities to invest in new CDs at even better
rates.
You can open a CD at your nearest bank or credit union.
Opening a CD is as simple as visiting your nearest bank or credit union, or
just going online.
Smaller, local banks or credit unions will give you better rates than the big
national institutions, and online-only banks can offer great deals because of
their lower expenses.
You may need to fund your CD with a minimum deposit of $500 or $1,000,
although some banks have CDs with no minimum opening requirements.
You'll want to comparison-shop for the best rates and find CDs at your sweet
spot, with a good yield and a term that's doable. How long will you want to
lock away your money?
Putting cash out of reach for years may be tough -- unless you've just got it
languishing in a low-rate savings account that you never touch. In that case,
put that money into CDs pronto!
@TomSchmidt
Social Security is not an entitlement. You pay into it, and receive a benefit. Social
Security was established as a Trust. There are legal requirements on those who manage a trust
– the trustees. Social Security has been mismanaged intentionally. There are people
receiving benefits who are not entitled to them. The US Government has raided the fund by
making it part of general revenue, instead of the Trust that it is supposed to be.
The "problems" of Social Security are a side show distraction to keep the focus away from the
real problem: the politicians and their Wall Street paymasters.
"... The CAPE aims to correct for those distortions. It smooths the denominator by using not current profits, but a ten-year average, of S&P 500 earnings-per-share, adjusted for inflation. Today, the CAPE for the 500 reads 29.7. It's only been that high in two previous periods: Before the crash of 1929, and during the tech bubble from 1998 to 2001, suggesting that when stocks are this expensive, a downturn may be at hand. ..."
"... is 36.1% higher ..."
"... Here's the problem that the CAPE highlights. Earnings in the past two decades have been far outpacing GDP; in the current decade, they've beaten growth in national income by 1.2 points (3.2% versus 2%). That's a reversal of long-term trends. ..."
"... Right now, earnings constitute an unusually higher share of national income. That's because record-low interest rates have restrained cost of borrowing for the past several years, and companies have managed to produce more cars, steel and semiconductors while shedding workers and holding raises to a minimum. ..."
"... t's often overlooked that although profits grow in line with GDP, which by the way, is now expanding a lot more slowly than two decades ago, earnings per share ..."
"... The reason is dilution. Companies are constantly issuing new shares, for everything from expensive acquisitions to stock option redemptions to secondary offerings. New enterprises are also challenging incumbents, raising the number of shares that divide up an industry's profits faster than those profits are increasing. Since total earnings grow with GDP, and the share count grows faster than profits, it's mathematically impossible for EPS growth to consistently rise in double digits, although it does over brief periods––followed by intervals of zero or minuscule increases. ..."
"... The huge gap between the official PE of 19 and the CAPE at 30 signals that unsustainably high profits are artificially depressing the former. and that profits are bound to stagnate at best, and more likely decline. ..."
"... In an investing world dominated by hype, the CAPE is a rare truth-teller ..."
For the past half-decade, a controversial yardstick called the CAPE has been flashing red,
warning that stock prices are extremely rich, and vulnerable to a sharp correction. And over
the same period, the Wall Street bulls and a number of academics led by Jeremy Siegel of the
Wharton School, have been claiming that CAPE is a kind of fun house mirror that makes
reasonable valuations appear grotesquely stretched.
CAPE, an acronym "Cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings ratio," was developed by economist
Robert Shiller of Yale to correct for a flaw in judging where stock prices stand on the
continuum from dirt cheap to highly expensive based on the current P/E ratio. The problem:
Reported earnings careen from lofty peaks to deep troughs, so that when they're in a funk,
multiples jump so high that shares appear overpriced when they're really reasonable, and when
profits explode, they can skew the P/E by creating the false signal that they're a great
buy.
The CAPE aims to correct for those distortions. It smooths the denominator by using not
current profits, but a ten-year average, of S&P 500 earnings-per-share, adjusted for
inflation. Today, the CAPE for the 500 reads 29.7. It's only been that high in two previous
periods: Before the crash of 1929, and during the tech bubble from 1998 to 2001, suggesting
that when stocks are this expensive, a downturn may be at hand.
The CAPE's critics argue that its adjusted PE is highly inflated, because the past decade
includes a portion of the financial crisis that decimated earnings. That period was so unusual,
their thinking goes, that it makes the ten-year average denominator much too low, producing
what looks like a dangerous number when valuations are actually reasonable by historical norms.
They point to the traditional P/E based on 12-month trailing, GAAP profits. By that yardstick
today's multiple is 19.7, a touch above the 20-year average of 19, though exceeding the
century-long norm of around 16.
I've run some numbers, and my analysis indicates that the CAPE doesn't suffer from those
alleged shortcoming, and presents a much truer picture than today's seemingly reassuring P/E.
Here's why. Contrary to its opponents' assertions, the CAPE's earnings number is not
artificially depressed. I calculated ten year average of real profits for six decade-long
periods starting in February of 1959 and ending today, (the last one running from 2/2009 to
2/2019). On average, the adjusted earnings number rose 22% from one period to the next. The
biggest leap came from 1999 to 2009, when the 10-year average of real earnings advanced
42%.
So did profits since then languish to the point where the current CAPE figure is
unrealistically big? Not at all. The Shiller profit number of $91 per share is 36.1%
higher than the reading for the 1999 to 2009 period, when it had surged a record 40%-plus
over the preceding decade. If anything, today's denominator looks high, meaning the CAPE of
almost 30 is at least reasonable, and if anything overstates what today's investors will reap
from each dollar they've invested in stocks.
Indeed, in the latest ten-year span, adjusted profits have waxed at a 3.2% annual pace,
slightly below the 3.6% from 1999 to 2009, but far above the average of 1.6% from 1959 to
1999.
Here's the problem that the CAPE highlights. Earnings in the past two decades have been
far outpacing GDP; in the current decade, they've beaten growth in national income by 1.2
points (3.2% versus 2%). That's a reversal of long-term trends. Over our entire 60 year
period, GDP rose at 3.3% annually, and profits trailed by 1.3 points, advancing at just 2%. So
the rationale that P/Es are modest is based on the assumption that today's earnings aren't
unusually high at all, and should continue growing from here, on a trajectory that outstrips
national income.
It won't happen. It's true that total corporate profits follow GDP over the long term,
though they fluctuate above and below that benchmark along the way. Right now, earnings
constitute an unusually higher share of national income. That's because record-low interest
rates have restrained cost of borrowing for the past several years, and companies have managed
to produce more cars, steel and semiconductors while shedding workers and holding raises to a
minimum.
Now, rates are rising and so it pay and employment, forces that will crimp profits. I
t's often overlooked that although profits grow in line with GDP, which by the way, is now
expanding a lot more slowly than two decades ago, earnings per share grow a lot
slower, as I've shown, lagging by 1.3 points over the past six decades.
An influential study from 2003 by Rob Arnott, founder of Research Affiliates, and co-author
William J. Bernstein, found that EPS typically trails overall profit and economic growth by
even more, an estimated 2 points a year.
The reason is dilution. Companies are constantly issuing new shares, for everything from
expensive acquisitions to stock option redemptions to secondary offerings. New enterprises are
also challenging incumbents, raising the number of shares that divide up an industry's profits
faster than those profits are increasing. Since total earnings grow with GDP, and the share
count grows faster than profits, it's mathematically impossible for EPS growth to consistently
rise in double digits, although it does over brief periods––followed by intervals
of zero or minuscule increases.
The huge gap between the official PE of 19 and the CAPE at 30 signals that unsustainably
high profits are artificially depressing the former. and that profits are bound to stagnate at
best, and more likely decline. The retreat appears to have already started. The Wall
Street "consensus" Wall Street earnings forecast compiled by FactSet calls for an EPS decline
of 1.7% for the first quarter of 2017, and zero inflation-adjusted gains for the first nine
months of the year.
In an investing world dominated by hype, the CAPE is a rare truth-teller .
This is a classic, textbook example of financial astrology... You probably should read it in full to appreciate the depth of junk
science here. But this is financial casino my friends, and they try to entice you with naked girls and drinks...
A gain in January has foretold an annual gain 87 percent of the time with only 9 major errors going back to 1950, according
to the Stock Trader's Almanac.
The S&P 500 was up 7.9 percent in January, its best performance for the first month of the year since 1987.
Some market pros are skeptical of the January barometer, but Jeff Hirsch, editor-in-chief of the Stock Trader's Almanac, says
it makes sense because that's when Wall Street expectations are reset for the year.
Stocks had their best January gains in more than 30 years, and that should mean 2019 will be a pretty good year for the
market.
That's what the widely watched January barometer tells you - as goes January, so goes the year. According to Stock Trader's Almanac,
going back to 1950, that metric of January's performance predicting the year has worked 87 percent of the time with only nine major
errors, through 2017. In the years January was positive, going back to 1945, the market ended higher 83 percent of the time, according
to CFRA.
But the indicator also signaled a positive year last year, and the market suffered an unusual late-year sell-off, wiping out all
of the gains. The S&P 500 ended 2018 down 6.6 percent, despite rising 5.6 percent in January. But the S&P also defied history with
a terrible December decline of 9.6 percent , the biggest loss for the final month of the year since 1931.
This January, the S&P 500 was up 7.9 percent. The best January performance since 1987, when it rose 13.2 percent. It was its best
overall month since October 2015.
Some market pros worry the sharp snapback in stocks since the late December low means January could be stealing the gains from the
rest of the year. Some also believe there could be another test at lower levels in the not too distant future. Yet, Wall Street forecasters
have a median target of 2,950 for the S&P 500 at year end, a big leap from the current 2,704.
"I'm still struck between the contrast of a year ago and now," said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthhold Group.
"We came in last year with nothing but optimism. At this point last year, we had synchronized global growth, confidence had spiked
to record post-war highs, and everyone knew we had this steroid-induced earnings boost coming. The thought was how could stocks lose,
and of course they did."
The market has sprung back from December's low, with the S&P gaining 15 percent since Dec. 26.
"This year, we came in with nothing but bad news - the economy was slowing down. ... The rest of the world is slowing. We have trade
wars. We have the shutdown, and analysts are revising earnings lower," Paulsen added. "We're worried about a recession and a bear
market. It's strikingly different, and yet it's kind of like how can stocks win, but they are and I think they will."
Strategists also point to the differences in the way the market traded in each January. This January has been full of volatile swings,
with ultimately larger gains than losses. Last year, the market was at the end of a long smooth glide path higher.
Last year didn't work
Stocks did well through most of January 2018, but by the end of the month, a correction started. "On January 30, in 2018, it was
the first 1 percent decline in 112 days. That was basically the start of the fall off the cliff. In terms of percent gains, this
January is similar to last, but in terms of where we've come from, it's very different. That was one of the calmest advances in history,"
said Frank Cappelleri, executive director at Instinet.
Cappelleri said it's important to put this year's market move in context, when considering the January barometer. "You have one of
the biggest snapbacks after a very bad December, so the odds were in the market's favor to do better than that. I think maybe you
have to look where we are now. You're up 15, 20 percent from the low depending on where you look. Are we going to go up that much
more for the rest of the year?" he said.
Paulsen sees the gains continuing, after a possible pause. "I think it's going to continue to be a fairly good year, and I think
we probably go up and get close to the highs or 3,000 on the S&P, and I'm not expecting hardly anything on the economy, and earnings
are going to be weak, if not flat or maybe down," Paulsen said.
He said the slowing economy and a potential U.S.-China trade deal could push the dollar down and that would be a positive for stocks.
At the same time, the Fed has paused in interest rate hikes and may even stop its balance sheet unwind.
Jeff Hirsch, editor-in-chief of the Stock Trader's Almanac, said there's another set of statistics that are in the market's favor
for a positive 2019, though they also failed last year. He said for the years when the S&P 500 was positive in the first five days
of the year, plus gained during the Santa rally period, and was up for the month of January, the S&P 500 had a positive year 27 out
of 30 times. It also had an average gain of 17.1 percent in those years, since 1950.
Nick 29 minutes ago
Job growth is solid. Unemployment remains near all time lows even while labor force participation increases. Wage growth outpaced
inflation last year. The economy is humming right along...its just the liberal media wants to bombard us with articles claiming
the Trump recession is imminent.
I'm surprised they actually published an article sayings its going to be a good year.
Parade of eminent astrologists ;-) Those financial prostitutes of casino capitlism, aka financial analysts most often are wrong
year after year, but still have a solid coverage by the neoliberal media due to the shire wieght of the companies they represent. This
bets are not connected with some kind of possible financial loss so they just talking up this firms portfolio, which of course is heavily
tilted in favor of stocks. God even Vanguard retirement 2015 fund has 40% in stock, while formula 100-age would give you less then 35%.
If this is bullish bias I do not know what is. Of course, they play with "other people money" and commissions are everything...
Notable quotes:
"... Their guesses about a great market in 2018 was kind of a miss. But they only had like 340 days so far. They still have 25 days left to turn in around. ..."
"... These guys are seldom right. I've been tracking these predictions more closely since 2014, usually 12-15 of the large financial institutions. Last year's average consensus was the SP at 2874. We closed Tuesday (Dec 4) at 2700. ..."
"... The average of the figures cited in the article is 3068. I think that is wishful thinking considering the slow downs in many sectors, slowing GDP and a flattening yield curve. ..."
"... With regard to upside potential, these all sound wildly optimistic to me. Ten years of printing money out of thin air and exploding deficits does not a future robust economy make, IMO. ..."
"... They cannot say 2500 cause people will not invest (and no commissions); they have to say equal or higher than today. To me it is screaming between the lines the index will hit 2500. ..."
"... So all of them predict the S&P will be higher then it is today even though many are saying we are already in a Bear Market...these people only make money if the market goes up so don't trust them! ..."
Morgan Stanley (Target: 2,750; EPS: $176) -- Beware tightening financial conditions and decelerating growth. (Price
target as of December 17)
Bank of America (Target: 2,900; EPS: $170) -- 'Wildcards' will make for more volatility. (Price target as of November
20)
Jefferies (Target: 2,900; EPS: $173) -- It's a 'mature, not end of, cycle.' (Price target as of December 9)
Oppenheimer (Target: 2,960; EPS: $175) -- Negative sentiment is 'setting the stage for upward surprises' (Price target
as of December 31)
Goldman Sachs (Target: 3,000; EPS: $173) -- Get defensive. (Price target as of December 14)
David
Kostin, chief equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, has a main message for investors going into 2019: Start getting defensive.
Barclays (Target 3,000; EPS $176) -- Growth will revert to trend. (Price target as of November 19)
Wells Fargo Securities (Target: 3,079*; EPS: $173) -- Sell-off will create 'double-digit opportunity' (*Note: Harvey
reduced his price target for 2019 to 2,665 and expected EPS to $166 as of December 21)
Citi (Target: 3,100; EPS: $172.50) -- Bearish sentiment makes for bullish outcomes. (*Levkovich
reduced his S&P 500 price
target for the year-end 2019 to 2,850 as of December 31, 2018)
JP Morgan (Target 3,100; EPS $178) -- A pain trade to the upside. (Price target as of December 7)
BMO (Target 3,150; EPS $174) -- Take a longer-term perspective. (Price target as of November 16)
UBS (Target: 3,200; EPS $175) -- A rough 2018 should make for a better 2019. (Price target as of November 13)
Deutsche Bank (Target: 3,250; EPS: $175) -- A while to "regain its prior peak." (Price target as of November 19)
Credit Suisse (Target: 3,350*; EPS $174) -- Bet on multiples expanding. (*Golub
reduced his S&P 500 price target
for the year-end 2019 to 2,925 as of December 18, 2018)
Joseph, 2 months
ago
So their best guess is a relatively flat to roughly a 20% gain...thanks for narrowing it down. Their guesses about a great market in 2018 was kind of a miss. But they only had like 340 days so far. They still have 25 days
left to turn in around.
M 2 months ago
These guys are seldom right. I've been tracking these predictions more closely since 2014, usually 12-15 of the large financial
institutions. Last year's average consensus was the SP at 2874. We closed Tuesday (Dec 4) at 2700.
We will need a 7% Santa Claus
rally to get there.
In 2017 the consensus was 2367; the year closed at 2673.
2016 was very close with a predicted average of 2223
and a close of 2238.
However, the market was far behind until the post-election rally.
The average of the figures cited in the article is 3068. I think that is wishful thinking considering the slow downs in
many sectors, slowing GDP and a flattening yield curve. I'll take 3068, but not going to bet a lot of money on it.
Omnipotent, 2 months ago
With regard to upside potential, these
all sound wildly optimistic to me. Ten years of printing money out of thin air and exploding deficits does not a future robust
economy make, IMO.
Linda, 2 months ago
Wall Street Strategists predicted G20 China meeting was the best news for markets and were looking for strong upside , market
tanked 800 points 2 days after. Enough said .
Gilad, 2 months ago
They cannot say 2500 cause people will not invest (and no commissions); they have to say equal or higher than today. To me it
is screaming between the lines the index will hit 2500.
PathFinder ofWhatis, 2 months ago
Not a single prediction says the market will finally have a Bear Market decline of 20%.... even after a 10 year Bull Market?
Is that called Group Think?
Todd2 months ago
So all of them predict the S&P will be higher then it is today even though many are saying we are already in a Bear Market...these
people only make money if the market goes up so don't trust them!
The first question to ask is: do those suckers need stocks at all?
That's all nice. But what if we are facing 2008 style event in a year or two?
The question here is why you need to risk retirement money in the casino? And stock market including all stock funds is a casino.
No questions about it.
Why if you are really close to, say, 65 it is necessary to take additional risk.
If you have enough money this is stupid (pure greed is often punishable, at least accounting to teaching of Prophets). You probably
can benefit from reading Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance by John Kay first. Before jumping into this water.
If you don't -- you need to be twice more careful -- please remember that such people most often are victims of grave own errors,
and/or fraud. So the cure might be worse then the disease. May be relocation to cheaper state and cutting some expenses (one car instead
of two, one bedroom instead of two bedroom, etc) is a safer solution then gambling.
In any case, if you keep money in the stock fund despite your age (I think around 17% of old Americans have all their retirement
savings in stock funds, or individual stocks ;-) and another financial bubble burst again (and this is a guaranteed event under neoliberalism)
recovery might take much longer then you expect, and you might need to take losses to make ends meet.
So the really important question here is not what funds you need to select from a thousand of names (there are more mutual funds
then stocks, I think). That's just another variety of gambling.
They real question is whether you need to play this game or not.
What if the current decline is not just a blip is a warning that more substantial trouble lies ahead?
Neoliberal with its hypertrophied and parasitic finance industry tend to produce Minsky moments (called bubble burst for non-specialists)
with surprising regularity: savings and loan crisis (1986-1995), dot-com bubble (2000-2002), Great recession (2008-?), so there is no
guarantee that we will not have yet another similar event in the next couple of years.
Target date funds might be a safer bet if you are old and still really want to play in a casino in hope to compensate inadequate
size on your retirement portfolio. For example, its Vanguard Target Retirement 2015 Fund (VTXVX) contains 40% stocks. While classic
100-your age allocation formula for 65-year person imply 35% stocks allocation. So you see that even Vanguard is a little bit too aggressive
here.
Also if you bought S&P500 at its 2000 peak (around 1500) your return for 18 years would still be 2.5% (4.5% with dividend reinvested).
So if you are much younger then 65 it is important to compare long-term record with S&P500 and age and track record of the manager (change
of the manager in an actively managed fund often badly affects that fund performance).
Start with low costs. Cheaper funds actually tend to beat their competitors even before expenses. SEE ALSO:
The 27 Best Mutual Funds in 401(k) Retirement Plans Buy funds the managers own. If the manager(s) of a fund won't invest
in the fund themselves, why should you? Look in the prospectus for managers who put at least $1 million in their fund, as the managers
of the five recommended funds in this article have done.
Chose funds that have a good corporate culture. Does the fund firm consider you a customer to be fleeced or a partner in investing?
Figuring this out is difficult, but low costs and manager investment are two indicators. My favorite big firms are
Vanguard ,
American Funds and
T. Rowe Price .
Consider long-term, risk-adjusted returns. You can do this by looking at Morningstar's star ratings, Sharpe ratios, alphas or
Sortino ratios. All of these provide measures of risk-adjusted returns. They're all slightly different, but higher is always better.
Reduce your risk. I think the market will remain highly volatile in 2019. Standard deviation, a measure of volatility, is an excellent
predictor of how a fund will behave in unstable markets. The higher a fund's standard deviation, the more volatile it has been. It's
my favorite risk metric. Downside capture, which measures how a fund has done in bad markets, is also worth a close look.
Following are my picks for 2019 among actively managed stock funds. It's no accident that they're all either value funds or foreign
funds. My strong hunch is that a bear market next year will lead to a change in leadership among stock sectors, as is often the case
during and after a selloff. Look for growth stocks' decade-long dominance over value stocks to end, and
value
stocks to outperform . Likewise, I think foreign stocks will finally begin to outperform domestic stocks.
April 1 If you turned 70½ in 2018, April 1 is the deadline to take
your
first required minimum distribution from your IRA or 401(k). First-timers get this one-time extension on their RMD (subsequent
RMDs must be taken by December 31). To figure a first RMD due on April 1, 2019, divide the account's 2017 year-end balance by a life
expectancy factor based on your birthday in 2018. Find the factor in IRS Publication 590-B. If you turn 70½ in 2019, you might consider
taking your first RMD this year, says Bradford. By delaying the first RMD to the following year, you have to take both your first
and second RMDs in the same year.
Keep in mind that while Roth IRAs don't have RMDs for the original owner, Roth 401(k)s do have RMDs. But if you are working past
age 70½, you can skip the RMD from your current employer's 401(k) if you don't own 5% or more of the company. You'll still need to
take RMDs from your IRAs and any 401(k)s you hold from prior employers, though. ... ... ... April 1 If you turned 70½ in 2018, April
1 is the deadline to take
your
first required minimum distribution from your IRA or 401(k).
First-timers get this one-time extension on their RMD (subsequent RMDs must be taken by December 31). To figure a first RMD due
on April 1, 2019, divide the account's 2017 year-end balance by a life expectancy factor based on your birthday in 2018. Find the
factor in IRS Publication 590-B. If you turn 70½ in 2019, you might consider taking your first RMD this year, says Bradford. By delaying
the first RMD to the following year, you have to take both your first and second RMDs in the same year.
Keep in mind that while Roth IRAs don't have RMDs for the original owner, Roth 401(k)s do have RMDs.
But if you are working past age 70½, you can skip the RMD from your current employer's 401(k) if you don't own 5% or more of the
company. You'll still need to take RMDs from your IRAs and any 401(k)s you hold from prior employers, though.
You must make your RMD by December 31, and it's best not to wait until the last minute. It can take a little while for your IRA
or 401(k) administrator to process the request. Plus, you need to leave enough time for any trades to settle so there's enough cash
for the withdrawal -- especially around the holidays, when the markets are closed or close early. "We suggest moving forward in the
beginning to mid December," says Keith Bernhardt, vice president of retirement income at
Fidelity .
Find out how the administrator determines which investments to sell. Some IRA or 401(k) administrators automatically take the RMD
money pro rata from each of your investments unless you specify otherwise, and they could end up selling stocks or funds at a loss
to make your payment. You could elect a fixed percentage from a few investments or have 100% taken from cash.
If you choose the cash option, the IRA administrator may need to send you an alert beforehand in case you need to sell shares
first
Q: I am 62. Last year, I got a Social Security calculation showing that when I am
66-plus-years-old, I will receive $400-plus in Social Security benefits per month. Because of
my health, I started to work only three days a week. Will this reduce the amount of my
benefits? If l decide to quit my job, but not apply for my Social Security benefits until I'm
66-plus, will it reduce my monthly Social Security benefits?
A: Social Security calculates your monthly benefit by taking your highest 35 years of
earnings and your age, says Rick Fingerman, a managing partner with Financial Planning
Solutions. "So, if you stop working before your full retirement age or FRA, as you suggest, you
could see a lower benefit if you do not have 35 years of higher earnings already."
The same answer applies if you quit your job altogether at 62 and wait until 66 to collect,
he says.
One option, says Fingerman, could be if you were going to wait until your FRA and you have a
spouse that is already collecting on their own benefit. "You might receive a higher monthly
benefit on their record as you would get 50% of what they are receiving, which could be more
than the $400 a month under your own benefit," he says.
Of course, nobody can predict exactly how long they'll live -- the average man and woman
turning 65 today can expect to live until age 84 and 86, respectively, according to the Social
Security Administration. However, if you're facing health issues and don't expect to live that
long, it may be wiser to claim as early as possible rather than waiting until you have only a
few years left to enjoy your benefits.
... ... ...
Your
full retirement age (FRA) is the age at which you'll receive 100% of the benefits to which
you're entitled. So if your FRA is 67, and you wait until then to claim, you'd receive $1,300
per month. If you claim at 62, your benefits will be cut by 30% -- leaving you with just $910
per month.
... ... ...
If you wait until your FRA to claim, you'll receive 100% of your entitled benefits. But if
you wait beyond that age, you'll receive a bonus on top of your full amount to make up for all
the months you weren't receiving benefits at all. If your FRA is, say, 67 and you wait to claim
benefits until 70, you'll receive a 24% bonus over your full amount. So if you would have
received $1,300 per month by claiming at 67, you'd receive $1,612 by waiting until 70. (Keep in
mind, too, that this bonus maxes out at age 70, so there's no additional benefit to waiting to
claim until after that age.)
This can be a lifesaver for those who are
seriously behind on saving for retirement . If you're going to rely on Social Security to
make ends meet, it's in your best interest to maximize those benefits.
The amount you receive in benefits will be locked in once you claim. If you delay and
receive that boost, you'll continue receiving that boost for the rest of your life. Likewise,
if you claim early and your benefits are reduced, you'll receive those smaller checks for life.
So delaying can play out in your favor if you spend several decades in retirement -- the longer
you live, the more you will receive over your lifetime.
While delaying claiming benefits by a few years will result in bigger checks, you may not
actually receive more over a lifetime than you would if you had claimed earlier. Although
you're receiving more each month, that's just to make up for the years you weren't receiving
any benefits at all. If you don't reach your "break even age" -- or the age at which you've
received more over a lifetime by waiting to claim than you would have received by claiming
early -- it may not be worth it to wait.
For example, say your FRA is 67. If you claim early at 62, you'd receive $910 per month (or
$10,920 per year), and if you delay until 70, you'd receive $1,612 per month ($19,344 per
year). Here's how much you'd have received in total benefits at different ages:
Age at Death
Total Lifetime Benefits When Claiming at 62
Total Lifetime Benefits When Claiming at 70
70
$87,360
N/A
75
$141,960
$96,720
80
$196,560
$193,440
85
$251,160
$290,160
Source: Author's calculations
So in this scenario, you'll have to live past age 80 in order to "break even" and earn more
in lifetime benefits by delaying rather than claiming early. That can be a good thing if you
expect to live a long time, but if you don't expect to live past 80, it may be more
advantageous to claim earlier rather than later.
"... Currently, the S&P 500 (as of 1/18/19) is trading at 2,670 with Q4-2018 trailing reported earnings estimated to be $139.50. ( S&P Data ) This puts the 10-year average trailing P/E ratio of the S&P at a rather lofty 28.86x. ..."
I'm referring to what many retirees are most afraid of: Running out of money before they
die. An Allianz Life
survey found that far more retirees are afraid of outliving their money than they are of
dying -- 61% to 39%. This ever-present background fear is especially rearing its ugly head
right now, given the bear market that too many came out of nowhere.
Retirement planning projections made at the end of the third quarter, right as the stock
market was registering its all-time highs, now need to be revised.
The reason not to give up hope is that the stock market typically recovers from bear
markets in a far shorter period of time than most doom and gloomers think. Consider what I
found when measuring how long it took, after each of the 36 bear markets since 1900 on the
bear market calendar maintained by Ned Davis Research Believe it or not, the average recovery
time was 'just' 3.2 years."
Mark correctly used total return numbers in his calculations, however, while his data is
correct the conclusion is not.
Here is why.
While Mark is discussing the recovery of bear markets (getting back to even) it is based on
a "buy and hold" investing approach.
However, Mark's error is that he is specifically discussing "retirees" which are
systematically withdrawing capital from their portfolios, paying tax on those withdrawals (from
retirement accounts) and compensating for adjustments to the cost of living (not to mention
spiraling "health care" costs.)
These are the same problems which plague most of the "off the shelf" financial plans
today:
Faulty assumptions based on average historic rates of returns rather than variable rates
of return, and;
Not accounting for the current level of market valuations at the outset of the planning
process.
To explain the problems with both Mark's assumptions, and the vast majority of financial
plans spit out of computer programs today, let's turn to some previous comments from
Michael Kitces.
"Given the impact of inflation, it's problematic to start digging into retirement
principal immediately at the start of retirement, given that inflation-adjusted spending
needs could quadruple by the end of retirement (at a 5% inflation rate). Accordingly, the
reality is that to sustain a multi-decade retirement with rising spending needs due to
inflation, it's necessary to spend less than the growth/income in the early years, just to
build enough of a cushion to handle the necessary higher withdrawals later!
For instance, imagine a retiree who has a $1,000,000 balanced portfolio, and wants to plan
for a 30-year retirement, where inflation averages 3% and the balanced portfolio averages 8%
in the long run. To make the money last for the entire time horizon, the retiree would start
out by spending $61,000 initially, and then adjust each subsequent year for inflation,
spending down the retirement account balance by the end of the 30th year."
Michael's assumptions on expanding inflationary pressures later in retirement is correct,
however, they don't take into account the issue of taxation. So, let's adjust Kitces' chart and
include not only the impact of inflation-adjusted returns but also taxation. The chart below adjusts the 8% return structure for inflation at 3% and also adjusts the
withdrawal rate up for taxation at 25%. By adjusting the annualized rate of return for the impact of inflation and taxes, the life
expectancy of a portfolio grows considerably shorter. While inflation and taxes are indeed important to consider, those are not the biggest threat
to retiree's portfolios.
There is a massive difference between 8% "average" rates of return and 8% "actual"
returns.
The Impact Of Variability
Currently, the S&P 500 (as of 1/18/19) is trading at 2,670 with Q4-2018 trailing
reported earnings estimated to be $139.50. (
S&P Data ) This puts the 10-year average trailing P/E ratio of the S&P at a rather
lofty 28.86x.
We also know that forward returns from varying valuation levels are significantly varied
depending on when you start your investing. As shown in the chart below, from current valuation
levels, forward returns from the market have been much closer to 2% rather than 8%.
As evidenced by the graph, as valuations rise future rates of annualized returns fall. This
should not be a surprise as simple logic states that if you overpay today for an asset, future
returns must, and will, be lower.
Math also proves the same. Capital gains from markets are primarily a function of market
capitalization, nominal economic growth plus the dividend yield. Using the Dr. John Hussman's
formula we can mathematically calculate returns over the next 10-year period as follows:
(1+nominal GDP growth)*(normal market cap to GDP ratio / actual market cap to GDP
ratio)^(1/10)-1
Therefore, IF we assume that
GDP maintains, 4% annualized growth indefinitely
Which means recessions have been eliminated, AND
Current market cap/GDP stays flat at 1.25, AND
The current dividend yield remains at 2%:
We would get forward returns of:
(1.04)*(.8/1.25)^(1/30)-1+.02 = 4.5%
But there's a "whole lotta ifs" in that assumption.
More importantly, if we assume that inflation remains stagnant at 2%, as the Fed hopes, this
would mean a real rate of return of just 2.5%.
This is far less than the 8-10% rates of return currently promised by the Wall Street
community. It is also why starting valuations are critical for individuals to understand when
planning for the accumulation phase of the investment life-cycle.
Let's take this a step further. For the purpose of this article, we went back through
history and pulled the 4-periods where trailing 10-year average valuations (Shiller's CAPE)
were either above 20x earnings or below 10x earnings. We then ran a $1000 investment going
forward for 30-years on a total-return, inflation-adjusted, basis.
At 10x earnings, the worst performing period started in 1918 and only saw $1000 grow to a
bit more than $6000. The best performing period was actually not the screaming bull market that
started in 1980 because the last 10-years of that particular cycle caught the "dot.com" crash.
It was the post-WWII bull market that ran from 1942 through 1972 that was the winner. Of
course, the crash of 1974, just two years later, extracted a good bit of those returns.
Conversely, at 20x earnings, the best performing period started in 1900 which caught the
rise of the market to its peak in 1929. Unfortunately, the next 4-years wiped out roughly 85%
of those gains . However, outside of that one period, all of the other periods fared worse than
investing at lower valuations. (Note: 1993 is still currently running as its 30-year period
will end in 2023.)
The point to be made here is simple and was precisely summed up by Warren Buffett:
"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."
This idea becomes much clearer by showing the value of $1000 invested in the markets at both
valuations BELOW 10x trailing earnings and ABOVE 20x. I have averaged each of the 4-periods
above into a single total return, inflation-adjusted, index, Clearly, investing at 10x earnings
yields substantially better results.
Not surprisingly, the starting level of valuations has the greatest impact on your future
results.
But, most importantly, starting valuations are critical to withdrawal rates
When we adjust the spend down structure for elevated starting valuation levels, and include
inflation and taxation, a much different, and far less favorable, financial outcome emerges
– the retiree runs out of money not in year 30, but in year 18.
"And, if you're retired and withdrawing from your portfolio, the 'sequence-of-return' risk
– the problem of the early years of withdrawals coinciding with a declining portfolio
– can upend your entire retirement. That's because a portfolio in distribution that
experiences severe declines at the beginning of the distribution phase, cannot recover when
the stock market finally rebounds. Because of the distributions, there is less money in the
portfolio to benefit from stock gains when they eventually materialize again.
I showed that risk in a previous
article where I created the following chart representing three hypothetical portfolios
using the '4% rule' (withdrawing 4% of the portfolio the first year of retirement and
increasing that withdrawal dollar value by 4% every year thereafter). I cherry-picked the
initial year of retirement, of course (2000), so that my graphic represents a kind of worst
case, or at least a very bad case, scenario. But investors close to retirement should keep
that in mind because current stock prices are historically high and bond yields are
historically low. That means the prospects for big investment returns over the next decade
are dim and that increasing stock exposure could be detrimental to retirement plans once
again. In my example, decreasing stock exposure benefits the portfolio in distribution phase,
and that could be the case for retirees now."
As John correctly notes, there is a case for owning stocks in a retirement portfolio, just
maybe not as much as your "run of the mill" financial plan suggests. To wit:
"Returns from cash and bonds may not keep up with inflation, after all. But stock returns
might fall short too. And if stocks do lag, they probably won't do so with the limited
volatility that bonds tend to deliver, barring a serious bout of inflation. So, if you're
within a decade of retirement, it may be time to think hard about how much stock exposure is
enough. The answer might be less than you think for a portfolio in distribution phase."
Questions Retirees Need To Ask About Plans
Importantly, what this analysis reveals, is that "retirees" SHOULD be worried about bear
markets. Taking the correct view of your portfolio, and the risk being undertaken, is critical
when entering the retirement and distribution phase of the portfolio life cycle.
More importantly, when building and/or reviewing your financial plan – these are the
questions you must ask and have concrete answers for:
What are the expectations for future returns going forward given current valuation
levels?
Should the withdrawal rates be downwardly adjusted to account for potentially lower
future returns?
Given a decade long bull market, have adjustments been made for potentially front-loaded
negative returns?
Has the impact of taxation been carefully considered in the planned withdrawal rate?
Have future inflation expectations been carefully considered?
Have drawdowns from portfolios during declining market environments, which accelerates
principal bleed, been considered?
Have plans been made to harbor capital during up years to allow for reduced portfolio
withdrawals during adverse market conditions?
Has the yield chase over the last decade, and low interest rate environment, which has
created an extremely risky environment for retirement income planning been carefully
considered?
What steps should be considered to reduce potential credit and duration risk in bond
portfolios?
Have expectations for compounded annual rates of returns been dismissed in lieu of a plan
for variable rates of future returns?
If the answer is "no" to the majority of these questions then feel free to contact one of the CFP's
in our office who take all of these issues into account.
With debt levels rising globally, economic growth on the long-end of the cycle, interest
rates rising, valuations high, and a potential risk of a recession, the uncertainty of
retirement plans has risen markedly. This lends itself to the problem of individuals having to
spend a bulk of their "retirement" continuing to work.
Two previous bear markets have devastated the retirement plans of millions of individuals in
the economy today which partly explains why a large number of jobs in the monthly BLS
employment report go to individuals over the age of 55.
So, not only should retirees worry about bear markets, they should worry about them a
lot.
The insidious and hidden tax - inflation. Retirement is mostly fantasy - it is always
being one step away from poverty. Even after decades of sacrifice and saving.
the nikkei topped out in 1989 and still hasn't recovered nearly 30 years later. most old
farts, including family members, aren't balanced, they are almost totally in stocks because
they believe that the fed guarantees the s&p only goes up. if someday it doesn't, too bad
for them.
The only way to retire [ unless you are very wealthy ] from the system is to adopt a
self-reliant lifestyle where your cost of living is way down. A single adult, in fair
condition, living a self reliant lifestyle can live comfortably on 15k per year. Thats
assuming no debt. To do that privately, you'll need about 400-600k, the right piece of land [
paid for ], and a whole mess of specific skills.
You wont be laying on your ***. This isnt your father's retirement of leisure. This is a
shifting of focus away from contribution / compensation through the system and towards
independence and literal "Self" reliance.
bull, bear who gives a ****? Only an idiot eats up the seed capital in pensions. All that
does is set down a death date you better follow thru with- With a bullet if neccesary.
Did they pick only companies that existed and survived the 30-year duration, in which case
they may not be representative of the market? Or did they use index, in which case there is
no complementary aggregate P/E ratio to account for dividends - or did they ignore dividends
altogether?
Very easy to calculate amortization of a retirement boodle. Just go online to a mortgage
amortization calculator. 1) Put in the initial amount of the retirement stake (= the amount
of a mortgage to be paid off, e.g. $1 million) 2) Punch in the projected interest rate (= the
interest on the mortgage). This will be the amount the retirement boodle pays in
interest/dividends over time as it's being drawn upon 3) Punch in the number of years the
retirement principle will have to pay out (= the number of years the mortgage is for). Crunch
these with the calculator provided and you'll get the amount the account will pay out each
month (= monthly payment of a mortgage with interest). Simple and free. The only uncertain
thing is the interest/dividend rate of the account. But one can be conservative (Say 2-3%)
and still get a very accurate monthly payout figure.
Also, nothing personal, but why should I take investment advice from someone who is still
working or paid to give it? I could never figure that one out.
If I were an investment genius, I would be rich, retired long before reaching age 65, and
avoiding people who need investment advice.
Retirees shouldn't worry about bear markets because retirees should never be in the equity
market in the first place. Especially during the times of rate normalization, where
sell-siders view every utterance by the Fed as 'dovish', and algos need ultra-volatility to
keep in business.
Assume $1 million in savings and Social Security of $25,000/yr based on a life of very
decent wages. At 4%, very easy to earn during normalized rates from fixed income, that's
$65,000/yr with NO principal reduction. Paltry for NYC or CA, but very decent for a
comfortable life almost everywhere else for an old person with no debts.
""Overall, between bank accounts and retirement savings, the median American household
currently holds about $11,700 , according to MagnifyMoney. Almost 30 percent of households
have less than $1,000 saved, MagnifyMoney finds, though the amount varies drastically by
age.Aug 28, 2018""
The article says, " For instance, imagine a retiree who has a $1,000,000 balanced portfolio, and wants to
plan for a 30-year retirement . . . "
It's not aimed at the median American household. The median American household doesn't
have a financial advisor, portfolio, or any hope for a retirement that goes beyond a $1,800 a
month Social Security check.
and to make matters worse it is becoming more and more difficult to find a reasonably
priced canned cat food that can substituted as a Decent Liver Pate. We have a high net worth
Bridge Owners party next week and the stuff we tried last month pulled the bridges right out
of their mouths.
You proved his point. You would be very concerned if you knew the true Money Power Monopolist Game of
Thrones.
===============
"Modern slaves are not in chains, they are in debt."
~Anonymous
"Let the American people go into their debt-funding schemes and banking systems, and from
that hour their boasted independence will be a mere phantom."
~William Pitt, (referring to the inauguration of the first National Bank in the United States
under Alexander Hamilton).
"The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on
depressions will be scientifically created."
~Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, after the passage of the Federal Reserve act 1913.
"The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable
debt."
~Henry Ford
"Retirement" is a fairly new fad- prior to the 1950s it was unheard of - expect that fad
to end some point soon. The whole concept resembles a Pyramid Scheme- as long as there are
enough people at the bottom supporting those at the top everything is OK- the problem occurs
when there are not enough at the bottom contributing to support those above them - which we
have now.
the answer is simple; the math of a distribution portfolio is vastly different than that
of a portfolio NOT making withdrawals.....depending on the amount being withdrawn the
recovery point will take longer if at all.
just keep dry powder ready for when FERAL Reserve jacks discount rate up in the teens, the
geezers will make it back fast. I do not doubt I will see rates in CDs at 10%. They have to
drain 4.4 trillion of gravy from the system to protect what they stole in 2008 or inflation
will get it fast.
The legendary John Bogle passed away yesterday in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He was 89. Bogle
was the founder of Vanguard Group. In announcing his death, Vanguard said that Bogle
"introduced the first index mutual fund for investors and, in the face of skeptics, stood
behind the concept until it gained widespread acceptance; and he drove down costs across the
mutual fund industry by ceaselessly campaigning in the interests of investors."
We'll always remember Bogle for the courage he demonstrated on April 23, 2013 when he
appeared
on the PBS program Frontline . Bogle dropped the bombshell that Wall Street has
attempted to hide for half a century: If you work for 50 years and receive the typical
long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost
two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street.
Bogle explained the math to Frontline's Martin Smith:
Bogle: What happens in the fund business is the magic of compound returns is overwhelmed by
the tyranny of compounding costs. It's a mathematical fact. There's no getting around it. The
fact that we don't look at it -- too bad for us.
Smith : What I have a hard time understanding is that 2 percent fee that I might pay to an
actively managed mutual fund is going to really have a great impact on my future retirement
savings.
Bogle: Well, you have to rely on somebody to get out a compound interest table and look at
the impact over an investment lifetime. Do you really want to invest in a system where you put
up 100 percent of the capital, you the mutual fund shareholder, you take 100 percent of the
risk and you get 30 percent of the return?
You can check the math yourself. Access a compounding calculator on
line. Input an account with a $100,000 balance and compound it at 7 percent for 50 years. That
gives you a balance of $3,278,041.36. Now change the calculation to a 5 percent return (reduced
by the 2 percent annual fee) for the same $100,000 over the same 50 years. That delivers a
return of $1,211,938.32. That's a difference of $2,066,103.04 – the same 63 percent
reduction in value that Smith's example showed.
If you don't know the amount of fees that you're paying on the mutual funds in your 401(k)
plan, 403(b) plan, IRA or other retirement vehicle, you may be putting your ability to retire
with adequate income and dignity at risk.
Roughly a third of Baby Boomers have saved less than $25,000 while just over a fifth of all
American have no savings at all, according to a study by Northwestern Mutual.
"'The best indicator of whether someone will be amenable to being defrauded has to do with
financial insecurity,' [said] David Vladeck, the former director of the Federal Trade
Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection."
So I wonder what the trend is on being scammed. Perhaps fairly level at the moment.
Overinvestment in stocks of retires is very common under neoliberalism.
There are several factors here: one is greed cultivated by neoliberal MSM, the second is
insufficient retirement funds (gambling with retirement savings) and the last and not least is
lack of mathematical skills an inability to use Excel for viewing their portfolio and making
informed decisions.
Notable quotes:
"... At the end of 2016, 69 percent of investors in their 60s had at least 40 percent of their 401(k) portfolio invested in stocks, up from 65 percent in 2007, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington. ..."
"... 19 percent had more than 80 percent of their 401(k) invested in stocks in 2016 ..."
"... "We had lousy forecasts in 2008. The housing market was in a tailspin," said 76-year-old John Bauer, who worked for McDonnell Douglas and Boeing Co for 36 years in St. Louis. "Today, employment is way up. The housing market is steady and corporations are flush." ..."
BOSTON (Reuters) - Nancy Farrington, a retiree who turns 75 next month, admits to being in a
constant state of anxiety over the biggest December stock market rout since Herbert Hoover was
president.
"I have not looked at my numbers. I'm afraid to do it," said Farrington, who recently moved
to Charleston, South Carolina, from Boston. "We've been conditioned to stand pat and not panic.
I sure hope my advisers are doing the same."
Retirees are worrying about their nest eggs as this month's sell-off rounds out the worst
year for stocks in a decade, and some fear they are headed for a day of reckoning like the 2008
market meltdown or dot-com crash of the early 2000s.
Retirees have less time to recover from bad investment moves than younger workers. If they
or their advisers panic and sell during a brief downturn, they may lock in a more meager
retirement. But their portfolio could be even more at risk if they hold on too long in a
prolonged decline.
"I have no way of riding it out if that happens," said Farrington. "I can feel the anxiety
in my stomach all the time."
While many industrialized countries still have generous safety nets for retirees, pensions
for U.S. private-sector workers largely have been supplanted by 401(k) accounts and other
private saving plans. That means millions of older Americans are effectively their own pension
managers.
Workers in countries like Belgium, Canada, Germany, France and Italy receive, on average,
about 65 percent of their income replaced by mandatory pensions. In the Netherlands the ratio
of benefits to lifetime average earnings is abut 97 percent, according to a 2017 Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development report.
The OECD says the comparable U.S. replacement rate from Social Security benefits is about 50
percent.
U.S. retirees had watched their private accounts mushroom during a bull stock market that
began in early 2009. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates near zero for years,
enticing retirees deeper into stocks than previous generations as investments like certificates
of deposit, government bonds and money-market funds generated paltry income.
At the end of 2016, 69 percent of investors in their 60s had at least 40 percent of their
401(k) portfolio invested in stocks, up from 65 percent in 2007, according to the Employee
Benefit Research Institute in Washington.
Still, fewer have gone all in on stocks in recent years. Just 19 percent had more than 80
percent of their 401(k) invested in stocks in 2016, down from 30 percent at year-end 2007,
according to nonprofit research group EBRI.
"Nothing has gone wrong, but it seems the market is trying to figure out what could go
wrong," said Brooke McMurray, a 69-year-old New York retiree who says she became a financial
news junkie after the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
"Unlike before, I now know what I own and I constantly read up on my companies," she
said.
The three major U.S. stock indexes have tumbled about 10 percent this month, weighed by
investor worries including U.S.-China trade tensions, a cooling economy and rising interest
rates, and are on track for their worst December since 1931.
The S&P 500 is headed for its worst annual performance since 2008, when Wall Street
buckled during the subprime mortgage crisis. But some are not quite ready to draw
comparisons.
"We had lousy forecasts in 2008. The housing market was in a tailspin," said 76-year-old
John Bauer, who worked for McDonnell Douglas and Boeing Co for 36 years in St. Louis. "Today,
employment is way up. The housing market is steady and corporations are flush."
Still, Bauer said he is uneasy about White House leadership. He and several other retirees
referenced U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's recent calls to top bankers, which did more
to rattle than assure markets. U.S. stocks tumbled more than 2 percent the day before the
Christmas holiday.
Nevertheless, Bauer is prepared to ride out any market turmoil without making dramatic moves
to his retirement portfolio. "When it's up, I watch it. When it's down, I don't," he said. And there are some factors helping take the sting out of the market rout, said Larry Glazer,
managing partner of Boston-based Mayflower Advisors LLC.
The median retirement account balance among all working US adults is $0 . This is true
even for the cohort closest to retirement age, those 55-64 years old.
The average (i.e., mean) near-retirement individual has less than 8% of one year's income
saved in a retirement account
77% of all American households aren't on track to have enough net worth to retire , even
under the most conservative estimates.
There a number of causal factors that have contributed to this lack of retirement
preparedness (decades of stagnant real wages, fast-rising cost of living, the Great Recession,
etc), but as we explained in our report The Great Retirement Con
, perhaps none has had more impact than the shift from dedicated-contribution pension plans to
voluntary private savings:
The Origins Of The Retirement Plan
Back during the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress promised a monthly lifetime
income to soldiers who fought and survived the conflict. This guaranteed income stream,
called a "pension", was again offered to soldiers in the Civil War and every American war
since.
Since then, similar pension promises funded from public coffers expanded to cover retirees
from other branches of government. States and cities followed suit -- extending pensions to
all sorts of municipal workers ranging from policemen to politicians, teachers to trash
collectors.
A pension is what's referred to as a defined benefit plan . The payout promised a worker
upon retirement is guaranteed up front according to a formula, typically dependent on salary
size and years of employment.
Understandably, workers appreciated the security and dependability offered by pensions.
So, as a means to attract skilled talent, the private sector started offering them, too.
The first corporate pension was offered by the American Express Company in 1875. By the
1960s, half of all employees in the private sector were covered by a pension
plan.
Off-loading Of Retirement Risk By Corporations
Once pensions had become commonplace, they were much less effective as an incentive to
lure top talent. They started to feel like burdensome cost centers to companies.
As America's corporations grew and their veteran employees started hitting retirement age,
the amount of funding required to meet current and future pension funding obligations became
huge. And it kept growing. Remember, the Baby Boomer generation, the largest ever by far in
US history, was just entering the workforce by the 1960s.
Companies were eager to get this expanding liability off of their backs. And the more
poorly-capitalized firms started defaulting on their pensions, stiffing those who had loyally
worked for them.
So, it's little surprise that the 1970s and '80s saw the introduction of personal
retirement savings plans. The Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA) was formed by the
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974. And the first 401k plan was created
in 1980.
These savings vehicles are defined contribution plans . The future payout of the plan is
variable (i.e., unknown today), and will be largely a function of how much of their income
the worker directs into the fund over their career, as well as the market return on the
fund's investments.
Touted as a revolutionary improvement for the worker, these plans promised to give the
individual power over his/her own financial destiny. No longer would it be dictated by their
employer.
Your company doesn't offer a pension? No worries: open an IRA and create your own personal
pension fund.
Afraid your employer might mismanage your pension fund? A 401k removes that risk. You
decide how your retirement money is invested.
Want to retire sooner? Just increase the percent of your annual income contributions.
All this sounded pretty good to workers. But it sounded GREAT to their employers.
Why? Because it transferred the burden of retirement funding away from the company and
onto its employees. It allowed for the removal of a massive and fast-growing liability off of
the corporate balance sheet, and materially improved the outlook for future earnings and cash
flow.
As you would expect given this, corporate America moved swiftly over the next several
decades to cap pension participation and transition to defined contribution plans.
The table below shows how vigorously pensions (green) have disappeared since the
introduction of IRAs and 401ks (red):
So, to recap: 40 years ago, a grand experiment was embarked upon. One that promised US
workers: Using these new defined contribution vehicles, you'll be better off when you reach
retirement age.
Which raises a simple but very important question: How have things worked out?
The
Ugly AftermathAmerica The Broke
Well, things haven't worked out too well.
Four decades later, what we're realizing is that this shift from dedicated-contribution
pension plans to voluntary private savings was a grand experiment with no assurances.
Corporations definitely benefited, as they could redeploy capital to expansion or bottom line
profits. But employees? The data certainly seems to show that the experiment did not take
human nature into account enough – specifically, the fact that just because people have
the option to save money for later use doesn't mean that they actually will.
And so we end up with the dismal retirement stats bulleted above.
The Income Haves
& Have-Nots
In our recent report The Primacy Of Income , we
summarized our years-long predictions of a coming painful market correction followed by a
prolonged era of no capital gains across equities, bond and real estate.
Simply put: the 'easy' gains made over the past 8 years as the central banks did their
utmost to inflate asset prices is over. Asset appreciation is going to be a lot harder to come
by in the future.
Which makes income now the prime source of building -- or simply just maintaining -- wealth
going forward.
That being the case, it's obvious that those receiving a pension will be in far better shape
than those who aren't. They'll have a guaranteed income stream to partially or fully fund their
retirement.
Resentment Brewing
While the total number of people expecting a pension isn't tiny, it's certainly a minority
of today's workers.
31 million private-sector, state and local government workers in the US participate in a
pension plan. 3.3 million currently-employed civilian Federal workers will receive a pension;
as will some percentage of the 2 million people serving in the active military and
reserves.
Combined, that's about 25% of current US workers; roughly 13% of total US adults.
The danger here is of festering social discord. The majority, whom we already know will not
be able to retire, will highly likely start regarding pensioners with envy and resentment.
"Hey, I worked as hard as Joe during my career. How come he gets to retire and I don't?"
will be a common narrative running in the minds of those jealous of their neighbors.
This bitterness will only increase as taxes continue to rise to fund government pension
payouts, already
a huge drain on public budgets . "Why am I paying more so Joe can relax on the beach??"
Humans are wired to react angrily to perceived injustice and unfairness. This short clip
shows how it's hard-coded into our primate brains:
So it's not a stretch at all to predict the divisive tension and prejudice that will result
from the growing gap between the pension haves and have-nots.
The negative stereotypes of union workers will be tightly re-embraced. This SNL sketch
captures a good number of them:
The steady news
reports of pension fraud and abuse will anger the majority further. Any projected decreases
in Social Security (benefit payouts will only be 79 cents on the dollar by 2035 at our current
trajectory) will only exacerbate the ire, as the small governmental income the have-nots
receive becomes even more meager.
The growing potential here is for an emerging social schism, possibly accompanied with
intimidation and violence, not dissimilar to that which has occurred along racial or religious
lines during darker eras of our history.
As people become stressed, they react emotionally, and look for a culprit to blame. And as
they become more desperate, as many elderly workers with no savings often do, they'll resort to
more desperate measures.
Broken Promises
And it's not all sunshine and roses for the pensioners, either. Being promised a pension and
actually receiving one are two very different things.
Underfunded pension liabilities are a massive ticking time bomb, certain to explode over the
next few decades.
For example, many pensions offered through multi-employer plans are bad shape. The
multiemployer branch of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federally-instated
insurer behind private pensions, will be out of business by 2025 if no changes in law are made
to help. If that happens, retirees in those plans will get only 10% of what they were
promised.
Moreover, research conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts shows a
$1.4 trillion shortfall between state pension assets and guarantees to employees. There are
only two ways a gap that big gets addressed: massive tax hikes or massive benefit cuts. The
likeliest outcome will be a combination of both.
So, many of those today counting on a pension tomorrow may find themselves in a similar boat
to their pension-less neighbors.
No Easy Systemic Solutions, So Act For Yourself
There's no "fix" to the retirement predicament of the American workforce. There's no policy
change that can be made at this late date to reverse the decades of over-spending,
over-indebtedness, and lack of saving.
All we can do at this time is influence how we take our licks. Do we simply leave the masses
of unprepared workers to their sad fate? Or do we share the pain across the entire populace by
funding new social support programs via more taxes?
Time will tell. But what we can bet on is tougher times ahead, especially for those with
poor income prospects.
So the smart strategy for the prudent investor is to prioritize building a portfolio of
income streams in order to have sufficient dependable income for a sustainable retirement. Or
for simply remaining afloat financially.
Sadly, accustomed to the speculative approach marketed to us for so long by the financial
industry, most investors are woefully under-educated in how to build a diversified portfolio of
passive income streams (inflation-adjusting and tax-deferred whenever possible) over time.
Those looking to get up to speed can read our recent report A
Primer On Investing For Inflation-Adjusting Income , where we detail out the wide range of
prevalent (and not-so-prevalent) solutions for today's investors to consider when designing an
income-generating portfolio. From bonds, to dividends (common and preferred), to real estate,
to royalties -- we explain each vehicle, how it can be used, and what the major benefits and
risks are.
And in the interim, make sure the wealth you have accumulated doesn't disappear along with
the bursting of the Everything Bubble. If you haven't already read it yet, read our premium
report from last week What To Do Now That 'The
Big One' Is Here .
They can try and tax to fill pension buckets that are empty, but the population is more
likely than ever to react negatively to this sort of thing.
People will not move to areas where the potential for extortion to satisfy pension
promises exists. Nor will they move to any place where there's the possibility of a big tax
increase to fill public coffers.
In my own area there's already the threat of a large property tax increase to cover
'social improvements' that are not really the responsibility of the local government, but you
can't tell them that, they extend their tentacles into everything. The county is just as bad,
with property tax increases and then handing out grants that no one monitors and no one knows
about.
If govt's would go back to doing what they're supposed to do instead of the garbage
they're involved in now we'd be better off and it would cost those who actually pay the taxes
a lot less. It's one big reason people are moving to rural areas. My muni has voted several
times now to increase local option sales tax, the people keep putting it down, the voting
costs thousands to conduct, I wish they would give it up.
It's no wonder that Chicago loses 150 people every day...not a good thing.
"The list includes a married couple -- a police captain and a detective -- who joined DROP
at around the same time and collected nearly $2 million while in the program. They both filed
claims for carpal tunnel syndrome and other cumulative ailments about halfway through the
program. She spent nearly two years on disability and sick leave; he missed more than two
years ... the couple spent at least some of their paid time off recovering at their condo in
Cabo San Lucas and starting a family theater production company with their daughter..."
Pensions in many ways they are the biggest Ponzi Scheme of modern man. Pension payouts are
often predicated on the idea the money invested in these funds will yield seven to eight
percent a year and in today's low-interest rate environment, this has forced funds into ever
riskier investments.
The PBGC America's pension safety net is already under pressure and failing due to the
inability of pension funds to meet their future obligations. The math alone is troubling but
when coupled with the overwhelming possibility of a major financial dislocation looming in
the future a nightmare scenario for pensions drastically increases. More on this subject in
the article below.
84% of state and local public sector workers receive defined benefit pensions as do 100%
of federal workers with little to no contribution on their part. After 30 years Federal
workers receive 33% of their highest 3 consecutive years pay and state workers average
benefits are $43000 with a range from 15000 (MS) to 80000 (CA). Private sector employees get
to pay for this and have little if anything coming from their employers in the form of a
pension. Instead, private sector employees get to gamble their savings in the stock and bond
markets to secure a retirement. And don't thing government employees are paid less - they are
usually paid very competitively with the private sector. Bottom line is private sector
employees are slaves to federal, state, and local governments.
Not only are government workers not paid that less, they get a slew of days off, sicks
days, mental health days , every minor holiday is a day off. And because they never get laid
off, the lower salary is worth more over the long term. then the private sector worker who
gets fired every 5 years
A 401K is not a pension plan and if you don't put anything into the 401K then you get
nothing out of the 401K. Plus, pensions can fail. The people that made no other arrangements
for their retirement other than rely on SocSec will have more because they will qual for food
stamps, housing subsidies, utility credits, etc. The picture is being distorted.
There is not going to be the old American pension, it's the new America, where everything
has been hollowed out. The new American economic conditions has created a vast
underclass.
The growing underclass is because of being hollowed out. Social services for the
underclass is costing hundreds of billions. The Trumpers want a massive cut in social
funding.
The communist Democratic Socialist have a wedge issue of underclass causes which keeps the
Democratic Socialist party growing. Clinton is their enemy as we now know from Clinton's out
burst.
The only way out for Trumpers is an infrastructure build. This will draw in the masses as
labor markets tighten, thus pushing wages up.
"... If I take Social Security at age 62 and then pay back the benefits within 12 months to erase the penalty for claiming early, is it true I get to keep the interest I earned while I had the money? ..."
"... I understand how delayed-retirement credits boost Social Security benefits by 8% for each year that one delays claiming between age 66 and age 70. But do cost-of-living adjustments during the years you wait amplify the advantage to more than 8% a year? ..."
Q If I take Social Security at age 62 and then pay back the benefits
within 12 months to erase the penalty for claiming early, is it true I get to keep the interest
I earned while I had the money?SEE ALSO:
10 Things You Must Know About Social Security
A Yes, but don't get too excited. Prior to 2010, when Social Security imposed the 12-month
limit for withdrawing an application and repaying benefits, it was often advised that people
who didn't need the money use this "do over" procedure to get what amounted to an interest-free
loan from the government. If you claimed benefits at 62 and repaid them at 66, you might be
playing with $100,000 or more of "house money." The 12-month window restricts that opportunity.
Also, note that if you receive benefits in one calendar year and pay them back in the next,
you'll likely have to pay tax on the benefits in year one. You can recoup the tax, but it's
complicated.
Q I understand how delayed-retirement credits boost Social Security benefits by 8% for
each year that one delays claiming between age 66 and age 70. But do cost-of-living adjustments
during the years you wait amplify the advantage to more than 8% a year?
A Yes. COLAs are built into benefits starting at age 62, the earliest age at which you can
claim benefits, even if you don't claim at that time.
Here's an example worked up for us by Baylor University professor William Reichenstein, head
of research for consulting firm Social Security Solutions. Let's say your benefit at age 66 is
estimated at $2,000 a month, but you decide to wait until age 70 to claim. You'll get eight
years of compounded COLAs based on the full retirement age benefit of $2,000 -- bringing the
monthly benefit up to $2,533, assuming an average annual COLA of 3%. You'd also get four years
of 8% delayed-retirement credits calculated on the $2,533 benefit. That extra 32% brings the
total monthly benefit at age 70 to $3,343. (Yes, a 3% COLA may seem high considering 2016's 0%
and 2017's 0.3%. But the annual average COLA since automatic adjustments started in 1975 is
3.8%.)
1. Re: the professor's hypothetical example... don't kid yourself. He shows a
hypothetical 20% increase ($2000 going up to $2500.) Just observing the past 3 years,
COLA's have been 0% twice,( so says social security) and & .3% this past year.. And a
few years before that, there were a few more 0% years, along with minimal COLA increases.
Myself, having been forced to retire in 2009, I've discovered what social security says
the COLA is, (on which they base your yearly increase in benefits) and what the CPI is in
REAL LIFE are ridiculously far apart.)
2. The payback question states, "it's complicated." Here's the quick and short answer: TO
START, you must be able to ITEMIZE your tax return ( and not take the standard deduction)
in the year you enact your do over, to even have a CHANCE to recoup some of the taxes you
paid on your social security benefits. The dollar amount you pay back in the "do over" to
SS that exceed the benefits you received from SS during the current year, is the amount
on which you can include as an itemized deduction on your tax return for the current
year. And remember, itemized deductions will only reduce your taxes by 15 cents or 25
cents on the dollar (depending on your marginal tax bracket.) There is no such thing as a
tax credit, nor an amended tax return, when it comes to trying to recoup income tax you
paid on social security benefits. My credentials? I'm a CPA & retired college
accounting professor.
One little discussed aspect of Social Security is the modest wealth
redistribution resulting from disability benefits. The upward trend of disability in
previous decades mirrors the decline in working class and lower middle class jobs and
income.
SSDI has been a target of the cutters for years and puts Trump in the middle between his
conservatives and his more lumpenproletariat base members, an increasing number of whom
live off SSDI benefits .
The number of SSDI recipients has tripled since the 1980s.
Democrats should continue to exploit the divergence between GOP policy and the grim
reality of a significant share of the Trumpist base.
How Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan Pulled off the Greatest Fraud Ever Perpetrated
against the American People
by Allen W. Smith / April 14th, 2010
David Leonhardt's article ,
"Yes, 47% of Households Owe No Taxes. Look Closer," in Tuesday's New York Times was
excellent, but it just scratches the tip of the iceberg of how the rich have gained at the
expense of the working class during the past three decades. When Ronald Reagan became President
in 1981, he abandoned the traditional economic policies, under which the United States had
operated for the previous 40 years, and launched the nation in a dangerous new direction. As
Newsweek magazine put it in its March 2, 1981 issue, "Reagan thus gambled the future
-- his own, his party's, and in some measure the nation's -- on a perilous and largely untested
new course called supply-side economics."
Essentially, Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a "tax
and spend" policy, to a "borrow and spend" policy, where the government continued its heavy
spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were
catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the
first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one
trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations,
the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!
Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan pulled off one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated
against the American people in the history of this great nation, and the underlying scam is
still alive and well, more than a quarter century later. It represents the very foundation upon
which the economic malpractice that led the nation to the great economic collapse of 2008 was
built. Ronald Reagan was a cunning politician, but he didn't know much about economics. Alan
Greenspan was an economist, who had no reluctance to work with a politician on a plan that
would further the cause of the right-wing goals that both he and President Reagan shared.
Both Reagan and Greenspan saw big government as an evil, and they saw big business as a
virtue. They both had despised the progressive policies of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson, and
they wanted to turn back the pages of time. They came up with the perfect strategy for the
redistribution of income and wealth from the working class to the rich. Since we don't know the
nature of the private conversations that took place between Reagan and Greenspan, as well as
between their aides, we cannot be sure whether the events that would follow over the next three
decades were specifically planned by Reagan and Greenspan, or whether they were just the
natural result of the actions the two men played such a big role in. Either way, both Reagan
and Greenspan are revered by most conservatives and hated by most liberals.
If Reagan had campaigned for the presidency by promising big tax cuts for the rich and
pledging to make up for the lost revenue by imposing substantial tax increases on the working
class, he would probably not have been elected. But that is exactly what Reagan did, with the
help of Alan Greenspan. Consider the following sequence of events:
1) President Reagan appointed Greenspan as chairman of the 1982 National Commission on
Social Security Reform (aka The Greenspan Commission)
2) The Greenspan Commission recommended a major payroll tax hike to generate Social Security
surpluses for the next 30 years, in order to build up a large reserve in the trust fund that
could be drawn down during the years after Social Security began running deficits.
3) The 1983 Social Security amendments enacted hefty increases in the payroll tax in order
to generate large future surpluses.
4) As soon as the first surpluses began to role in, in 1985, the money was put into the
general revenue fund and spent on other government programs. None of the surplus was saved or
invested in anything. The surplus Social Security revenue, that was paid by working Americans,
was used to replace the lost revenue from Reagan's big income tax cuts that went primarily to
the rich.
5) In 1987, President Reagan nominated Greenspan as the successor to Paul Volker as chairman
of the Federal Reserve Board. Greenspan continued as Fed Chairman until January 31, 2006. (One
can only speculate on whether the coveted Fed Chairmanship represented, at least in part, a
payback for Greenspan's role in initiating the Social Security surplus revenue.)
6) In 1990, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a member of the Greenspan
Commission, and one of the strongest advocates the the 1983 legislation, became outraged when
he learned that first Reagan, and then President George H.W. Bush used the surplus Social
Security revenue to pay for other government programs instead of saving and investing it for
the baby boomers. Moynihan locked horns with President Bush and proposed repealing the 1983
payroll tax hike. Moynihan's view was that if the government could not keep its hands out of
the Social Security cookie jar, the cookie jar should be emptied, so there would be no surplus
Social Security revenue for the government to loot. President Bush would have no part of
repealing the payroll tax hike. The "read-my-lips-no-new-taxes" president was not about to give
up his huge slush fund.
The practice of using every dollar of the surplus Social Security revenue for general
government spending continues to this day. The 1983 payroll tax hike has generated
approximately $2.5 trillion in surplus Social Security revenue which is supposed to be in the
trust fund for use in paying for the retirement benefits of the baby boomers. But the trust
fund is empty! It contains no real assets. As a result, the government will soon be unable to
pay full benefits without a tax increase. Money can be spent or it can be saved. But you can't
do both. Absolutely none of the $2.5 trillion was saved or invested in anything. I have been
laboring for more than a decade to expose the great Social Security scam. For more information,
please visit my website or contact me.
This article was posted on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 at 9:00am and is filed under
Economy/Economics
, Social
Security , Tax .
5 comments on this article so far ...
Still, this is only symptom or really quite legal act by US. So, appears to me of the
system. So, what's wrong-right with the system of which governing the country by laws is
integral part? Apparently nothing; even to allen smyth.
So, why bother complaining ab an a legal act? Beats me! Why not change the system that
allows this? tnx
I think politics is, has and always will be the problem and it seems to have creeped in
to Dr. Smiths article.
The American people through decades of political rhetoric have come to believe all the lies
that have been told by politicians and duly reinforced by a compliant media.
Reagan proposed cutting benefits to fix social security. On 5/12/81 HHS Secretary Richard
Schweiker sent Congress the Administrations plan to rely on benefit cuts. You know what
happened next – the Democrats pounced with the elderly lobbies not far behind. Reagan
gave up and not unlike todays President, formed the commission mostly for political cover
and to take the heat off. And remember Congress passes the law, the President does not get
a vote.
The reserve fund build up for the boomers is also a myth. That is if we can believe the
Congressionsl Research Service:
"In fact, it has become conventional wisdom that Congress deliberately intended to built
up large balances in the trust funds, not just for the near term, but to help finance the
benefits of the post World War II baby boomers and later retirees." "To the contrary, a
review of the record of congressional proceedings would suggest that the goal was
not to create surpluses, but to assure that the system would not be threatened by
insolvency again in the event adverse conditions arose." ( CRS Report for Congress –
Social Security Financing Reform: Lessons From the 1983 Amendments – 97-741 EPW )
Or if we choose to believe Robert J Meyers:
Q: As we look at it today, some people rationalize the financing basis by saying that
it's a way of partially having the baby boomers pay for their own retirement in advance.
You're telling me now this was not the rationale. Nobody made that argument or adopted that
rationale?
Myers: That's correct. The statement you made is widely quoted, it is widely used, but
it just isn't true. It didn't happen that way, it was mostly happenstance that the
Commission adopted this approach to financing Social Security.
( http://ssaonline.us/history/myersorl.html
)
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan may have become outraged but he was on the commission.
He never realized that all cash surpluses have to be invested in debt – since Social
Security began? I find that hard to believe, but he was right to recommend cutting the FICA
tax, which of course went nowhere in CONGRESS.
If this new commission comes up with a plan to "extend the life" of the trust fund, as
happened with the new health care bill, it's just kicking the can down the road again.
Let's let them use the "trust fund" and run it down to zero. How? cut spending
elsewhere.
this is a great article alan, you missed one of the most important things greenspan did
to destroy the economy
he went to war on what he termed "wage inflation"
every time you see the prime go up that means there is upward pressure on wages and he
is trying to keep businesses from having money to offer higher wage
when you see wages go down it's because wage pressure is either stagnant or negative
of course there are other factors that make the prime go up or down but wage pressure is
the big reason you see it happening
when greenspan said "the economy is heating up" what he meant is "people are asking for
and getting a raise"
important stuff and one of the main reasons the middle classes wages have been
stagnant
– the US was not alone – this scam was taking place in most if not all
western faux-democracies. For the Canadian perspective – which has cost Cdn taxpayers
some two trillion dollars over the last 30+ years in "debt service" whilst government after
government claims 'no money!!' and slashes the social programs Cdns worked generations to
establish – What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html
. And thus it will continue until people catch on to this scam, this fraud, and put a lot
of people in jail. ABout the same time I find my way out from behind the looking glass, I
expect. We're all in cloud cuckooland now. Dorothy. The wizard is dead and the black witch
rules.
"Both Reagan and Greenspan saw big government as an evil, and they saw big business as a
virtue. They both had despised the progressive policies of Roosevelt, Kennedy and
Johnson"
Republicans BAD ..Democrats GOOD.
"When Ronald Reagan became President in 1981, he abandoned the traditional economic
policies, under which the United States had operated for the previous 40 years"
The 'traditional' economic policy of 'capitalism' (are economists allowed to utter that
word in public, or is 'traditional' a better oxymoron?) was rampant before 1981 and was
going about its destructive business. This article paints a picture of the pre-1981 world
being the 'glory days'.
"The official actuaries of the Social Security system say in order to get our Social
Security and retirement funds in balance, they'd have to cut benefits by 25 percent
indefinitely into the future," he says. "Do I think it's going to happen? Well I don't know,
but this is one of the reasons why inflation is the major problem out there. So long as you
don't do it, you're going to cause the debt overall -- the total government debt -- to rise
indefinitely, and that is an unstable situation."
He adds: "In the book discussing what the long-term outlook is all about, we say that the
issue of the aging of the population and its consequences on entitlements is having a
significant negative deterioration over the long run. The reason for that is what the data
unequivocally show is that entitlements -- which are mandated by law -- are gradually and
inexorably driving our gross domestic savings, and the economy, dollar for dollar. And so
long as that happens, we have to borrow from abroad, which is our current account
deficit."
He also said:
"When you deal with fear, it is very difficult to classify," he tells Here &
Now 's Jeremy Hobson. "But you can look at the consequences of it, and the consequence
is basically a suppressed level of innovation and therefore of capital investment and a
disinclination to take risks."
I agree with this, but not just as it relates to " a suppressed level of innovation " but
instead as it relates to the 2005 World Bank report on what produces wealth in a developed
economy like ours. It comes down to trust. Trust in your judicial system and trust in your
education system. I discuss this in the following 3 posts: 2007, 2009, 2011
This election at it's core is about trust. Destroy that, and we have no democracy, we have
no economy. It's that simple. That McConnell et al has decided he will not abide by the rules
agreed to in conducting the business of the Senate means we have no currently functioning
democracy. That is how fragile democracy in the US is. Our democracy comes down to two people,
the leaders of each party in the Senate agreeing to the rules. When one decides not to, there
is nothing that can be done other than vote.
You can hear the full interview here:
Sandi , November 5, 2018 10:48 am
Trust – I could't agree more. Thanks for shining this light.
Paul Krugman has been pounding the drum for years about the GOP's repeated con game of
creating deficits when they are in power, then running through the room with their hair on
fire on how deficits are going to be our downfall and so we MUST, MUST, MUST cut
entitlements. And yet we never seem to catch on.
It seems to me we should make all income, not just wages, subject to FICA. Of course we
could never touch what gets shipped off-shore anyway, so we'd just have to let that slide,
I suppose ..still, as long only the 'wage slaves' are taxed, things will only get
worse.
Karl Kolchak , November 5, 2018 12:16 pm
You still have trust? I gave that up after the Iraq War, the bailouts the Obama Betrayal
and Citizens United. Now I just assume the worst, no matter who is in power, and rarely am
I disappointed.
"... I have skipped the chest thumbing about the economy from Mnuchin and Mulvaney to focus on the stupidity ala CNBC . Real government spending barely kept pace with inflation, which is why outlays relative to GDP fell from 20.7% to 20.3%. Real tax revenues clearly fell in absolute terms and as a percent of GDP went from 17.2% to 16.5%. I guess this is what one gets when one lets Lawrence Kudlow become a chief economic adviser. But this kind of dishonesty is well known ever since Kudlow and his ilk tried to pull this intellectual garbage in the 1980's. Does anyone at CNBC not realize the Trump White House is playing the same games with numbers? ..."
"The only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs
like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security1."
More McConnell: "It's disappointing but it's not a Republican problem." The deficit, grew 17
percent to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018. "It is a bipartisan problem and a problem of the
unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those
programs to the demographics of America in the future."
The deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.
A new Treasury Department analysis on Monday revealed that corporate tax cuts had a
significant impact on the deficit this year. Federal revenue rose by 0.04 percent in 2018 which
is a nearly 100 percent decrease from the previous year's 1.5 percent. In fiscal year 2018, tax
receipts on corporate income fell to $205 billion from $297 billion in 2017.
Still, McConnell insisted the change had nothing to do with a lack of revenue due to the tax
break or increased spending resulting from new programs since 2015. Instead he insists the
deficit increase is due to entitlement and welfare programs. Now he does the old switcheroo
from the yearly deficit to the national debt.
McConnell said, the debt is very "disturbing and is driven by the three big entitlement
programs that are very popular, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. There has been a
bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of those
programs. Hopefully, at some point here, we'll get serious about this."
What McConnell
does not tell you is 8 years out those tax decreases will go away for much of the
population and many will see tax increases. McConnell and Republicans needed a way to keep the
60% of the total tax break going to the 1% of the Household Taxpayers making greater than
$500,000 annually since this tax break was passed under Reconciliation rules (Democrats could
not block it without 60 votes). Robert Reich has called this a Trojan
Horse tax break.
Recently, Mitch McConnell has been considering his legacy. I think it would be adequate to
paraphrase it as: "I saved the 2018 tax break for the 1 percenters. To hell with the rest of
you."
1. PGL pointed out the variance is barely audible on scale of the deficits. " I have
skipped the
chest thumbing about the economy from Mnuchin and Mulvaney to focus on the stupidity ala
CNBC . Real government spending barely kept pace with inflation, which is why outlays relative
to GDP fell from 20.7% to 20.3%. Real tax revenues clearly fell in absolute terms and as a
percent of GDP went from 17.2% to 16.5%. I guess this is what one gets when one lets Lawrence
Kudlow become a chief economic adviser. But this kind of dishonesty is well known ever since
Kudlow and his ilk tried to pull this intellectual garbage in the 1980's. Does anyone at CNBC
not realize the Trump White House is playing the same games with numbers? "
I kept my post the same because it is just another ruse by McConnell to get something done
for no reason what-so-ever. It is a lie by McConnell.
EMichael , October 17, 2018 11:00 am
And it will cost them exactly zero votes among the working class.
I wonder why that would be?
little john , October 17, 2018 12:02 pm
Maybe he'll get serious and endorse the NW Plan.
pgl , October 17, 2018 12:26 pm
A CNBC Federal spending SURGED. As in a 3.2% increase in NOMINAL spending, which means
real spending barely went up. As I noted under that post of mine on the CNBC/Treasury
dishonesty, Paul Ryan tried this same dishonest trick but the CBS guy nailed him. Well he
tried to but Ryan cut him off and repeated the same line.
Now how many people are stupid enough to not realize that Paul Ryan lies 24/7?
run75441 , October 17, 2018 1:20 pm
PGL:
I read your post earlier and recognized your point of spending barely rising. It is a ruse
of cut spending inside of a much larger ruse being precipitated by McConnell. If he can get
them to cut spending now, then maybe, maybe, they do not increase taxes down the road as
planned. I should have looked further and I did not.
I am thinking of adding your point in the text of my post. It is a great point and also
reinforces my point of the lies the Republicans tell the public. Thanks!
run75441 , October 17, 2018 9:19 pm
Noted . . . Just added your comment. Thanks again.
Joel , October 17, 2018 12:28 pm
"Maybe he'll get serious and endorse the NW Plan."
Co-terminus with the first verified report of porcine aviation.
pgl , October 17, 2018 3:04 pm
Trump blames the rise in the deficit on hurricanes and forest fires:
Someone fact check this please. But let's humor the Idiot in Chief for a comment by
assuming that the rise in the deficit is due to some temporary surge in FEMA spending. That
undermines the call for permanent reductions in Social Security and Medicare.
Point made – these clowns cannot keep their lies straight!
Amateur Socialist , October 17, 2018 7:17 pm
McConnell: "It's disappointing but it's not a Republican problem."
Not as long as people keep electing these clowns. I guess we'll find out in 3 more
weeks.
"... Note: Taking a spousal benefit does not reduce or change the amount your current spouse, ex-spouse, or ex-spouse's current spouse may receive. ..."
By Dana
Anspach Updated August 17, 2018 When a spouse dies, their Social Security benefits may
become available to their current or former marital partner, depending on certain
circumstances. A Social
Security spouse benefit is called a "spousal benefit" and is available to:
Current spouses
Widowed spouses
Ex-spouses
Before applying for spousal benefits, you should understand how your spouse's benefit may
be affected if you take your Social Security
benefits early, and what happens upon the death of a spouse. Eligibility for a Spousal
Benefit Current spouses and ex-spouses (if you were married for over 10 years and did not
remarry prior to age 60) both have eligibility for the spousal benefit. You must be age 62 to
file for or receive a spousal benefit. You are not eligible to receive a spousal benefit until
your spouse files for their own benefit first. Different rules apply
to ex-spouses . You can receive a spousal benefit based on an ex-spouse's record
even if your ex-partner has not yet filed for his or her own benefits, but your ex must be age
62 or older. Note: Taking a spousal benefit does not reduce or change the amount your
current spouse, ex-spouse, or ex-spouse's current spouse may receive.How Much You
Get As a spouse, you can claim a Social Security benefit based on your own earnings record,
or you can collect a spousal benefit that will provide you 50 percent of the amount of your
spouse's Social Security benefit as calculated at their full retirement age (FRA). Check the
Social Security website to determine your FRA, as it depends on your year of birth. If you file
before you reach your own FRA, your spousal benefit will be reduced because you are
filing early. You are automatically entitled to receive either a benefit based on your own
earnings or a spousal benefit based on your spouse's or ex-spouse's earnings. Social Security
calculates and pays the higher amount. If you were born on or before January 1, 1954, after you
reach FRA, you can choose to receive only the spousal benefit by filing a restricted
application. By doing this you delay receiving your own retirement benefits based on your
earnings record, until a later date. For example, at age 70 you could switch from receiving a
spousal benefit to receiving your own potentially higher benefit amount. Due to recent
Social
Security laws that went into effect Nov. 2, 2015, if you were born on or after Jan. 2,
1954, you will not be able to restrict your application and only receive spousal benefits. For
anyone born on or after Jan. 2, 1954, when you file you will automatically be deemed to be
filing for all benefits for which you are eligible.
"... If you have reached your full retirement age (and turned 62 before January 2, 2016), you may also elect to receive spousal benefits and delay taking your benefits, allowing your own delayed retirement credits to accrue, and switch to your own benefit at a later date. ..."
If you could receive more from Social Security based on your own earnings record than
through the spousal benefit, the Social Security Administration will automatically provide you
with the larger benefit.
If you have reached your full retirement age (and turned 62 before January 2, 2016), you may
also elect to receive spousal benefits and delay taking your benefits, allowing your own
delayed retirement credits to accrue, and switch to your own benefit at a later date.
However, you cannot elect to receive spousal benefits below your retirement age and later
switch to your own benefits.
Individuals who turn 62 on or after January 2, 2016, will not be
able to choose to take spousal benefits at their full retirement age.
However, spousal benefits should still be taken into consideration when planning your own
retirement strategy.
For example, let's say you and your spouse are both 66 and are still working, so you are
considering letting your Social Security benefit grow for another few years. However, if your
spouse anticipates collecting a spousal benefit on your work record, you might be better off
filing at your full retirement age instead of waiting.
As I mentioned earlier, there are no delayed retirement credits for spousal benefits. And
one of the requirements for collecting a spousal benefit is that the primary worker must be
collecting his or her own retirement benefit. Therefore, it rarely makes financial sense to
delay Social Security beyond your spouse's retirement age, if they expect a spousal
benefit.
This is just one example of how a spousal benefit can affect your overall retirement
strategy. The bottom line is that Social Security spousal benefits will affect the retirement
income of millions of American workers, so it's important to know what they are and how they
work.
The $16,728 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook
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Many couples can significantly enhance their lifetime Social Security earnings by having one
of the pair claim spousal benefits at 66 years and delay personal benefits until 70 years of
age.
This claiming strategy, which we call free spousal benefits , has
been discussed here
and elsewhere as one of the best ways to avoid the otherwise inevitable trade-off between
getting money sooner (early claiming) and a larger benefit later (delayed claiming).
Having drunk the free-spousal-benefit pool-aid, an inquisitive client asked if the claiming
strategy would work in the reverse. Instead of claiming spousal benefits first and then
switching to personal benefits later, Karen wanted to know if she should claim her modest
Social Security retirement benefits early, say at 62 years of age, and then switch to claiming
her husband's larger spousal benefits later on. On its face, her idea seems to make sense.
However, let's look at how this actually works for Karen and her husband Burt. They are both
62 and their full retirement age is 66. Karen's full retirement benefit is $400 a month and
Burt's is $2,000. Karen's maximum spousal benefit is $1,000 at 66 (that is half of Burt's age
66 retirement benefits). Burt plans to file for retirement benefits at 66, at which point Karen
will be eligible to claim spousal benefits. Karen knows that she can claim retirement benefits
early at age 62 and get $300/month (75% of the $400 she could get at her full retirement age).
She also believes that at 66 she can switch to her spousal benefits and get $1,000.
On this last point Karen is wrong. When getting supplemental spousal benefits at 66, her
full retirement age, her benefit will be $900, not $1,000.
The reasons for this are very convoluted. (A more complete description of the issues can be
found at socialsecuritychoices.com/blog/?p=391 .)
While Karen was hopeful that the reduction in benefits from early claiming will be temporary,
confined to benefits during her 62nd to 66th years of age, unfortunately this is not the
case.
While claiming at 62 will provide Karen with income sooner, there is a cost. First, claiming
at 62 means that she will receive only 75% of her retirement benefit. Secondly, the total
benefit she will receive after getting the spousal supplement will be smaller than it would
have been if she had waited until full retirement age to claim her retirement benefits. If she
opts for this strategy, she will receive this smaller benefit for the rest of her life.
Approach the strategy of taking your own retirement benefits now and a supplemental spousal
benefit later with caution. The rules here are especially complicated and Karen's example may
not apply in your case.
It would be wise to consult an expert before pursuing such a strategy. The long-term benefit
of claiming early might be lower than you expect.
That post led to an outpouring of deeply lived personal experience, of almost
French complexity, extolling the virtues of eating particular food types in
particular combinations at particular times, and not paying too much attention
to calories. Fine. If you wish to be befuddled, that is your perfect right.
So, with some trepidation, here is a summary of the current state of knowledge
regarding intelligence and health. Indeed, it is my summary of a summary paper.
A pointless redundancy, you may say, but I know you are busy, and I would not
like to interrupt your lunch break.
Intelligent people lead healthier lives, and that is not just because they
intelligently make healthy decisions, but also, it would appear, because they
are inherently healthier. Spooky.
What genome-wide association studies reveal about the association between
intelligence and physical health, illness, and mortality
Ian JDeary 1 Sarah EHarris 12 W DavidHill 1
1 Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Department of Psychology,
University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, United Kingdom
2Medical Genetics Section, Centre for Genomic & Experimental Medicine, MRC Institute
of Genetics & Molecular Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Western General Hospital,
Edinburgh EH4 2XU, United Kingdom
The associations between higher intelligence test scores from early life
and later good health, fewer illnesses, and longer life are recent discoveries.
Researchers are mapping the extent of these associations and trying to understanding
them. Part of the intelligence-health association has genetic origins. Recent
advances in molecular genetic technology and statistical analyses have revealed
that: intelligence and many health outcomes are highly polygenic; and that
modest but widespread genetic correlations exist between intelligence and
health, illness and mortality. Causal accounts of intelligence-health associations
are still poorly understood. The contribution of education and socio-economic
status -- both of which are partly genetic in origin -- to the intelligence-health
associations are being explored.
Until recently, an article on DNA-variant commonalities between intelligence
and health would have been science fiction. Thirty years ago, we did not
know that intelligence test scores were a predictor of mortality. Fifteen
years ago, there were no genome-wide association studies. It was less than
five years ago that the first molecular genetic correlations were performed
between intelligence and health outcomes. These former blanks have been
filled in; however, the fast progress and accumulation of findings in the
field of genetic cognitive epidemiology have raised more questions. Individual
differences in intelligence, as tested by psychometric tests, are quite
stable from later childhood through adulthood to older age. The diverse
cognitive test scores that are used to test mental capabilities form a multi-level
hierarchy; about 40% or more of the overall variance is captured by a general
cognitive factor with which all tests are correlated, and smaller amounts
of variance are found in more specific cognitive domains (reasoning, memory,
speed, verbal, and so forth). Twin, family and adoption studies indicated
that there was moderate to high heritability of general cognitive ability
in adulthood (from about 50–70%), with a lower heritability in childhood[4].
It has long been known that intelligence is a predictor of educational attainments
and occupational position and success
In addition to mortality, intelligence test scores are associated with
lower risk of many morbidities, such as cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular
disease, hypertension, cancers such as lung cancer, stroke, and many others,
as obtained by self-report and objective assessment. Higher intelligence
in youth is associated at age 24 with fewer hospital admissions, lower general
medical practitioner costs, lower hospital costs, and less use of medical
services, and intelligence appeared to account for the associations between
education and such health outcomes. Higher intelligence is related to a
higher likelihood of engaging in healthier behaviours, such as not smoking,
quitting smoking, not binge drinking, having a more normal body mass index
and avoiding obesity, taking more exercise, and eating a healthier diet.
All this work launched a new field: cognitive epidemiology. When studying
health, factor in intelligence. If you read any research about a health problem,
like for example obesity, always ask yourself the question: how much of this
problem is associated with intelligence? Do they have early childhood data on
ability and health? Without that, there is probable confounding.
The associations which are found between health and intelligence could be
due to a direct genetic pathway shared by intelligence and health, and/or by
better, more educated and wealthy intelligence choices.
Genome-wide association studies transformed the field. Box 1 summarises all
the different statistical methods. This is a very good guide to the field. The
main one is GWAS, which finds regions of the genome which are correlated with
the trait in question and statistically significant at a P-value of <5 × 10−8
to control for the multiple comparison being made.
Here are all the correlations between the genetic code and health.
Table 1 here
Another part of understanding the genetic contribution to intelligence
health correlations concerns other predictors of health inequalities, and
intelligence's correlations with them. Intelligence is related to education
and socio-economic status (SES), and those were known to be related to health
inequalities before intelligence was known to have health associations.
Although education and SES are principally thought of as social-environmental
variables, both have been found to be partly heritable, by oth twin
based and molecular genetic studies, both have high genetic correlations
with intelligence, Mendelian Randomisation results show bidirectional genetic
effects between intelligence and education, and both have genetic correlations
with health outcomes
What does all this mean? It may mean that the underlying causes of health,
happiness, morbidity and mortality are unequally distributed, and favour some
people more than others. Evolution does not have to conform to our imaginings
or our notions of fairness. If genetics is a significant contributor within
a genetic group, it is plausible that it contributes to between group variance.
Perhaps the Japanese live longer because they are Japanese. This remains to
be proved, but is worth testing. If we ever achieve the noble ambition of creating
healthy environments all over the inhabited world we may yet have a residuum
of health differences due to purely genetic causes.
Meanwhile, you may be wondering what is the intelligent thing to do about
your health. Don't smoke, don't get fat, and don't read too many health warnings.
Dean
Baker at Beat-the-Press has pointed out (sorry, not able to link to it) that Associated Press
put out a tweet that presents an essentially hysterical story about future prospects for Social
Security following the recent release of the Trustees. This report says that as of 2026
Medicare and as of 2034 Social Security will face a "shortfall." However, the AP tweeted that
what they face is "insolvency." Needless to say, "insolvency" is much more serious than
"shortfall" and simply feeds the overblown hysteria that so many think about these programs,
feeding political pressures to mess with them.
The new report provides the latest update on what would happen if the forecast happens and
nothing is done. Given that the projection is that Social Security benefits are set to increase
by about 20% by 2034, if somehow nothing were done and benefits were set to be reduced so that
they could be paid by expected tax revenues, the benefit would be cut back by about that amount
to about what they are now in real terms. In short, this is not the hysterical crisis AP
suggested or that so many think is out there. We have seen this nonsense before.
Of course, Dean accurately points out that by law the benefits must be paid. This may also
be a time to remind everybody that the US is really in much better shape demographically in
terms of life expectancies, retirement ages, and expected population growth rates than most
other high income nations, with such cases as Japan and Germany in much worse shape than the
US. However, all these nations are making their public old age pension payments. In the case of
Germany the payments are higher than in the US, but the payments are being made, and its
economy is humming along very well. There simply is not basis for any of this hysteria in the
US regarding the future of Social Security.
"... "The main difficulty with choosing an investment adviser is that by the time you know enough to choose a good one, you probably know enough to do your financial planning and asset management on your own." ..."
There is no substitute to self-education. Those unwilling to learn are destined to repeat
these same mistakes. The financial-advice industry is too rife with conflicts of
interest for you to enter without equipping yourself with knowledge.
Maybe the best summation is by Dr. James M. Dahle in his book "
The White Coat Investor ." He says: "The main difficulty with choosing an investment
adviser is that by the time you know enough to choose a good one, you probably know enough to
do your financial planning and asset management on your own."
You can find
extensive information here to help you become a DIY investor. There are plenty of others
dedicated to demystifying the process of investing as well.
Take time and educate yourself. Then, if you still think you still need help with your
investments and financial planning, go out armed with knowledge and find a financial adviser
that fits your needs.
Chris Mamula used principles of traditional retirement planning, combined with
creative lifestyle design, to retire from a career as a physical therapist at age 41. This was
first published on the blog site Can I
Retire Yet?
"... The maximum monthly social security benefit is $3,538. caught my eye, though. ..."
"... The system was designed with psychological, political intent. The idea was that the program would be impossible for conservatives to eliminate because all wage earners would feel entitled to pensions that they themselves had paid for (though strictly speaking it is a pure tax and your taxes are paid to current retirees). ..."
"... I was in Hawaii recently and watching that was .well .interesting. You walk around and see extraordinary opulence, often gluttony really, and at the same time all those homeless. Yes, I do know the story about them, but, still Plenty of those, apparently, vets. ..."
Social Security benefits are based on your lifetime contributions and what age you choose
to begin taking them. So a higher earner will get more benefits (up to the cap, around $106k
if memory serves) than a modest earner–simply because he paid more into the system.
You can elect to take benefits as early as 62, or as later as 70.5.
The system was designed with psychological, political intent. The idea was that the
program would be impossible for conservatives to eliminate because all wage earners would
feel entitled to pensions that they themselves had paid for (though strictly speaking it is a
pure tax and your taxes are paid to current retirees).
In act early economists recommend the system be funded out of general revenues and said
there was no need for a payroll tax. FDR said he wanted people to take ownership in the
system so no one could ever destroy the system.
It is remarkably effective. It's remarkable effective and neither Ronald Reagan nor George
W Bush lasted more than a few weeks when they tried to roll back the system.
The only wins conservatives have scored against it are taxing some of the benefits (began
in the 80s) and making some changes to cost-of-living inflation adjustments in the 90s. It's
called the third rail of politics here and every old person is outraged by any suggestion
that benefits should be reduced. There is however a lot of propaganda about the alleged
future unaffordability of the system, and it now strikes me that there is an elite consensus
in favor of modifying the system to reduce benefits.
It's "known" that the US "social safety net" is the worst in West.
I mean, with that amount of available money provided by the State , how do we see all
that visible homelessness and poverty in US? I know that drugs and alcohol, with general
stupidity, can do that.
I guess my question is:
A family of four, breadwinner losing his/her job (offshoring, outsourcing, downsizing)
getting on that "net", renting would they lose their accommodation and effectively have
problem with food, shelter and medical help, while on that net while finding another job?
And, how long can they be on that net?
I know I can read about that a lot, but condensed info from a person on the ground there
would be much more helpful.
As a general rule of thumb the safety net is very weak for those in the middle class,
whereas in many other Western countries there are universal social insurance systems intended
to cover everyone regardless of income. Healthcare is an obvious one across the West, and
much ink has been spilled about the outrageous cost of college in America. The government's
safety net here is simply to allow young folks to go into unlimited state-guaranteed
debt.
Something of a stealth middle class safety net is provided by the corporate sector in the
form of health insurance, pensions, maternity leave, etc. This has been reduced since the 80s
but still exist, and government tax policy encourages it. As an example if you leave your
employer you have the right to keep your employer-sponsored health insurance through
something called COBRA.
A number of programs also exist to provide tax-deferred investment accounts for various
social purposes. These are available for retirement, healthcare, and higher education. The
programs cost the government nothing in expenditures, but reduce tax revenue (probably by
less than the public benefit however).
There is much more of a safety net for the poorer classes, but as a general rule of thumb
many of these programs run through women since they're dependent on the number of children
you have (and, of course, household income). If you're a single man or your baby mamma
doesn't want you around anymore, tough luck.
Programs that exist for the poor include:
Additionally some of the states have additional welfare programs.
Actual cash transfers to the poor have largely been abolished since the 90s, though the
Obama Administration revived them in stealth form by greatly expanding disability
payments.
As far as the homeless go, if you see them in the winter in cold cities they're probably
mentally ill.
If they're somewhere warm that's still possible, though then there are other factors such
as a lifestyle choice, temporarily down on luck, single man unable to find any work or
charity, etc.
Type of beneficiary
Beneficiaries
Total monthly benefits (millions of dollars)
Average monthly benefit (dollars)
Number (thousands)
Percent
Total
61,984
100.0
79,988
1,290.46 Average Benefit
The table format does not paste correctly. See the table here:
Comprehensive and informative.
Didn't know a couple of things.
there is an elite consensus in favor of modifying the system to reduce benefits.
Of course. It's the in their nature.
As a general rule of thumb the safety net is very weak for those in the middle class,
whereas in many other Western countries there are universal social insurance systems
intended to cover everyone regardless of income.
Interesting re former and true around here re later. The level of "assistance" depends on
assessed needs of a person/family, not on their previous income.
There is much more of a safety net for the poorer classes, but as a general rule of
thumb many of these programs run through women since they're dependent on the number of
children you have (and, of course, household income). If you're a single man or your baby
mamma doesn't want you around anymore, tough luck.
And
single man unable to find any work or charity, etc.
Interesting too. I will sound simplistic and naive, but it's really hard to reconcile those extremes in
US.
I mean, I have no problem with capable, talented, or just ruthless and greedy, or just lucky,
having all those zillions. Good on them.
But, at the same time, in the same place, people who are going through the trash cans.
Yes, I've heard all the explanations, all sound very reasonable, some don't even understand
(stupid me), but , still
I was in Hawaii recently and watching that was .well .interesting.
You walk around and see extraordinary opulence, often gluttony really, and at the same time
all those homeless. Yes, I do know the story about them, but, still
Plenty of those, apparently, vets.
I haven't got the slightest how to fix that, or even is it possible, but, still
..something simply does not compute.
Still, a couple of things are eluding me.
I'll use an example:
A man, single, late 20s, professional, worked in, say, corporate environment, got
"restructured/downsized/outsourced". Salary at the time of being "let go" around 80K. Worked
in similar capacity for, say, 6 years. Renting, of course. No savings (kid likes to
travel).
So, where I am, well, he does get an "assistance" which will pay for a rent, 3 decent meals
per day and he'll have a (state, not private, of course), medical help. Especially in
emergencies. And this can last for quite a while, actually.
Bottom line, no need to be homeless, no need to be hungry, and he'll get the basic and
emergency medical help.
All the rest, well, that's precisely the initiative to get a job, and do it fast. I mean, not
much fun living like that. But, at the same time, no need to sleep rough, beg and go through
trash cans.
I will sound simplistic and naive, but it's really hard to reconcile those extremes in
US.
I mean, I have no problem with capable, talented, or just ruthless and greedy, or just
lucky, having all those zillions. Good on them.
But, at the same time, in the same place, people who are going through the trash cans.
Yes, I've heard all the explanations, all sound very reasonable, some don't even understand
(stupid me), but , still
It's a political choice, pure and simple. And some of the political choices are unrelated
to the welfare state–some municipalities have statutes against vagrancy and enforce
them. Others don't.
I was in Hawaii recently and watching that was .well .interesting.
You walk around and see extraordinary opulence, often gluttony really, and at the same time
all those homeless. Yes, I do know the story about them, but, still
Plenty of those, apparently, vets.
Hawaii, for obvious reasons, is a place with a lot of voluntary homeless. The state has
been trying to get rid of them by buying them tickets to the mainland.
Many other voluntary homeless are found in California, Colorado, and Las Vegas. The
California ones may be quasi-involuntary as it seems many arrived from the Midwest to get
into paid rehab programs, then after running out of money moved into tent cities. But they
weren't homeless in the Midwest and panhandling enough for a Greyhound bus ticket is not hard
(though embarrassing, or at least it would be for me).
Bear in mind that Americans also donate a lot to charity, both in absolute and per capita
terms. So almost every community (besides rich-only suburbs) has a food bank which people
donate to, even if there's no social need for it. My secretary for instance is a very kind
person and as such is always trying to organize canned food drives for the food bank. The
many users of the food bank are what Victorians would call the undeserving poor who are
already on the federal SNAP program. The food bank lets them increase their purchases of
marketable commodities (such as soda), which can then be traded for supplies not covered by
the SNAP program (alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs).
Note that my community does not have homeless people as it's a rural small town.
Lots of churches, including here, will also do things such as offer free Thanksgiving and
Christmas dinners to the indigent and purchase toys for their children.
Larger cities have a mix of public and private homeless shelters. There generally isn't
enough capacity for all homeless, but that works as many homeless don't like the rules these
shelters impose.
So.. the same guy in US, how would that look like?
First, you are dealing with 50 different systems. Only Social Security is uniform
throughout the country.
As a general rule an able-bodied male would receive no permanent assistance in a state
like mine (Alabama).
He could get unemployment compensation for 26 weeks provided he complied with the job
search rules.
Other than pregnant women, adults in Alabama do not receive Medicare so if he was unable
to pay his Cobra insurance premiums he would have no insurance. There are public health
clinics but the availability varies by county.
Many that are under 62 try to get approved for Social Security Disability. It is a bit of
a racket. The rate goes up during times of high unemployment and is trending higher even
though most jobs are less physically demanding. "Mental" disability is one of the best
tickets available. This is the route most druggies take.
Playing it straight is a real disadvantage. As a general rule people lose assistance as
they earn more. As was pointed out, the ones who do not work and have no "income," wink,
wink, do best with regard to the available assistance.
Many of the "homeless" have mental, alcohol or drug problems (or all three) plus the
charitable organizations devoted to providing services for the homeless are extensive. Around
the cities free meals are widely available.
"... Canada is as neoliberal as almost anywhere else in the Anglo developed world. You can think of us as being just like the USA or UK, but about a decade behind in the adoption of dumb and cruel ideas. In the Anglo neoliberal family, Canada is the slightly retarded little sibling. ..."
"... Ireland allows you to claim citizenship if you have an Irish grandparent (with some caveats). Many US and Canadians use this to work/settle in the EU. A Chicago friend who was working in London and HK got her Irish passport without ever bothering to visit Ireland. ..."
"... Yves, Sweden might take you, if you can take the winters the requirements for self-employed residence permits aren't too harsh. So far they've managed to not overdo it on neoliberalism, although there are forces that sure try to make it happen. ..."
"... I also live near San Miguel de Allende in a small, agricultural Mexican community perched on the side of an extinct volcano. I pretty much avoid the expat scene, shop in the mercados, hang with Mexican friends and am thoroughly enjoying soaking in this wonderful way of life. I made this move at age 70. ..."
"... When I'm in Mexico the feeling is of constantly hitting my head against a glass ceiling and biting my tongue. ..."
"... But for the love of God, stay on the beaten tourist path (SMA-Oaxaca City-Cholula etc.). Don't go into Guerrero except maybe Taxco. I was just in Chilpancingo for a professional event, taking every precaution, and the stories you hear first hand are horrifying. The security situation in Mexico is deteriorating badly. ..."
"... Even states like Puebla that used to be safe are seeing kidnappings and other extreme crime. If you speak Spanish, the issue of security it is utterly unavoidable, it creeps into many conversations and dominates the local news. ..."
"... 'According to Pew Charitable Trusts, only 13 percent of Baby Boomers still have [defined benefit pensions].' ..."
"... This 13 percent remnant overwhelmingly consists of government employees, whose defined benefit pensions are uniformly underfunded (and even understated as to HOW underfunded they are). ..."
"... I had a work colleague from Sweden. She had been a school teacher there and came to the U.S. to sell financial products, make a lot of money and avoid Swedish taxes. I asked her if she were going to become a U.S. citizen. She looked at me like I was crazy, laughed and said, "Hell no, I would never wish to be old in America." ..."
"... From my perch, if any Americans want to make the move, I would say over the next decade before that door closes. The regulations are already tightening up such as making sure that you owe no taxes or the like before you leave. More Americans are now renouncing their citizenship as America still want to tax them even when they have moved away. After this decade, I regret to say, that America will be no country for old people. ..."
"... And speaking of inequality, most countries have far worse inequality than the US and it is savage and painful to watch when your security guard finishes a 12 hour shift and then starts another 12 hour shift across the street. ..."
"... By the way don't get me started on the cost of healthcare. It's cheap until you run into a major complication. I had surgery in Peru for something minor and the total bill was over $5000 USD. Imagine if it were heart surgery. My expat insurance paid it but you can't get that if you're over a certain age. ..."
Canada is as neoliberal as almost anywhere else in the Anglo developed world. You can think of us as being just like the
USA or UK, but about a decade behind in the adoption of dumb and cruel ideas. In the Anglo neoliberal family, Canada is the slightly
retarded little sibling.
The cost of living is high in Canadian cities. In Vancouver and Toronto, the cost of living has soared out of any sort of proportion
to employment incomes. Affordable rental housing is often infested with bedbugs or other vermin (Vancouver alleyways are strewn
with stained mattresses and other abandoned furniture). Beggars are seen everywhere, while the Teslas and Lexuses roll past. Not
a day goes by that I don't see elderly persons climbing in and out of dumpsters. Permanent shantytowns have arisen on the outskirts.
We got almost the same opiates problem as the USA.
The province of Quebec used to be more social-democratic in orientation than other parts of Canada. But even the Quebecois
seem to have caught the mental and spiritual diseases of the globalist bourgeoisie. I recently spent a month in Montreal, and
was aghast to see the staircases of downtown Metro stations rendered almost impassable by the large numbers of homeless men and
women trying to sleep there.
My younger relatives look at me very sceptically, when I tell them that as late as 1990, a beggar was an unusual sight in Vancouver.
Of course, people born since that time would think that what you see today is normal .
We were at a commercial hot springs somewhere in France about 15 years ago, and it cost around $5 to go in, and before entering,
there was a doctor and nurse that checked your blood pressure, etc., for no extra charge. It was so over the top in terms of anything
compared to here, in a delightful way.
In France, doctors make a lot less than in the US, particularly general practitioners. The GP doctors make on the order of
what a senior manager or engineer makes.
There are good reasons for that (among them free education for doctors and a totally different societal attitude towards healthcare,
based on SOLIDARITY – whose outcome is a more reasonable cost and coverage. Yes, they also do use that word a lot in general public
discourse, in many European countries. Have you heard the word SOLIDARITY in the US in public discourse, ever?).
A good summary of that and meaningful comparisons with other nations' healthcare systems is provided in the book 'The Healing
of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care' by T. R. Reid.
Don't worry, Marcon and Merkel are accelerating the crapification of France and the wider EU. The next generation will get
to experience the joys of economic and health insecurity in abundance.
the main project now is to gut the public pensions. the PIIGS countries have already had to slash theirs, so the plan now is
to bring the rest of Europe to Canadian levels (retirement age at 67 or higher with a minimal state component).
By the way, it is not widely known for example that the retirement age in Russia is 60. And, judging by the tens of thousands
of healthy and active Russian retirees (these are teachers and professional workers, "middle class" people, not oligarchs – those
go to Monaco and Switzerland of course) living on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria (mild winters, culturally and geographically
close, inexpensive by developed world standards, gateway to the EU), their pensions cannot be that bad.
And no, they don't look like they are about to die at 65.
So, take that, dear future US retirees (myself in that number).
Wikipedia says the retirement age in Russia is 60 for men, and 55 for women !!! My personal family practice physician is a
Russian immigrant and pre-GFC she claimed, "Most Russian men die before 60. (Wikipedia now says 70.91) Next time I see her I may
ask her about Russian retirement, and life expectancy etc. Another topic is the prevailing attitude of Russian immigrants when
they came to America. They really expected to clean up! I'd be interested in what other NC readers think about this.
Certainly
I can imagine the distress of Russian immigrants who through a lot to move to the US only to find by age 60–55 for women–they
might have been better off being back in Russia.
Indeed, the Black Sea coast is overran by Russkies, younger ones as well. The countryside is where the Brits move to to feel
like country squires on the cheap. And Americans are concentrated in Sofia, doing the heavy lifting of pretending to be civilising
the natives while securing staging areas for the future war against Russia. It's all one big happy international family :) Can't
wait to move back there permanently in 30 months.
They should allow Medicare to be used outside the US, especially for low cost countries in the Third World. They are cheaper
and just as good as the US for many medical services – maybe not for transplants but for heart bypasses, dialysis, etc., they
are ok.
correct: medicare cannot be used outside the u.s.
we are retirees living abroad much of the year. our secondary insurance (which we are lucky enough to have from former teaching
job) becomes our primary insurance. we submit bills to them and they pay (reimburse) fairly well.
we use local doctors and clinics at much lower rates than in the u.s.
emergency medical care in europe is nearly always free or all but free.
We've been to Ecuador twice in the last 4 years exploring retirement there – and decided against it. For a combination of reasons.
1. In spite of what gets touted in the retirement media, for the most part Ecuador is a third world country with everything
that entails.
2. The much ballyhood Cuenca is in an Andes plateau at 8,000 ft. elevation. Not a fan, and it's isolated, if you want to get
out of Cuenca there's a lot of nowhere to go. Cuenca has been haggling with airlines to get some service providers since TAME
cancelled its routes, that's been a constant and ongoing problem.
3. I liked Quito, It's at 9,000 ft. I really couldn't take it.
4. The coast is a very narrow strip of land at the bottom of the mountains, and outside of a couple of areas it's a backwater.
Little infrastructure, few services, dirt poor. The north coast of Ecuador (we call it the mosquito zone) shook down in a 7.8
earthquake in 2016 that wrecked everything from Manta to the Colombian border.
5. Ecuador completely overhauled its visa laws in February of this year making it much more difficult to get any kind of permanent
residency permit, and requiring all visa applicants to provide proof of personal health insurance to qualify for a visa.
6. Ecuador isn't cheap. They levy enormous taxes on almost everything that's imported, which is just about everything but food.
Impossible to get packages and mail in or out.
'Studies' have shown that the majority of pensioners who retire there, leave and go back home or somewhere else within 5 years.
American individualism is a recent myth. I remember how my grandmother who grew up in rural Montana a century ago could rattle
off the names of various second cousins, to say nothing of all the family stories. Life then was rugged but it was not individualistic.
Perhaps one can acquire new pals at the age of 70, as as not to be a lonely old man/woman.
Or are you just a Yankee with money?
And hopefully the new country is so subdued by the super power that there is no need to liberate it. For example, Libya, a
few years ago, would not have been a good choice, in this respect.
If you choose traditional medicare instead of a medicare advantage plan , I don't understand how it would narrow your network.
Traditional medicare is universal in the US and accepted by most providers. I've been on traditional medicare for16 years and
haven't had a provider that doesn't accept traditional medicare.
I wonder if that is regional. Where I live(south), I never see a problem with that.
My PCP when I asked him as I approached 65, replied, that of course he accepted medicare, that there was little difference
between it and other insurance, and that folks who did not accept medicare were immoral in his view.
I think out here in flyover it is less common for doctors to not take Medicare patients. My elderly father moved out here 1.5
years ago and has made considerable use of the excellent resources of the UW health system. His secondary private insurance covers
very little since he is out-of-network but Medicare has covered virtually everything and no expert has refused to see him (urology,
throat/swallowing, dementia, macular degeneration, etc.) due to being Medicare insured. I am pretty sure the entire Mayo Clinic
operation takes Medicare patients also.
It may be that independent docs are refusing Medicare patients but there are fewer and fewer of those out here.
A lot of doctors do not accept Medicare. My current MD does not. I think that is even more true of specialists.
And I am not in a network. I have an old-fashioned indemnity plan. I can see any doctor, anywhere in the world. I submitted
claims for 2 years from Australia, and have also submitted claims from the UK and Thailand.
it happens around this southern city . scary stuff, my first world problems may turn into third world problems. trying to imagine
being 70, living in a van, queing up for a chance at a valuable temp gig in an amazon warehouse.
I would have thought so, too. Certainly the media I have read has lead me to believe that many doctors don't accept Medicare.
I wondered what the percentages were so I did a search. Surprising to me. More nuance than one might think in the results -- seems
you can "accept" at finer-grained levels than one might assume in a Federal program. Here's what seems to be a reasonably objective
and recent appraisal: http://www.factcheck.org/2017/03/medicaids-doctor-participation-rates/
Anecdotal reply from the few doctors I have seen: They state they accept Medicare because it pays them quickly and there is
less paperwork than with most insurance companies, which results in less office overhead. Even with the lower payments from Medicare
for many procedures, the doctors do OK when the big picture is examined.
One of my docs accepts no insurance. But he will file the Medicare claim. I pay him and Medicare sends me a check. It's a little
unwieldy but he's a good doc (in my completely unprofessional opinion) so I put up with it. Others don't and go to other docs.
Physicians in private practice often do not accept Medicare or Medicaid do to billing issues. These are usually older doctors
with established practices. Younger physicians often end up working as employees of large chain hospitals to stay solvent, and
they will accept any form of payment.
I now live in Portugal. The quality of life is high, and cost of living quite low (though Lisbon has become pricey in terms
of property).
A few months ago I sustained a cut that wasn't healing well, and decided to visit a private walk-in clinic. It was clean, modern,
and there was virtually no wait. The nurse took care of me, as no doctor was required. She spent about twenty minutes cleaning
and dressing the wound, and gave me some extra waterproof bandages to take home.
The cost? Six Euros. You read that correctly: Six Euros.
To the issue of cost of living, I was in Portugal last week and had a myocardial infarction upon seeing petrol prices at 1.55€/litre.
Good thing is not only are there excellent public hospitals for such MIs, but the extremely relaxed recreational pharmaceuticals
policy makes for good prevention as well.
Where I live a liter is about .48 euro if I have my conversion right. So retirees here do catch some breaks. Also there's no
VAT although we do of course have sales tax. And finally many US retirees fully own their homes whereas in, say, Germany almost
everybody rents. Indeed I'd say that so far the US elderly have it easy compared to the millenials who are the ones really getting
screwed. Just reading an article the other day about the record number of millenials living with their parents or, undoubtedly,
their grandparents.
And finally I've read Nomadland and should be said that many of those older people wandering around the country do so by choice.
RVs are not cheap. A new one can cost as much as a house. Amazon prefers to hire these people for their work ethic and because
they bring their own housing with them which is handy for a temporary workforce. Amazon even tries to sugarcoat the exploitation
by making a kind of club out of it called CamperForce.
Home ownership in Germany is 52% and it is below 45% in Switzerland. It is 65-75% in almost all other rich countries including
the US. It is actually around 85% in Russia and 90% in Cuba although the amenities are not quite the same.
As a Swiss I can say that it does not pay to own your house outright. The way our taxes are structured you are cash ahead to
carry your mortgage in perpetuity. It is a nice gift for our banks.
Many 'Mericans say they own their home, but actually the bank (mortgage) owns the home. They're simply trying to improve their
equity (and freedom to paint it whatever color they please) in the home.
I've owned (completely mortgage free) several homes, and between crazy neighbors, time involved in upkeep, and property tax
the best hope is to sell them to a greater fool. (Price appreciation.) Spending over half of one's income on a home mortgage and
hoping the next generation will buy it when it's time to move on is more risky than many other "investments".
I was in Italy this year, in a remote part where you really needed a car to get around. The diesel prices were shocking, but
the small car efficiency actually balanced out the price. I don't think I spent any more per mile than I did in the US. For reference,
I drive a 4 cylinder Toyota which is not exactly a gas guzzler here.
My mom gave me her checkbook register from mid 1961-62 a few years ago, and for a family of 6, there was a total of $88 paid
to Dr. Evers, our family physician. My coming out party was $190.
The checks were mostly $6 and $7, with one $14 whopper.
I asked my mom if we had health insurance, and she told me that aside from a few that had Kaiser, nobody had health insurance
back in those days.
Health insurance was not as critical in those days. The low prices you quote for day to day purchases could also be found in
the healthcare of the day. Not the inflated prices we have now. Same with education. I recall seeing old tuition receipts from
my university that maxed out at a few hundred dollars per semester in the 1950's.
My dad's brother was a physician, an old-fashioned family doctor whose office was in his home and who made house calls. This
was in the 1940's and 50's. Many of his patients paid 'in kind;' although he lived in the city, people still had large gardens
or lived on outlying small farms, and in August and September especially, my aunt would routinely find boxes of fresh fruits and
veggies on their porch. She joked that she was kept busy canning and preserving for at least three months of the year.
Actually, there are some avenues available for some, depending on ancestry, but work is required.
My father was born in Europe, and, after three years and the help of an inexpensive lawyer, I was able to gain a second citizenship.
That, in turn, allowed me to live in Europe.
I believe that Ireland has fairly liberal rules along these lines, but it is worth checking into it no matter what foreign
country one's parents were born.
Won't even remotely work for me. I'm from old and undistinguished stock. All my grandparents were born in the US and three
of my four grandparents have gene pools that go back to before the Revolution (two English, one bizarrely Hungarian).
If you could speak Hungarian (which would be a feat ), you could apply for Hungarian passport by ancestry (assuming you can
track your Hungarian roots with sufficient documentation). That would open all of EU, and I think you might like Berlin
No, my Hungarian ancestors have supposedly been here over 200 years, plus my mother was terrified of both her parents, in particular
her Hungarian father, who was estranged from the rest of his family, and so she knows nothing about his ancestors. The claim was
they came to help fight in the Revolutionary War and stayed. That's likely family urban legend, but my mother is pretty sure his
parents were born here too.
Ireland allows you to claim citizenship
if you have an Irish grandparent (with some caveats). Many US and Canadians use this to work/settle in the EU. A Chicago friend
who was working in London and HK got her Irish passport without ever bothering to visit Ireland.
Easy enough within the EU of course – there are huge numbers of northern European retirees living on the Med and in Portugal.
But plenty of Britons are finding out to their horror they are very vulnerable to both Brexit and a weakening sterling.
I've not looked into the visa side of things, but some Asian countries target retirees as a source of investment in rural areas.
I don't know if it still does, but Taiwan used to market itself to Japanese retirees as a cheap place to move with your yen pensions.
There are a lot of retirement developments in Thailand and elsewhere, marketed on cheap property and good quality health systems.
They seem to aim mostly at Europeans and Japanese.
Mexico. I have friends (gay, married; a retired nurse and retired librarian), who moved there full-time 3 years ago after 30+
years in NYC, and nearly 15 years of periodic vacations all over Mexico, to consider possible locations. They moved to a medium-sized
city about 3 hours by bus from Mexico City, somewhat off the beaten path of the usual expat communities. Very affordable, and
permanent residency is not a problem. Mexico City is very affordable, very good subway system, and has lots of things to do if
you're retired and need to fill up a day. Over their years of visits, they built up a network of friends and connections, and
have found good local doctors and dentists. One is fluent in Spanish, the other not so much.
To me, another thing that makes the US horrible and expensive for older people (among other groups) is the virtual requirement
for a car. Outside of a few major metro areas you're basically screwed without one. Part of why I encourage my mother to move
back to Germany after my father passed away (even though she drives now and has a car) she can get basically anywhere in Europe
without needing to get behind the wheel.
Yves, Sweden might take you, if you can take the winters the requirements for self-employed residence permits aren't too harsh.
So far they've managed to not overdo it on neoliberalism, although there are forces that sure try to make it happen.
Thanks for the link. These bits from "Requirements for obtaining a residence permit as a self-employed" do seem a bit daunting,
though: "show that you have established customer contacts and/or a network in Sweden", and "show that the business' services or
goods are sold and/or produced in Sweden". This would be tough for us, since our main business now is fiber arts (weaving, etc.)
and farming, all very local things. I do some part-time programming but that's also quite local.
Fifteen years ago, I qualified for NZ immigration, just barely. Now I'm too old (their points system penalizes you on age).
Sad, really, since I spent a year in NZ as a child, went to school there, went on camping trips and adored the landscape, etc.
I still consider it my first home.
When Bush got appointed the second time in 2005 we made the move to Australia and boy are we glad we did.
The concerns about family and friends cited here are real but we have adjusted and Aussies are very easy and welcoming as new
friends.
We recently dropped our "private health coverage" which is essentially an American-style system that sits atop the existing
public system. So when my son recently had a non-serious health problem we were really astonished when, at 2 hours' notice, a
doctor showed up at our house to treat him. Bill? Zero. All of the health care we've received here has been top-notch.
Not mentioned in the article is that many countries, especially in Asia, are not ageist . Employers actually value and
respect the experience and wisdom older workers bring.
But my view is that the only hope is to hijack the politics of everything in the U.S., the richest country on Earth
has more than enough money to solve its woes. So pick a single issue, a simple one that everybody can understand, one that is
so destructive and hateful and wasteful that everybody can get behind it, and organize. Can I suggest Permanent War ? Maybe
mention the $21 trillion that went missing at the Pentagon in the last decade? Maybe help people understand that the
enemy (Osama, ISIS) is dead ? Show them a quick chart and ask them to pick which one they want to buy , an electronic
gun that can shoot Middle Eastern goat herders from space, or 25 new hospitals.
Stop the War. It's what worked in the 60's, and it can work again. A New Peace Dividend that can be spent on the things people
are crying out for like retirement and health care. Leave out all of the other divisive stuff like gender and race and abortions
and green energy and net neutrality. The party platform has one item on it: Stop The War. Peace, Bread, and Land.
Yes, the trick is getting to Canada and Quebec at my advanced age. I know the provinces have job categories where they are
seeking workers, otherwise my impression is it's by points, and I fail on that. The only way in might be if I got some sort of
teaching post at one of the unis for something where my background would add something they couldn't get locally.
I speak French. The spousal unit is learning. The cats picked it up quickly ;^) They are quite happy being "minous", rather
than kitties.
Actually in Montreal you can get by fine with English only in the West Island. I have anglophone colleagues who only speak English.
this is so true. 2 or more cars per household, and the ridiculous quantities of meat in their diet, are probably the two main
reasons why americans consume more than twice as much as the EU average.
I lived in Sweden for 6 months (as an EU citizen). There is indeed a lot going for it but there are a lot of issues too that
don't get media attention. As a Professor in Uppsala I was warned by a friendly local that "even if you were a Stockholm-based
immigrant to here you'd find it difficult to integrate". This was not due to any latent racism or anything like that – merely
that Swedes have quite an ingrained way of "putting down roots" (compared to, say, Denmark). So I was warned that socialising
means many many weeks of doing the coffee and cakes thing, then, if things go well, you may get invited out for a drink in a bar,
then again, if weeks of that work you may get an invite for a home visit.
It's tough – and I was someone who (unlike many anglos) was keen to learn the language so as to fit in better – though (of
course) Swedes typically have brilliant English you can't expect them all to speak it exclusively in a social context just to
accommodate you. So I witnessed Europeans (central, southern and western) tended not to integrate well and instead formed their
own groups. Furthermore Swedish healthcare, although overall cheap and good, does not do well on the "integrated care" front –
IIRC (don't have reference to hand) some "official" comparisons of industrialised countries bear this out and its ranking dropped
several places due to this issue.
It was incredibly difficult (even with employer sponsorship) to get Aussie permanent residency .but the "final hurdle" of citizenship
was a cinch (given that most of the "benefit" is accrued through PR, not citizenship) .I don't think any non-North American industrialised
country is unequivocally "better" – you decide what you want most and what you'll compromise on and take your choice. I'm probably
going to get citizenship of a 3rd country (Ireland – not cheap but I'm entitled to it via Irish mother and Irish paternal grandfather)
to hedge my bets if my company stays afloat but I have enough relatives there to know it has its own set of issues.
Agree on the integration part, but if you know this going in I think it's a bit more manageable (you learn not to take it personally,
that's just the way Swedes are, and it's definitely not universal). It also helps to join activity groups – they're into that
in a major way.
There are also large ex-pat communities in towns and cities of virtually any size. My circle of friends and acquaintances is
a Sesame Street-like cast of people from all over Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia who have all moved here to study and
work. Many of us speak Swedish with full professional fluency, hold dual-citizenship and regularly consume Swedish media but have
found other transplants to be among the most welcoming and have gravitated towards each other for that reason.
Oh, this is an entrepreneurial visa. That's; how I got into Oz but they shut that down. They typically require that you show sufficient net worth to fund a business and you need to generate a certain level of domestic
revenues and/or employment to stay.
The way "in Sweden" is tacked on at the end regarding where you make money makes it a little vague as to which part of the
and/or it applies to. I think they also do a reasonable job of looking at the whole case and would understand someone making a
living online or remotely. They just want you to pay tax here. If you haven't done the conversion already, 200,000 SEK is around
25,000 USD at today's rate, which I think is pretty modest from my vague knowledge of this type of visa in other parts of the
world.
But like I said, in my experience Migrationverket is quite polite, professional and even welcoming when you deal with them,
so it de worth contacting them if you're interested.
Aaw, that's really kind! And I am 1/4 Swedish if that at all helps, although my grandmother was born here (her father came
over and then had kids here after he got established).
I emailed one of our corporate attorneys today, he's been with the company since the early 1990s, and Outlook told me he resigned
on 12/8. I asked someone about it, and they said, yeah, he's moving to Sweden. I'm dying to find out why, and what he's going
to do.
It's the tax and treasury account compliance that stops many and causes more to renounce US citizenship combined with many
European banks refusing to do business with Americans that make expatriating very difficult. It's a feature and not a bug as Lambert
would say
FATCA has been a source of unending critical trouble for expatriates from the USA but also bureaucratic hassle for non-US citizens
who have strictly nothing to do with the USA.
I live 2 miles outside of San Miguel de Allende in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. It's been voted the best tourist city in
the world by several magazines a little Paris. Settling here was tough, and ultimately I had to become functional in Spanish to
get the 13 year lease at $500/mo for a 4 bedroom 3 1/2 bath, needs work house, on 2 acres, since my landlord doesn't speak English.
But I live far and away better than I could in the US, on 1/3d to 1/2 of the cost. I am living in the only sustainable place of
my life pretty friendly, pretty clean, awfully nice a veritable garden of fireflies, butterflies, bird life, decent animal husbandry,
up against the mountains, much in nature reserve. There is excellent medical care at reasonable prices. I am 8 hours from the
US border if I have serious Medicare needs. Town offers wonderful food, luxuries, entertainment if I want to go in. Down here
we say, thank god people in the US are afraid and ignorant of Mexico. It keeps them away.
There is a lot of hand wringing in the Mexican press about how American and Canadian retirees have gentrified and de-Mexicanized
San Miguel de Allende. If the shit ever hits the fan, at the very least I would want my immigration papers in order, but really
I just would rather not be there.
Plus, quality major healthcare (the kind that a 65+ person may need suddenly at any time) is not cheap in Mexico and the Mexican
government has made it much harder for new arrivals to get onto the Institute of Medicine and Social Security.
When you add in the very high levels of xenophobia in Mexico (just look at how the Central Americans and even Mexican Americans
are treated) and deteriorating security situation in more and more states it is a risky proposition. I would not want my mom to
move there.
We take their low wage huddled masses and they get our gentry who benefited from paying low wages. It's win win! Or a stupid
circle jerk. Not sure which.
Unfortunately given escalating healthcare costs in Mexico, plus the same xenophobia as ever, they're much less keen on taking
our huddled masses. Plus they have a big problem now with American retirees who are trying to live on less than $1000 a month
in US social security, well under the approx $2500 month required to get a retiree visa, who can no longer return to the US for
healthcare or family visits because they can't even afford the bus ticket and might not be let back into Mexico because of their
massive immigration violations.
I think that's part of the problem. America is more and more reluctant to take in the huddled Mexican masses which means that
these huddled Mexican masses may begrudge more and more the privileged gringos who make the trip down south.
I also live near San Miguel de Allende in a small, agricultural Mexican community perched on the side of an extinct volcano.
I pretty much avoid the expat scene, shop in the mercados, hang with Mexican friends and am thoroughly enjoying soaking in this
wonderful way of life. I made this move at age 70.
Certainly, this required a major adjustment. It's not like moving from Boston to Tucson. It's more like moving to a different
universe. But if a person is open, hangs loose and finds someone to help work through the ins and outs of the immigration process,
it's not all that difficult.
My health insurance is free because of my age and health care here puts the emphasis on *care*. An acquaintance had a knee
replacement and the total out-of-pocket cost to her was 3300 pesos – about 170 usd. The entire surgical team came into her room
and introduced themselves before the procedure. The surgeon was top notch and she is fully functional with no pain for the first
time in years.
I've taken road trips from Chihuahua to Oaxaca alone with my dogs and have never felt unsafe. There are certain roads in Guerrero,
certain parts of Mexico City, etc that I avoid because it's just common sense. I did the same in parts of NYC and Albuquerque.
It was clear to me that I would outlast my savings if I'd stayed in the US. Here, I can afford to live here modestly but comfortably.
I have a Spanish tutor and I can get by. I am obviously a gringa but when Mexicans speak English to me and I answer in Spanish,
they smile and everything changes. People here are kind, polite and, if you don't behave like the proverbial "ugly American" (some
expats do, unfortunately), you may find yourself treated like family. And the way of life, the quality of the food, so many things
have had a hugely positive effect on my health. My borderline hypertension has given way to BP numbers I haven't seen since I
was in my 20s – and I take no pharmaceuticals.
I lived all over the US before moving here. I have no intention of going back. I'm eligible to become a Mexican citizen soon
and I will do so. Whether I renounce my US citizenship remains to be seen. I haven't been back to the US since moving here so
.
I speak Spanish at a near-native level (started learning as a child and lived years in Latin America).
My sincere advice is don't learn much more, if you're happy now, just keep being happy. If you're able to understand better
the world around you, the glow will rub off and you'll likely find that you are not in fact being treated as family but as a guest.
I once spent a year in South East Asia and made a conscious decision not to get too involved, and loved it. I pretty much had
the same experience you're having in Mexico. When I'm in Mexico the feeling is of constantly hitting my head against a glass ceiling
and biting my tongue.
The wonderful thing about not speaking the language is it's an automatic filter. Only people who like foreigners talk with
you and you are constantly in the position of wonderful people helping you out, because you need help.
But for the love of God, stay on the beaten tourist path (SMA-Oaxaca City-Cholula etc.). Don't go into Guerrero except maybe
Taxco. I was just in Chilpancingo for a professional event, taking every precaution, and the stories you hear first hand are horrifying.
The security situation in Mexico is deteriorating badly.
Even states like Puebla that used to be safe are seeing kidnappings and other extreme crime. If you speak Spanish, the issue
of security it is utterly unavoidable, it creeps into many conversations and dominates the local news.
because there isn't a lot of evidence most labor gets a very good return for crossing borders (like maybe all the low paid
mexican immigrant laborers with no rights for example?). Well yes and maybe it's better for them than staying put, but it isn't
any kind of good life. Most labor, even most skilled labor, is a lot closer to that "dime a dozen" bucket than any kind of name
your own price bucket. As individuals labor just doesn't have much power, now maybe labor movements need to cross borders have
all the workers at whole companies emigrate even.
Yes, I agree that in many cases labor doesn't necessarily win by moving in the real world. My comment was more on philosophical
level – and somewhat a spin on the NC concept of "because markets" – in an ideal world countries would compete on attracting labor
by what they offer in concrete material benefits.
'According to Pew Charitable Trusts, only 13 percent of Baby Boomers still have [defined benefit pensions].'
This 13 percent remnant overwhelmingly consists of government employees, whose defined benefit pensions are uniformly underfunded
(and even understated as to HOW underfunded they are).
On the back side of Bubble III, as pension sponsors' equity-heavy assets shrink like an ice cream cone in the Sacramento sun,
a hue and cry will arise for massive tax increases on the hapless public to bail out public employees' rich pensions. (Not that
they aren't already happening -- two towns near me just hiked their sales tax by 1 percent to bail out police and firefighter
pensions.)
'Pension envy' will be the defining cultural war of the 2020s. Got ammo?
"Pension envy" has been around for a long time, Jim. I'm in my late 50s and grew up in one of the reddest states in the country
(North Dakota). For forty years I've heard many snarky remarks about public pensioners, not to mention those gawdawful Unions
(AFL-CIO, et al.). It never occurred to these people to demand the same treatment from THEIR private employers instead of complaining
about collectively bargained for benefits. Much easier to beggar thy neighbor, apparently. Sigh.
yes just unionize and get a pension from your private employer – not all of which are big employers btw which might be the
only plausible shot at a private sector pension -however most people work for small to mid-size companies. And then people wonder
why people think public sector employees are clueless about reality when it's all "let them eat cake" all the time.
I say let's NOT pay much higher taxes to fund the public pensions but INSTEAD pay much higher taxes to fund expanded and improved
SOCIAL SECURITY for all. It's only equitable, it's only just, there shouldn't be favored types of retirees, whoever we work for,
we all get old if we live long enough. Btw those same private sector unions have often sold out younger employees and accepted
tiered wages etc.. I'm not anti-union, I'm skeptical of non-radical unions being sufficient.
For me, it's about merging all plans into one universal pension – Social Security, and defend it as hard as, or harder, as
pension plans are defended now.
government employees, whose defined benefit pensions are uniformly underfunded
They are not uniformly underfunded. The Wisconsin state and local employee pension system is fully funded. Even Scott Walker
hasn't been able to undo that.
The only way I could figure out how to retire in the US was to find a house in a semi rural community that is a 45 minute drive
past gentrification.
Start by buying a lot (bare land) then put a cheap RV on it, later a manufactured home if possible. Or find a lot with an older
decrepit -- but still livable single wide trailer. Buy it for a roof and grandfathered utilities.
Medicare, plus low price house, plus low-status address. We also looked for a county with a high percentage of over-65 residents
and rudimentary senior services.
Still not optimal but workable. northern California is where we landed because of family. Look for cheap towns with collapsed
logging, farming or fishing industries.
Investigate by taking vacations in community.
Downsides include car-dependent culture, dependence on Medicare system, poor public transit, 2 hour drive to land of decent
coffee shops.
Canada was a serious thought experiment until I realized they dont want old people unless they bring large bags of money along.
That's similar to what we've done, and we're an hour away from 'civilization'. Our difference being that we're still years
away-Medicare wise.
Our plan mostly revolves around the idea of not getting sick, a common way to avoid costly medical bills, combined with ACA
(for the time being) and costly deductibles that will put the hurt on us financially, but not devastate us, should push>meet<shove.
Too busy with yoga and writing to set up hostel. We do host traveling yoga teachers who come through periodically to teach
at county yoga studios.
The second part of the scheme outlined above is to bring a low cost avocation that gives your life meaning and connects you
with others. For me it was photography, writing, travel, and yoga. As years go by travel and photography are diminishing, yoga
and writing expanding.
I traveled like the dickens when I was younger, and am content now to hang out and do stuff that costs a pittance, most of
which doesn't involve a computer in any capacity, aside from this here ball & chain.
Yves, have you checked to see if you qualify for Canadian permanent residency? I did and don't qualify. I'm retired with a
good income from pension, social security, and interest from retirement savings. If I sold my house I'd nearly be a millionaire,
which around here isn't that big a deal. It's also not enough for the Canadians, which makes sense, given that I've never paid
into their health system and my medical expenses are likely to increase as I age. My understanding is that, given I am not going
to proved the Canadian economy with a scarce skill, I would have to invest $2 million in a business in Canada that created jobs
for Canadians.
I had a work colleague from Sweden. She had been a school teacher there and came to the U.S. to sell financial products, make
a lot of money and avoid Swedish taxes. I asked her if she were going to become a U.S. citizen. She looked at me like I was crazy,
laughed and said, "Hell no, I would never wish to be old in America."
I'm laying this one down at the door of social Darwinism at work. If you're poor then you deserve nothing and if you are rich
then obviously you deserve everything. That is why someone like Peter Thiel can waltz into New Zealand and buy himself citizenship
in less that a fortnight there. Not everybody can get themselves into the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in India. And that mention
of Ayn Rand and her influence on American life through people like Paul Ryan?
Well, if so may Congressmen want to investigate Russian influence in American politics then I present you with Ayn Rand as proof
positive. In spite of all her malignant opinions, it should be noted that it did not stop her from claiming Medicare and Social
Security when she got old. She did not want to be bankrupted by illness in old age so registered under her married name.
From my perch, if any Americans want to make the move, I would say over the next decade before that door closes. The regulations
are already tightening up such as making sure that you owe no taxes or the like before you leave. More Americans are now renouncing
their citizenship as America still want to tax them even when they have moved away. After this decade, I regret to say, that America
will be no country for old people.
In the most excellent book "I Will Bear Witness" diarist Victor Klemperer is often writing about German-Jewish friends that
are leaving the 3rd Reich for other shores, subject to a "25% Reich Flight Tax", and in reality it was more like a 50-75% tax. What's our going rate?
I had another friend, a real gem of a man. From privilege, a Harvard graduate, progressive activist, who worked for low pay
in the non-profit sector. He described his future retirement plan as "homeless in Honduras."
Sorry, I was triggered by the introduction. I am an American in my late 30s and I've lived a large chunk of my adult life outside
the US, Latin America mostly and East Asia. Already now I'm hoping not to live long-term outside the country again.
I just made a short trip to Mexico and thought dear God I'm too old for this.
If you speak the local language and are hooked into local issues, you quickly realize that there is an unbelievable (for urban
Americans who are used to a mosaic international society) amount of xenophobia in almost every other country. Being an outsider
everywhere I go, with all the constant microagressions (and ocasional more major aggressions) wears on me the way Lambert says
that inequality wears on the body.
And if you don't speak the local language and try to isolate yourself among other retirees -- why even be alive at that point?
I don't imagine commenters on this site of all people sitting at a bar all day arguing US and UK politics in English with some
other retirees far away from the action.
And speaking of inequality, most countries have far worse inequality than the US and it is savage and painful to watch when
your security guard finishes a 12 hour shift and then starts another 12 hour shift across the street.
By the way don't get me started on the cost of healthcare. It's cheap until you run into a major complication. I had surgery
in Peru for something minor and the total bill was over $5000 USD. Imagine if it were heart surgery. My expat insurance paid it
but you can't get that if you're over a certain age.
And speaking of inequality, most countries have far worse inequality than the US and it is savage and painful to watch when
your security guard finishes a 12 hour shift and then starts another 12 hour shift across the street.
The obvious in your face OMFG inequality is often worse, but the absolute inequality in America is among the greatest in the
world. Most countries, outside Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa specifically, have better income equality. We are
one step up from El Salvador . I've been to El Salvador, and no offense to them, we really should be doing much, much
better than that small, oppressed, corrupt, dirt poor country. Granted, we are overwhelmingly wealthier, so being poor here is
often not as bad as there, but still.
With that rant done, the GINI coefficient, which is a quick dirty way of measuring inequality, and therefore the economic/social/political
well being of a country with 1.0 meaning one person owns everything and 0.0 complete income equality. The figures change some
depending on whose doing the figuring, but the GINI for income in the American paradise is around .47 compared to Mexico's 0.48
with the Swedish hellhole at 0.24. If you are counting wealth instead of income, the United States is 0.8. Also, our lowest, therefore
our most equal GINI was 0.36 in 1968. A study was done showing Rome's GINI (income) was 0.44.
I really should check again, but I recall reading nobody, anywhere who did not have revolution, uprising, something bad once
0.59 was reached.
Come to Bangkok. The medical care here is superb.. very reasonably priced and absolutely state of the art. Yes, we pay out
of pocket, but only for what we need. There's competition between health care providers and one can get a quote from multiple
sources for any surgical procedure. The US, with its ever increasing costs which now are something like 17% of GDP, is on an unsustainable
path. Combined with the pending pension crisis I am concerned about the future for my US colleagues.
After my first annual physical here my Dr. said, bluntly, no pills but lose 25 lbs and exercise daily and come back in 6 months.
An honest answer to our metabolic issues.
The lifestyle is fantastic, food is superb, cheap direct flights to anywhere in the world, world class beaches and vineyards,which
make a halfway decent red wine, with wonderful restaurants, are just two hours away. The occasional coup keeps everything interesting.
I can honestly say my lifestyle has improved in my retirement by leaving the US.
" The U.S. Is No Country for Older Men and Women "?
Indeed, it isn't. But increasingly, it's no place for younger people either. The stagnant wages, rising housing costs, and
rising medical costs impact younger people just like they do older people. And yes, I know that younger people's medical expenses
tend to be lower that they are for older people, but today's youth are being socked with educational expenses that seem to know
no bound:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/12/student-loan-defaults-approach-5-million-using-permissive-definition-default.html
Is the solution really to "strengthen" programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or would it be better to tackle
the monopolies and rent-seeking behavior that results in the need for ever more dollars to be supplied? Bob Hertz had some excellent
ideas regarding medical costs in
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/11/medical-cost-reduction-act-2017.html
. I think this would be a better solution than to simply promise more money for the money-hungry beasts out there to consume on
the behalf of seniors. Tackling rising costs at the source would benefit everybody .
But strengthening social services can be done and will help many people. Fixing root causes looks politically impossible (today) and will be strongly opposed by powerful interests. I doubt anyone
here would object but we are not in charge
Yes, makes some sense. Fixing root causes would include things like fixing ever rising rents etc. (although sometimes seniors
can get it cheaper). However, the reality is living on social security is hard at this point even for those who own a home, just
because the old age benefits are so much less than almost any other industrialized country on earth. So just increasing those
would help a lot.
the loss of the family network is an important thing to consider for many. Someone from our family always goes with my aunt to her hours-long chemo sessions and doctor appointments. In the waiting rooms, I see all these other solo cancer patients. They often look sodden. Maybe they're always going to chemo
alone? The last thing you want when battling illness is also battling a sense of isolation.
Seriously, all the centrists act like the US should welcome people from all over the world, while Canada hardly lets ANYONE
in. Also, I just got the aforementioned "Nomadland" book from my library, which I'll start on as soon as I finish "The Big Rig"
which is (so far) a fantastic book about the way the trucking industry screws its workers.
My friend Max, the neurosurgeon left the US several years ago for Switzerland. His son Peter had a serious brain tumor and
went to Switzerland for treatment. Max bankrolled the treatment with a $2 million gift. Max's son is now cancer free and is now
working at CERN and is also in the process of immigrating. Max and his son at beneficiaries of a very substantial trust fund that
is sited in Nevada. Max renounced his US passport and it cost 30% of his assets. Max's son is facing a similar cost. It was easy
for Max and his son, both are extremely wealthy and Max's parents were Swiss. Lesson: portable skills that enjoy strong demand
and loads of income.
I've often thought of moving abroad but see myself more as living in a different country for only part of the year. I'd love
to hear more from those who are ex-pats.
Home ownership in Germany is 52% and it is below 45% in Switzerland. It is 65-75% in almost all other rich countries including
the US. It is actually around 85% in Russia and 90% in Cuba although the amenities are not quite the same.
I think that it has become increasingly apparent that the rich have no sense of noblesse oblige. They are in it for themselves
and nobody else.
I'd be very interested to see if they believe their own propaganda on things like Ayn Rand and Social Darwinism. I know that
many libertarian types can be, but the more extreme Ayn Rand types? Or is this just a coping mechanism?
It may be like oil executives who for years publicly denied global warming, but knew the truth. I think that deep inside, many
wealthy people know exactly how worthless they are to society and insecure. They will never admit the truth though in public.
But the only bargain "world city" I know of is Montreal.
Canadian here. Montreal has it's pros and cons. I have talked with a few people who are fed up with that city and left.
Pros:
+ Cheap rent (especially compared to any other large city)
+ Very cultured city, for lack of a better term (night life, arts, exotic places to eat that you can actually afford, that sort
of thing)
+ For a while it was Canada's job creation capital due to our weak dollar
+ Cheap tuition for students compared to rest of Canada
+ Cheap hydro! Car insurance is also much cheaper.
+ Considered the best city in North America for cycling (
https://www.mtlblog.com/lifestyle/montreal-ranked-1-bicycle-friendly-city-in-north-america
). There's also lots of parks and green spaces.
+ Apart from NYC and if you live in the middle of the city, Montreal is one of the few North American cities where you probably
don't need a car
Cons:
– Becoming increasingly unillingual (French), which is one of the reasons why one of my colleagues left Montreal
– Buddy of mine says healthcare is not very good by Canadian standards and being an English speaker will be a big disadvantage
(the government is actively trying to get people to be French) and I believe there is mandatory French schooling for parents of
English origin
– Quality of roads is pretty awful in Quebec I find and drivers can be aggressive. Infrastructure as a whole is aging.
– Winter isn't that cold (By Canadian standards mind you), but Montreal does get quite a bit of snow.
– Outside of the boom periods, it can be hard to find a good job or frankly, a job
– Wages in many jobs isn't as good (although often the lower cost of living makes up for it, so net you may not be that much worse
off, and in some cases, even better off)
– Some of the worst traffic congestion in Canada
– Quebec separatism politics
– There are cultural issues you should be aware of:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-low-birthrate-immigration-1.3573966
– A lot of consumer goods aren't as available in Canada, although you can rent a US mailbox or use Kinek at the border (Expensive
because our dollar is weaker and you have to pay for import taxes, US taxes, along with the mailbox fees). On the other hand,
there are some items in Canada and especially Quebec that are not as available in the US.
On the fence:
– If you own a home, I have been told that many parts of Montreal are a "Buyers market" now so if you ever want to move out
– There are government services like affordable childcare, but they do have long waitlists. That said, child care is cheaper than
in the rest of Canada as this still does drive the costs of the private sector down.
– The US is making it harder for Americans to renounce their US citizenship for those moving from the US (
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/delays-costs-mount-for-canadians-renouncing-us-citizenship/article28688026/
)
– Taxes are higher, but the majority of payers (especially those not in the six figures and with children) will find themselves
better off I'd say in Quebec due to the better services.
– A lot of folks in Quebec say that Montreal is expensive compared to the rest of the province, although for a city its size,
it is fairly affordable
The big challenge though is that Canada's immigration system is pretty restrictive, and yes older immigrants are at a drawback
(the purpose is to attract immigrants that are likely to pay more in the system over their life than take out).
The other big issue with Canada is that neoliberalism, although not as bad as the US, has very strong backers and I fear could
get worse. We seem to be following the dark path the US has undergone. I just hope that a genuine left can come out, not this
neoliberal identity politics stuff that really serves the rich.
It's really not that hard to move to a third world country. It's practically a lateral move.
1. Bad public transport. Check.
2. Corrupt government. Check.
3. High wealth inequality. Check.
4. Increasingly bad infrastructure. Check.
I am sure there are plenty of areas where the US is ahead, but plenty where it's behind like affordable healthcare. But really
at the end of the day, moving is not easy because of : language, and for active people scratching that itch to be productive.
Yves, the US is also no place for young people. My wife and I have been visiting South America checking out possible retirement
locations. In Ecuador, we found a young Swiss man (late 20s) with his Ecuadorian girlfriend who were running the Hacienda we stayed
in near Cotacachi. The 80-year old owner had been in a car crash and had to have someone take over operations right away. The
owner's daughter was friends with the young Swiss man and recommended him to her father. In the United States you would never
see someone his age given this much responsibility. He had trained in the hospitality field and came to Ecuador a couple of years
earlier because he would actually have the opportunity to own and operate his own business, which he considered an impossibility
in Western Europe. He told us his Swiss parents were also seriously considering re-locating to Ecuador for a better quality of
life in retirement (and presumably – my guess – to be near the eventual grandchildren). They were not wealthy but had sufficient
funds to provide relatively small seed capital for their son's business in Ecuador.
In Montevideo, we met a young woman in her early thirties from Montana and her French husband, a chef, who had just opened
the café we had stopped in for postres and tea some 8 months earlier. They left the U.S. about 6 or 8 years ago (can't recall
exactly) because they concluded they had no opportunities there, and came to Montevideo after a friend recommended it. They now
have two daughters in school there.
I spoke with a prominent immigration attorney in Montevideo who told me that it's not just Americans, many Western Europeans
were also emigrating to Uruguay "because of social issues." I didn't press for an explanation.
It's a mistake – and implicitly demeaning to the country – to think of these places as retirement havens. A North American
or European young adult might actually be able to build a life for themselves in these places because the capital investment hurdles
are low, and there are opportunities.
Every time I talk to my Boomer father he wonders how I could be so irresponsible as to not, like him, have "saved for retirement."
He's got an Air Force pension, a local government pension, a pension from a private employer, and social security. There's a 0%
chance I'll ever be able to pay off my student loans. I have less take-home money after 20 ostensibly successful years in my profession
than I did when I was 15 years old and working in a deli.
For most people in my generation, our retirement plans are to hope to win the lottery, and if not, suicide.
They often did have to pay out of their salaries into those pensions as well, so he has a tiny bit of a point, it wasn't all
free money. But they were of course much better deals than the 401ks on offer now, that we are lucky to even be able to have purely
for the tax benefits, which most employers aren't even contributing to.
I remember my friend's mother, an RNA (Cdn equiv of an LPN) who religiously contributed to her voluntary pension plan. It was
hard for her, single mother in the 50's and 60's, but she considered it the responsible thing to do. When she came to retire in
the mid 70's she was disappointed (understatement) to find that the pension she had sacrificed to contribute to for all those
years paid her a whopping $17 per month.
When I was planning for my retirement, in the 70's and 80's, I was looking at interest rates of 7 to 10 % -- truly! It is no
accident that interest rates are now less than the rate of inflation, unless you are paying out, of course. We are being robbed
in every possible way.
I'm pre-baby boomer, with no pension because of the industry I worked in. But I do own my own home in rural Pennsylvania for
how long, I'm not sure. 20% of my modest income goes to school and property taxes. I recently let a handicapped friend live in
my other building; he gets $700 a month and $85 in food stamps. Currently both of us are struggling to deal with paying to heat
our homes, so the last time he was bitching to me I said: "Why else do you think old people are living in trailers in the Arizona
desert?"
I considered not only Arizona but Cuba. I know enough Spanish to get by. But I decided that I would stay in the U.S. I think
everyone needs to downsize and simplify because, unless the American people wake up and revolt, things aren't going to get any
better.
P.S. I tried to research bankruptcy and mortgage foreclosure rates in Pennsylvania. Nothing current, but I found that the rates
continually increased every year, and this was well before the 2008 implosion. So I assume that the situation is probably dire
by now.
What's a second world country? And Montreal is inexpensive?
Anyway thinking from a young person's perspective it's even worse. Employment prospects are crap everywhere especially Europe
where there is some inkling of a social safety net.
As I said, it's an inexpensive world city. You missed that. It's even been rated that way. Rent is cheap. My costs would be
40% or so lower than in NYC.
Yeah, but that's not a very high hurdle: almost *anything* is cheaper than NYC in particular, and NYS in general. Not to mention
less stressful. I tend to recommend Buffalo and outlying suburbs/rural areas, but then again I'm biased, being a native of the
area. Real estate differences can be dramatic even within NYS: I routinely compare prices and taxes in Erie county vs Wyoming
county. Its a real eye-opener, especially compared to anything near Albany or NYC.
This entire thread is simply heartbreaking, Americans have had their money, their freedom, their privacy, their health, and
sometimes their very lives taken away from them by the State. But the heartbreaking part is that they feel they are powerless
to do anything at all about it so are just trying to leave.
But
"People should not fear the government; the government should fear the people"
As your quote appears to imply, it's not a problem that can be solved by voting which, let's not forget, is nothing more than
expressing an opinion. I am not sticking around just to find out if economically-crushed, opiod-, entertainment-, social media-addled
Americans are actually capable of rolling out tumbrils for trips to the guillotines in the city squares. I strongly suspect not.
This is the country where, after the banks crushed the economy in 2008, caused tens of thousands to lose their jobs, and then
got huge bailouts, the people couldn't even be bothered to take their money out of the big banks and put it elsewhere. Because,
you know, convenience! Expressing an opinion, or mobilizing others to express an opinion, or educating or proselytizing others
about what opinion to have, is about the limit of what they are willing, or know how to do.
100M US citizens in 1945; 200M in 1976; 320M in 2016. Population up and resources down. The politicians would give you anything
to get a vote, the reason they don't is that the money is not there. Everything goes up in price and wages stagnant because that's
how economies adjust to less resources to share. Canada and Australia and Europe are going the same way as the US, not because
of nefarious politicians or greedy rich people, although they certainly exist, but because the sums don't add up any more. MMT
is just one example of grasping at straws. I wonder what part of 'you are doomed' old people don't understand? Apart from the
last 80 years or so, people got old and died; now they get old, get sick long term, go bankrupt and then die.
I have a very rare good, very old insurance policy.
I sure hope you can hold onto it Yves. I also had a really good private BCBS NC policy. This year they killed it and threw
me onto ACA which is horribly expensive and crappy if you are single and make > $48200. 5 years to Medicare .if it's still there.
I have also lived internationally in my late 30's. It takes huge effort to liquidate here and to move. I believe it's risky
to be an alien in a country if there is unrest -- and unrest is coming imo.
I'm scouting Panama this Feb but I also just read the central america will be ground zero for climate change and they are already
having droughts.
Canada or NZ are likely the best choices for immigration if that were even possible.
I live in Alaska. Can in no way think of living somewhere else. At sixty years of being. My body is a bit worn hard and put
away wet. I have no property, no retirement, no substantial savings. What i do have is knowledge.
Now driving a cab for cash in a small city on the coast. I make furniture as my backup income. Was a cabinetmaker at a time.
In fact i count on making furniture till i cannot.
Expecting to have SS is not something i count on. I know all the wild plants to forage, wild game to be had-small game. Fish
of course, living on the coast.
But when i cannot pay rent i will have to rely on the generosity of friends to let me put up a shack on their property to get
by, or squat on land. The woman who lets me live with her for the last twenty-two years will be able for retirement next year.
We will set her up with something simple in town. I shall head for the woods. Am building a foot powered wood lathe. You may find
me one day on the side of the road turning simple items for pittance + beer.
Getting a little tired of this leave the country stuff. Heard it from my dad in the 60's (Australia). Heard it from my husband
this morning (Canada). I am 66 years old and intend to fight it out on this line, like Grant, until they carry me out of here
in the funeral home van. This is my country, major f–ked as it presently stands.
More asset-shuffling through public-private partnerships will not solve the moral
catastrophe of short-termerism and greed that prevents enterprises from investing in the
human timeframe of a lifespan, that might support a proper social safety net. A sane
government which had the interests of all citizens at heart would impose a confiscatory tax
system on asset shufflers and short term greed. This is the opposite of the policies of our
political class, who prefer voter suppression to the sort of democracy that would find the
impoverishment of our elders intolerable.
"A sane government which had the interests of all citizens at heart" In the One
Exceptional Country? Not in my lifetime or that of my children.
Its all very fine to talk about how wonderful your favorite band-aid would be if only the
Repugnant or Democon team would support it, but in the real world there is only one
semi-valid retirement strategy.
Emigrate to a country that is sufficiently un-exceptional to not have to support an Empire
and which is poor enough to allow you to live on whatever savings or pension you have
accumulated.
This larger role of government proposal overlooks the fact that is just creates more piggy
banks for workers to raid to buy new cars, finance big ticket purchases, etc.
This human irrationality is common with today's IRAs. Congress has shown willingness to
expand access to retirement savings in order for workers to raid their pots of gold. We have
just seen this with legislation relaxing withdrawal in the federal TSP. Thus, how such
programs are set up and administered is likely to merely expand financial asset management
fees while collecting taxes and penalties to boost the treasury – with little
improvement in retirement outcomes.
The first thing that government could do is guarantee an acceptable pension to all those
who live past 80. Then we would not all have to save as if we will live to 95, bloating
financial markets for nothing.
And it should be funded from current earnings, not through financial markets.
We just hit the peak of 5 workers per retiree. This number will be going to 2.5 over the
next couple of decades.
I think you don't realize how low the standard of living has to drop to fund an age 55
retirement.
2/3 of boomers have less than something like 100k saved up so this means they will be
asking the young to fund their retirement because I don't see the 1%ers doing it, without
some huge transformation which would take a decade or two sidelining boomers anyway.
This situation should have been planned for 30-40 years ago but it wasn't because the
general meme at the time was that the markets would save the boomers.
When a squirrel plans for winter, it stores nuts, meaning it does not eat them all.
In our economic system we've been eating all our nuts plus using millions of years of
energy to eat even more than we needed. Our obesity epidemic is one blatant symptom. Even
most of those with big investment portfolios have overindulged just think of how many joules
of energy they have spent in their lifetimes yet they are still expecting their investments
to represent claims on future resources.
I guess it can work out if our planet can support it and the US can force its way on the
world for another few decades but I have trouble believing that a country with more than 30%
of its population over 60 can cling to its reserve currency status while net importing.
I believe we can fund a 55+ retirement if most retirees accept to rent a room in their
kids' house but the kids have to somehow get out of the basement of their parents' still
mortgaged house and take possession of the main floor. That's the conundrum.
Yeah, that's the question. Is retirement a universal human right or a privilege? This
whole notion of focusing on the plight of the elderly as a group is bizarre. In the US
context, older generations are significantly wealthier than younger generations.
If we are really talking about people living with dignity, then such a policy should apply
to people of all ages, not just older Americans.
How bout a UBI for the elderly and disabled, and free healthcare for everyone? Seems like
the simplest solution to me.
Aside from the fact that it seems like the obviously right thing to do, as an oldish
millennial, I'd prefer to have them out of the forced-labor market anyway.
I've also long thought that providing care for the elderly, disabled, and children could
go a long way toward filling the roles of a job guarantee for us relatively young and
able-bodied.
On the one hand, the job part of the job guarantee already exists almost everywhere in the
U.S. The problem is the job stinks – low pay and often very hard work.
On the other hand, it is foolish, and inhuman, to think of these jobs as overflow job
guarantee jobs in an MMT JG. We need an economy, and society, that values caring over (mostly
idiotic) for-profit paid work.
Maybe we can put "social" in the name, because it's the social safety net. And since it's
a source of financial security, we should also put "security" in the name.
But isn't it based on earnings? Which for tens of millions were based on 10$ an hour which
is not a livable wage thanks to CEO wage inflation going from 30x lowest wage to over
300x?
Just to respond to all of you, the Townsend Plan from back in the 1930's when Social
Security was being devised, pledged to give out $200/month to people of age:
https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html
According to an inflation calculator I used, that's $3400/month per person.
They actually paid out more like $50/month. Which is more like $900 in our money
today.
Social Security is fine, it just needs to be increased, and the age lowered (to at least
what it used to be). Calling it a UBI, although it is one, will just lead to people trying to
tie it to costs of living which varies widely across the country, it just needs to be
increased a lot to be on par with what much of the rest of the world offers.
coincidentially, i just read
" In 2016, California residents 62 and older took out more payday loans than any other age
group, according to industry data compiled in a new report from the Department of Business
Oversight. Seniors entered into nearly 2.7 million payday transactions, 18.4% more than the
age group with the second-highest total (32 to 41 years old). It marked the first time that
the DBO report on payday lending, published annually, showed seniors as the top payday
lending recipients. The total transactions by the oldest Californians in 2016 represented a
60.3% increase from the number reported for that age group in 2013. The fees can bring annual
percentage rates that top 400%. In 2016, the average APR was 372%, according to the DBO
report. Customers typically take out multiple loans in a year, ending up in what critics call
a "debt trap." .. The average payday loan borrower 62 years or older took out almost seven
payday loans last year, compared with the average of 6.4 loans for all customers"
It is simply the case that with an ageing populace, we will in total be spending more on
Cumadin, nursing home beds and depends than we used to. Pensions, public or private don't buy
warehouses of this stuff to use later. A larger amount of our current GDP will be spent on
this than on health club memberships and daycare than if our population wasn't ageing. Those
who are currently working will have a greater percentage of the wealth that the create
devoted to purchases of these goods and services than used to be the case when there were
fewer elderly. Some of this may be paid for with higher payroll taxes, some with higher
income taxes (because bonds in the SS trust fund) and some because the value of equities goes
down as pensions become net sellers rather than purchasers of assets. The more people are
looking for a magic and relatively painless solution, the further we are from actually
figuring out how to do this.
The thing is that many with underfunded guaranteed pensions will be getting good pensions
while those with no guaranteed pensions will be getting peanuts.
Not to mention those with pensions based on 10$ per hour while others were making much
more. Those who made more feel entitled to their money by they refuse to see how social,
fiscal and monetary policies contributed to the wealth disparity. Many of the winners were
not better but just at the place at the right time.
There has to be a redistribution within the older population first before we skim the pay
checks of the young still working.
So your solution includes taking money from those who saved and invested, and
re-distribute it to those who spent everything they earned? As someone in the "saved and
invested" category, I find that plan to be a non-starter.
When I was setting aside 15% of my income for savings and investments, paying extra on my
mortgage, and driving older cars, I have friends who (at the same income level as my wife and
I) literally spent everything they earned. They had lots of fun, and lots of new stuff that I
didn't.
Fast forward 30+ years, and now – in my late 50's – I'm planning my retirement
(before my 60th birthday). My friends? None of them are even thinking of retiring, and one
couple has said they will need to work into their 70's.
We made different choices, and ended up in different places – but that doesn't
obligate me to hand them what I have.
If you've been able to work on a consistent basis at decent enough paying jobs that you
could save, it is substantially due to luck: being born into a stable middle to upper middle
class family, being white and male, being born at a time when there was enough growth in the
economy that you could land good jobs early in your career, which is critical for your
lifetime earnings trajectory. Oh, and not having you or a spouse or a child get a costly
medical ailment that drained your savings. And not winding up in a job where you were being
ethically compromised and stood up against it, resulting in career and earnings damage.
Did you miss that college grads had a worse time that high school grads and even dropouts
in landing jobs in 2008-2010? And getting no or crap jobs then set them back permanently? And
this includes graduates in the supposedly more "serious" STEM fields, where contrary to DC
urban legend, there aren't a lot of entry level jobs. You do well if you find employment, but
save in a few niches like petroleum engineering, the unemployment rate is actually worse for
STEM college grads overall than liberal arts grads.
Yves, I think that Middle Class would acknowledge the "luck of the draw" on pension or
not. It's just that neo-liberalism would only redistribute
within
the laboring
classes, not from the looting .01 percent responsible. The Arnold Family Foundation cronies
in Rhode Island are making your argument. Those who lucked into wage-earning with a pension
shouldn't be the first redistribution.
If almost all the increase in productivity and income over the past 30 years had not gone
to the top 1%, where it is essentially exempt from SS taxes, there wouldn't be a problem.
If the Middle and Working Classes still earned the same share of national income they earned
before Reaganomics there wouldn't be a problem. Lots of people with good incomes; those
incomes almost all subject to SS deductions.
Your response to Middle Class puzzled me. It is undoubtedly true that there is luck
involved in his success. However, he was comparing himself to peers that seemingly had most
of the same luck but made different life choices. I think one can recognize his luck and his
thrift and appreciate them both.
It's not my solution. It's how the cookie will probably crumble. I'm in my late 40s and
I'm in the category who saved but I also realize that I was in the lucky group with extra
income and chances are I'm going to pay for that luck.
"There has to be a redistribution within the older population first before we skim the pay
checks of the young still working."
Increased taxes on the social security of wealthy people has been proposed, so has
increased Medicare premiums for wealthy people. These ideas were part of the "grand bargain"
proposed by some Republicans and Democrats, including Hilary Clinton.
What is considered "wealthy" in these proposals has yet to be determined. I don't think
that the "grand bargain" specified that the increased revenue would be used to help
impoverished seniors either. Anyway, how much of a surplus would these increased taxes
generate ? Enough to give poor retirees a meaningful cost of living rebate on their tax
returns?
I'm not necessarily against proposals such as these, but
a better and more certain solution would be to rein in the military/security complex, stop
all the wars for oil, and get the government back in the business of working for the citizens
of this country. I bet we could find a few extra dollars that way.
If you stop investing in the MIC you will send the signal that you are weakening and
renouncing being the "protectors" of the planet. This means potentially losing your reserve
currency status. That means you would lose your easy money printing and net importing
advantages.
The currency issuer can create new spending with the constraint being generating too
much inflation.
I worry about leaving this statement to stand alone, because The Market is an independent
thing, and it's in The Market that inflation is created or not. Players out there are capable
of creating inflation on their own. Abba Lerner's article on Functional Finance (linked here
a month or so ago) tells us that the remedy is taxation. I.e. spending to generate well-being
shouldn't be blamed for inflation. Applying the taxation remedy will take some political
backbone.
No, inflation is created in the real economy due to any of commodites inflation (cost-push
inflation), wage-pull inflation (created by too much demand, or in MMT terms, too much net
government spending) and more recently and not sufficiently acknowledged, by monopolies and
oligopolies (see pricing of cable services and drugs, which have monopolies via patents) .
Interest rates are a different matter and are controlled by the central bank. We've had
risk-free interest rates below the inflation rate for years now thanks to the ministrations
of the Fed.
Central banks have the power to kill the economy (raising interest rates so high that it
induces inflation) but not much/any power to stimulate (save goosing asset prices, which only
trickles down a bit to the real economy). The cliche is "pushing on a string".
I'm a great supporter of Social Security. There's nothing inherently wrong with Social
Security. The problem has been the politicians. In the mid-1980s the Reagan admin with Dem
support changed CPI price calculations (and have been doing so ever since) in order to make
any cost-of-living inflation adjusted increase in SS be less than the true CPI inflation
numbers. They also made something like the first $25,000.00 of retiree income (all sources)
tax exempt . but did not index that number to inflation. They were clever in hiding the time
erosion aspects of that "grand bargain." They also raised the retirement age. They used the
"saved" monies these changes to pay for tax cuts for the well off.
I think adding another mandatory paycheck deduction for private savings accounts
controlled by others would simply be another pot of money for politicians and Wall St firms
to rummage. Fees? Churn? "Special" tax treatment? I appreciate the good intentions of the
proposal. However, I'd rather see proposals for stronger protections and honest CPI
accounting for existing Social Security.
adding: the number of workers to retirees is less important than the productivity per
worker, which has been going up steadily for the past 40 years. If workers were still earning
the share of income from productivity and profits that they earned up until Reagonomics there
wouldn't be a problem. Since Reaganomics, however, almost all the gains in productivity and
income have gone to the top 1-2%. Meaning that most of the productivity gains are not
reflected in SS taxes. The top 1% pay SS security tax on only a tiny, tiny bit of their
income. So less and less national total income is subject to SS tax. Falling SS tax receipts
are less a function of fewer-workers-to-retirees than to less nation total earned income
subject to SS tax. imo.
Is no one talking about just abolishing the income cap on social security taxes anymore? I
thought I read somewhere that would largely fix any holes in the program and allow retirees
to get the COLA that they need to keep up with inflation
"The currency issuer can create new spending with the constraint being generating too much
inflation".
The problem with this is money. Money >> currency. As we have seen, the market can
create its own money independent of the currency issuer, making inflation/deflation difficult
for the monetary authority to control, e.g. the Eurodollar market.
Does anyone know anyone who has retired and lived solely on their 401k, just like a
pension? And this person did not inherit any large chunk of money to assist in providing
retirement funding. I want an example of a factory worker, McDonald's worker, etc where they
were part of the working class.
Why not just expand social security? I understand she advocates in addition to SS we have
this mandatory investing thru public/private partnerships.
But when you have that, doesn't the govt have to establish guaranteed rate of return?
Because when people invest, there has to be a winner and a loser, always. Otherwise, some
people's investments may not make a return enough to support them financially.
...Tontines, like Social Security, traditional pensions,
and life annuities, insure against the risk of living longer
than expected in retirement. The problem of outliving one's
savings has gotten worse as Social Security benefits have
been trimmed back and private sector employers have replaced
traditional pensions with 401(k)-style savings plans. In
theory, 401(k) savers can insure against longevity risk by
purchasing life annuities, but few actually do. There are
several reasons for this, starting with the fact that few
have significant savings to begin with-a problem exacerbated
by current low interest rates that lock annuitants into low
annual payments. In addition, potential buyers must navigate
complex and tricky insurance markets and face prices driven
up by adverse selection and asymmetric information, the
classic problem of markets for individual insurance whereby
people at greater risk (of living longer, in this case) are
more likely to purchase insurance and have an incentive to
conceal information to avoid higher risk-adjusted premiums,
leading to higher prices for all consumers and a shrinking
market
Potential annuity buyers also behave in ways are hard to
square with fully-informed and rational behavior, such as
overvaluing lump sums relative to their equivalent in
annuitized benefits and exhibiting loss aversion-in this
case, the tendency to dwell on the potential financial losses
associated with dying prematurely rather than the potential
gains from living a long life. Could tontines at least
counter these behavioral challenges? One psychological hurdle
for would-be annuity buyers is the fact that insurance
companies profit from annuitants' early death, which puts
people in a pessimistic and suspicious frame of mind.
Advocates say tontines could be structured so that only
investors-not issuers-would benefit from the deaths of others
in the pool, which might or might not alleviate these
concerns. (Tontine murders were once a common melodramatic
plot device in plays and murder mysteries)...
*
[A fairly thorough discussion of the pros and cons of
various investment and private insurance options for
retirement security are discussed concluded by the obvious
solution.]
*
...Unlike a tontine scheme, where payments simply increase
in inverse proportion to the share of surviving investors,
such longevity and return-smoothing adjustments are complex
and require trust in the system, so may be better suited to
government-sponsored plans than private sector ones. The
simplest solution, of course, is simply to expand Social
Security, an increasingly mainstream idea among Democrats but
not one that is likely to fly in the current Congress.
"The problem of outliving
one's savings has gotten worse as Social Security benefits
have been trimmed back and private sector employers have
replaced traditional pensions with 401(k)-style savings
plans."
Social Security benefits have been trimmed back? When did
this happen? (Are you referring to the changes made back in
1986, which gradually lengthened the full-benefit retirement
age to 67? It would have been helpful to say so.)
And it's not entirely accurate to say that 401(k)-style
retirement plans have worsened the problem of outliving one's
savings. For millions of retirees, the opposite has been
true; with the cooperation of the stock market (we're in the
second-longest bull market in 85 years), they're withdrawing
tens of thousands every year and seeing their total holdings
*increase* at the same time. Traditional defined-benefit
plans do provide greater security, but they're no match for
401(k)s, IRAs and other similar plans at actually increasing
in value.
This aspect of defined-contribution retirement plans
hasn't gotten nearly the exposure that the negative aspects
have. It's just as true though.
"we're in the second-longest bull market in 85 years"
Sure
... after the biggest crash in 80 years. And since when is
the length of time a bull market lasts, rather than long term
compound annual returns, the important metric?
You're attempt to describe the upside of retirement
savings in at-risk equity investments seems to be built on a
shaky and selective view of recent history.
"... If I had a 401K, I would not be trusting those jackals with my money. My ex lost pretty much everything after he had contributed for 12+ years. ..."
"... As far as cutting off Wall Street from the teat of the Fed, this is a virtual impossibility. Wall Street, the Fed, and the Federal Government, and particularly the National Security State, are all just different faces of the same entity. It would be like trying to separate the front and the back of a dollar bill. You can't do it without destroying the whole thing. ..."
"... "Companies are worried about their employees retirement prospects" Gotta love the language. Maybe they should pay their employees more ..."
"... this is why I don't read the news anymore. The ongoing casual lies are embedded within a broader tapestry of falsehood. ..."
"... Even of the boomers I bet many of them don't have pensions. Why? They didn't work for government or fortune 500s, and it was probably never that many people with lifetime at careers at small companies that got pensions. But much of the employment is small businesses. ..."
"... "The great lie is that the 401(k) was capable of replacing the old system of pensions," No kidding. There are so many great lies with 401(k)'s, the biggest being that it is now expected that people should be able to save enough for their own retirement if they would only assume some personal responsibility. ..."
"... Over the years, I have been astonished at how little many executives understand about finance, taxes, and business. I have always wondered what they actually do in their cocooned meetings. Generally speaking, those meetings result in hilarious memos re-organizing people that don't appear to have anything to do with the normal business while cutting costs that are essential to executing the business. ..."
"... So it is not a surprise to me that a high-level executive would be unaware that a 401k is tax-deferred, not tax-exempt. He probably also thinks that a hedge fund is guaranteed to outperform the S&P 500 and has already moved his money into one, which means he will have less money to pay his taxes with. ..."
"... I'm curious: If you pay the interest on the 401k loan with already-taxed money, is that interest taxed again upon withdrawal from the 401k? ..."
"... Yes it is a 35% tax savings, even if not in the highest bracket. Say in the 25% fed bracket (income of $37,950 to $91,900). Then California income taxes for that income can come to nearly 10%. ..."
"... many 401k accounts tend to have higher costs for equivalent funds than one can get in a rollover IRA. Buyer gots to do their research. ..."
"... No, he's correct. 401(k)s have TONS of hidden fees. You can't even get full disclosure of the full fees. You are guaranteed to have lower fees and more choices at Vanguard. ..."
Since American companies are run by the greediest psychopaths on the planet, the real reason
for the objection to 401K withdrawals might as well be that selling overpriced stock and using
the cash to pay bills, reduces the opportunity of the chief corporate psychopaths to cash out
on their stock options.
It's personal. How dare a peasant beat a corporate bigwig by cashing out early, and reduce
the bigwig's monetary takings by even a penny.
Tapping or pocketing retirement funds early, known in the industry as leakage, threatens
to reduce the wealth in U.S. retirement accounts by about 25% when the lost annual savings are
compounded over 30 years, according to an analysis by economists at Boston College's Center for
Retirement Research.
That's 25% less available funds that Wall Street can steal from customers. Starve the beast?
How do we cut them off from the teat of the FED?
Bernie Sanders: The business of Wall Street is fraud and greed.
precisely. If I had a 401K, I would not be trusting those jackals with my money. My ex
lost pretty much everything after he had contributed for 12+ years.
Re: " American companies are run by the greediest psychopaths on the planet "
I have a quibble with this point of view. Greed takes many forms, and greed for power is just
as motivating as greed for wealth. So I'm of the opinion that corporate psychopaths have plenty
of company in the halls of government, particularly in the National Security arena. These people
have shown that killing hundreds of thousands and destroying the lives of millions more is not
enough to satisfy their lust for power and control. Oh no, not nearly enough. The beast you speak
of must eat every day.
As far as cutting off Wall Street from the teat of the Fed, this is a virtual impossibility.
Wall Street, the Fed, and the Federal Government, and particularly the National Security State,
are all just different faces of the same entity. It would be like trying to separate the front
and the back of a dollar bill. You can't do it without destroying the whole thing.
And if I was Marc Jones, I wouldn't be crying "ovens" too loud. It's happened before, and by
people who may not have been all that much further along the psychopath curve than the ones we
are dealing with now.
I have friends who are just past their mid-30s and borrowed against their 401k to make a house
purchase. A promotion lead to a desire for a bigger home in a nicer town (i.e. schools) and when
they sold their current house a combination of real estate transaction fees and being slightly
underwater on mortgage (I thought housing prices always went up!?) meant the only place they could
go for excess savings was their retirement accounts. Now that's something I would never do, but
I understand the motivation. And from their perspective, things are still on the upswing in terms
of their age and career expected earnings.
I have another colleague who has been at our large company long enough to still have a pension
plan, while our U.K. colleagues are still in a union. Instead of wondering why our older colleagues
have it so good with regards to benefits and time off, they just joke about the days of a pension
being gone and make with the old man cracks.
"Companies are worried about their employees retirement prospects" Gotta love the language.
Maybe they should pay their employees more
If you actually believe that's what companies are concerned about but seriously this
is why I don't read the news anymore. The ongoing casual lies are embedded within a broader tapestry
of falsehood.
Well they could just make contributions to the 401ks for employees themselves without even
requiring the employee to put anything in (without requiring matching). Some companies do do this.
Probably better than just paying them more if they are really worried about their retirement funds,
because if they just paid them more there's a good chance it wouldn't go to retirement. I'm not
opposed to more pay, just realistic about how much might go to retirement. A pension of course
is better but small companies aren't going to manage that financially even if they wanted to.
Even of the boomers I bet many of them don't have pensions. Why? They didn't work for government
or fortune 500s, and it was probably never that many people with lifetime at careers at small
companies that got pensions. But much of the employment is small businesses.
"The great lie is that the 401(k) was capable of replacing the old system of pensions,"
No kidding. There are so many great lies with 401(k)'s, the biggest being that it is now expected
that people should be able to save enough for their own retirement if they would only assume some
personal responsibility.
But the math has never worked. According to Reaganomics, personal responsibility is the solution
to retirement needs, medical costs, education costs, child care costs, unemployment, etc. No one
has ever been able to produce a household budget for a family in the lower half of income that
would ever come remotely close to fulfilling the conservative's fantasy of personal responsibility.
It. Can't. Be. Done.
The great lie that is the 401(k) and Reaganomics serves the same purpose as so many other conservative
lies: it allows more money to flow to Wall Street and the richest Americans. It also is used to
justify tax cuts for the rich and cuts in social programs. It is about the greed of the few against
the living standards of the rest of our society.
The 401(k) was intended to be a supplemental income to a pension, but those pensions no longer
exist and are never coming back. In the face of what has happened, particularly the graft Wall
Street and financial managers have imposed on 401(k)'s and other retirement investments, what
is needed is a much more muscular Social Security system for retirement.
Does anyone know what percentage of boomers (or even older boomers) have pensions? I'm guessing
it's not all that high (even if it's 50%, that means half would be relying on SS and other savings
etc.).
So if all benefited from well funded DB plan wouldn't the economy be smaller from less spending
and markets even more overvalued?
Oh no, the economy would have been smaller so there would have been less money to save
My head hurts thinking about all those what ifs!
It just seems to me that the cost of living for the vast majority will always equal disposable
income because there is alway someone out there younger, willing to work longer hours, willing
to take a pay cut or pay extra for a house. Arbitrage rules.
Asking everyone to save for 30 years of retirement is a farce and sure to fail. And we are
currently witnessing its failure. There are just too many variables.
All it takes is for someone out there to plan using a life expectancy of 80 while another with
the same income uses 95. This gives them way more cash flow during their working years to increase
the price of everything screwing up the plans of those using more conservative assumptions.
Since companies don't care if you survive after you leave them and I bet in many of these big
box stores newbies and old timers probably earn about the same amount 10-15/hr. What is the real
reason they want to stop leakage? That 25% drop in gambling money & earnings for fund managers.
I am guilty moved on to new job and cashed it out. I didn't put any money in, don't care and don't
see this as a real way to ?retire.
After 2008 it seems like 401ks are just a place to dump garbage. What do I know, I am young &
dumb.
Question:
So my spouse has changed jobs 4 times in the last 5 years. Each time we have to cash out the old
401k and deposit it in the new one. Some times this rollover was done by direct wire transfer
from old to new, but one time they sent us a check, which we signed over to the new 401k account.
Are these somehow being counted as "cashing out"? We though these are really rollovers? Just curious
The Wall Street crooks through the governments they own have convinced the majority of the
people that 401(k)s are good because of (1) tax deferral and (2) company contributions. Americans
are obsessed with paying lower taxes that they let the Wall Street Banksters get their claws on
their savings. The laws dictate that only the banksters/brokers can keep and handle your savings.
Each trade results in a commission. Add to this mix the myriad of so called financial consultants
who churn the account for their own benefit. When Wall Street crashes, Good Bye!
BIL (high-level TV executive mostly unemployed for two years) withdrew his entire 401k without
understanding the tax consequences. April 15 a very large number is due to the Feds. Oops.
Over the years, I have been astonished at how little many executives understand about finance,
taxes, and business. I have always wondered what they actually do in their cocooned meetings.
Generally speaking, those meetings result in hilarious memos re-organizing people that don't appear
to have anything to do with the normal business while cutting costs that are essential to executing
the business.
So it is not a surprise to me that a high-level executive would be unaware that a 401k
is tax-deferred, not tax-exempt. He probably also thinks that a hedge fund is guaranteed to outperform
the S&P 500 and has already moved his money into one, which means he will have less money to pay
his taxes with.
Borrowing against your 401k is only an issue if you are saving in it at a low rate. The really
big issue with 401ks is that companies generally do not put much in matching funds in – typically
far less than their old pension fund contributions would be. Instead, those funds have been going
to pay for exorbitant healthcare insurance plans in the vastly over-priced US healthcare system.
I have borrowed against my 401ks over the years. However, I also save at a pretty high rate,
generally at the highest rate that the company permits. So I get the tax savings (been in some
of the highest tax brackets for over 20 years and live in a high income tax state, so about 35%
or so tax deferral) while building an asset base.
Occasionally, something comes up that needs some cash, so I take a loan against the 401k (generally
the value is less than a year's worth of contributions) and set up a schedule to pay it back over
a couple of years. Some years the interest rate on the loan (that you are paying to yourself)
is higher than the portfolio returns and other years it is lower. In the end, I have come out
ahead because I am not trying to save those chunks of money after tax in a bank savings account
that pays little or not interest.
Yes it is a 35% tax savings, even if not in the highest bracket. Say in the 25% fed bracket
(income of $37,950 to $91,900). Then California income taxes for that income can come to nearly
10%.
Mostly true, but it depends. If the new 410k has good, low cost investment options that one
wishes to utilize then it's probably fine. That said, many 401k accounts tend to have higher
costs for equivalent funds than one can get in a rollover IRA. Buyer gots to do their research.
No, he's correct. 401(k)s have TONS of hidden fees. You can't even get full disclosure
of the full fees. You are guaranteed to have lower fees and more choices at Vanguard.
Not just the corporation investing in equities or stock buybacks, or workers investing in equities,
but also the corporations turn themselves into finance/insurance businesses (Westinghouse, etc.)
It's funny that they can't see how they have defeated themselves – and they are blaming leakage
when spending the money is the antidote to stagnation as the system now works. It's hard to imagine
that the corporations want to retire the old workers to make room for new – I don't believe that
for a second because they'll gladly retire 4 olds and hire 1new. It's "flexibility" they are looking
for.
"... This was Alan Greenspan's trick that he pulled in the 1980s as head of the Greenspan Commission. He said that what was needed in America was to traumatize the workers – to squeeze them so much that they won't have the courage to strike. Not have the courage to ask for better working conditions. He recognized that the best way to really squeeze wage earners is to sharply increase their taxes. He didn't call FICA wage withholding a tax, but of course it is. His trick was to say that it's not really a tax, but a contribution to Social Security. And now it siphons off 15.4% of everybody's pay check, right off the top. ..."
"... The effect of what Greenspan did was more than just to make wage earners pay this FICA rake-off out of their paycheck every month. The charge was set so high that the Social Security fund lent its surplus to the government. Now, with all this huge surplus that we're squeezing out of the wage earners, there's a cut-off point: around $120,000. The richest people don't have to pay for Social Security funding, only the wage-earner class has to. Their forced savings are lent to the government to enable it to claim that it has so much extra money in the budget pouring in from social security that now it can afford to cut taxes on the rich. ..."
"... So the sharp increase in Social Security tax for wage earners went hand-in-hand with sharp reductions in taxes on real estate, finance for the top One Percent – the people who live on economic rent, not by working, not by producing goods and services but by making money on their real estate, stocks and bonds "in their sleep." That's how the five percent have basically been able to make their money. ..."
"... The Federal Reserve has just published statistics saying the average American family, 55 and 60 years old, only has about $14,000 worth of savings. This isn't nearly enough to retire on. There's also been a vast looting of pension funds, largely by Wall Street. That's why the investment banks have had to pay tens of billions of dollars of penalties for cheating pension funds and other investors. The current risk-free rate of return is 0.1% on government bonds, so the pension funds don't have enough money to pay pensions at the rate that their junk economics advisors forecast. The money that people thought was going to be available for their retirement, all of a sudden isn't. The pretense is that nobody could have forecast this! ..."
"... In Chile, the Chicago Boys really developed this strategy. University of Chicago economists made it possible, by privatizing and corporatizing the Social Security system. Their ploy was to set aside a pension fund managed by the company, mostly to invest in its own stock. The company would then set up an affiliate that would actually own the company under an umbrella, and then leave the company with its pension fund to go bankrupt – having already emptied out the pension fund by loaning it to the corporate shell. ..."
"... We have the highest healthcare costs in the world, so out of your paycheck – which is not increasing – you're going to have to pay more and more for FICA withholding for Social Security, more and more for healthcare, for the pharmaceutical monopoly and the health insurance monopoly. You'll also have to pay more and more to use public services for transportation to get to work, because the state is not funding that anymore. We're cutting taxes on the rich, so we don't have the money to do what social democracies are supposed to do. You're going to privatize the roads, so that now you're going to have to pay to use the road to drive to work, if you don't have public transportation. ..."
"... "Classical and neo-classical economics, as dominant today, has used the deductive methodology: Untested axioms and unrealistic assumptions are the basis for the formulation of theoretical dream worlds that are used to present particular 'results'. As discussed in Werner (2005), this methodology is particularly suited to deriving and justifying preconceived ideas and conclusions, through a process of working backwards from the desired 'conclusions', to establish the kind of model that can deliver them, and then formulating the kind of framework that could justify this model by choosing suitable assumptions and 'axioms'. In other words, the deductive methodology is uniquely suited for manipulation by being based on axioms and assumptions that can be picked at will in order to obtain pre-determined desired outcomes and justify favoured policy recommendations. It can be said that the deductive methodology is useful for producing arguments that may give a scientific appearance, but are merely presenting a pre-determined opinion." ..."
"... "Progress in economics and finance research would require researchers to build on the correct insights derived by economists at least since the 19th century (such as Macleod, 1856). The overview of the literature on how banks function, in this paper and in Werner (2014b), has revealed that economics and finance as research disciplines have on this topic failed to progress in the 20th century. The movement from the accurate credit creation theory to the misleading, inconsistent and incorrect fractional reserve theory to today's dominant, yet wholly implausible and blatantly wrong financial intermediation theory indicates that economists and finance researchers have not progressed, but instead regressed throughout the past century. That was already Schumpeter's (1954) assessment, and things have since further moved away from the credit creation theory." ..."
"... "Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive banking system." ..."
"... it insults the intelligence of the audience, ..."
"... we would now call ..."
"... totally insupportable on its face. ..."
"... as a corporate, spiritually mandated obligation, ..."
"... You're going to privatize the roads, so that now you're going to have to pay to use the road to drive to work, if you don't have public transportation. ..."
"... Henry Ford II: Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues? Walter Reuther: Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars? ..."
"... "You're turning the economy into what used to be called feudalism. Except that we don't have outright serfdom, because people can live wherever they want. But they all have to pay to this new hereditary 'financial/real estate/public enterprise' class that is transforming the economy." ..."
"... "The industrial capitalists, these new potentates, had on their part not only to displace the guild masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, the possessors of the sources of wealth. In this respect, their conquest of social power appears as the fruit of a victorious struggle both against feudal lordship and its revolting prerogatives, and against the guilds and the fetters they laid on the free development of production and the free exploitation of man by man. The chevaliers d'industrie, however, only succeeded in supplanting the chevaliers of the sword by making use of events of which they themselves were wholly innocent. They have risen by means as vile as those by which the Roman freedman once on a time made himself the master of his patronus. ..."
"... The starting point of the development that gave rise to the wage labourer as well as to the capitalist, was the servitude of the labourer. The advance consisted in a change of form of this servitude, in the transformation of feudal exploitation into capitalist exploitation. " ..."
Posted on
March 9, 2017 by Yves
Smith Yves here. This Real News Network interview is from a multi-part series about Michael Hudson's
new book, J is for Junk Economics. And after a lively discussion by readers of the economic necessity
of many to become expats to get their living costs down to a viable level, a discussion of the disingenuous
political messaging around retirement seemed likely. Among the people in my age cohort, the ones
that managed to attach themselves to capital (being in finance long enough at a senior enough level,
working in Corporate America and stock or stock options) are generally set to have an adequate to
very comfortable retirement. The ones who didn't (and these include people I know who are very well
paid professionals but for various reasons, like health problems or periods of unemployment that
drained savings, haven't put much away) will either have to continue working well past a normal retirement
age (even charitably assuming they can find adequately compensated work) or face a struggle or even
poverty.
SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.
I'm speaking with Michael Hudson about his new book J Is For Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in
the Age of Deception.
Thanks for joining me again, Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be here.
SHARMINI PERIES: So, Michael, on page 260 of your book you deal with the issue of Social Security
and it's a myth that Social Security should be pre-funded by its beneficiaries, or that progressive
taxes should be abolished in favor of a flat tax. Just one tax rate for everyone you criticize. We
talked about this earlier, but let's apply what this actually means when it comes to Social Security.
MICHAEL HUDSON: The mythology aims to convince people that if they're the beneficiaries of Social
Security, they should be responsible for saving up to pre-fund it. That's like saying that you're
the beneficiary of public education, so you have to pay for the schooling. You're the beneficiary
of healthcare, you have to save up to pay for that. You're the beneficiary of America's military
spending that keeps us from being invaded next week by Russia, you have to spend for all that – in
advance, and lend the money to the government for when it's needed.
Where do you draw the line? Nobody anticipated in the 19th century that people would have to pay
for their own retirement. That was viewed as an obligation of society. You had the first public pension
(social security) program in Germany under Bismarck. The whole idea is that this is a public obligation.
There are certain rights of citizens, and among these rights is that after your working life you
deserve to live in retirement. That means that you have to be able to afford this retirement, and
not have to beg in the street for money. The wool that's been pulled over people's eyes is to imagine
that because they're the beneficiaries of Social Security, they have to actually pay for it.
This was Alan Greenspan's trick that he pulled in the 1980s as head of the Greenspan Commission.
He said that what was needed in America was to traumatize the workers – to squeeze them so much that
they won't have the courage to strike. Not have the courage to ask for better working conditions.
He recognized that the best way to really squeeze wage earners is to sharply increase their taxes.
He didn't call FICA wage withholding a tax, but of course it is. His trick was to say that it's not
really a tax, but a contribution to Social Security. And now it siphons off 15.4% of everybody's
pay check, right off the top.
The effect of what Greenspan did was more than just to make wage earners pay this FICA rake-off
out of their paycheck every month. The charge was set so high that the Social Security fund lent
its surplus to the government. Now, with all this huge surplus that we're squeezing out of the wage
earners, there's a cut-off point: around $120,000. The richest people don't have to pay for Social
Security funding, only the wage-earner class has to. Their forced savings are lent to the government
to enable it to claim that it has so much extra money in the budget pouring in from social security
that now it can afford to cut taxes on the rich.
So the sharp increase in Social Security tax for wage earners went hand-in-hand with sharp
reductions in taxes on real estate, finance for the top One Percent – the people who live on economic
rent, not by working, not by producing goods and services but by making money on their real estate,
stocks and bonds "in their sleep." That's how the five percent have basically been able to make their
money.
The idea that Social Security has to be funded by its beneficiaries has been a setup for the wealthy
to claim that the government budget doesn't have enough money to keep paying. Social Security may
begin to run a budget deficit. After having run a surplus since 1933, for 70 years, now we have to
begin paying some of this savings out. That's called a deficit, as if it's a disaster and we have
to begin cutting back Social Security. The implication is that wage earners will have to starve in
the street after they retire.
The Federal Reserve has just published statistics saying the average American family, 55 and
60 years old, only has about $14,000 worth of savings. This isn't nearly enough to retire on. There's
also been a vast looting of pension funds, largely by Wall Street. That's why the investment banks
have had to pay tens of billions of dollars of penalties for cheating pension funds and other investors.
The current risk-free rate of return is 0.1% on government bonds, so the pension funds don't have
enough money to pay pensions at the rate that their junk economics advisors forecast. The money that
people thought was going to be available for their retirement, all of a sudden isn't. The pretense
is that nobody could have forecast this!
There are so many corporate pension funds that are going bankrupt that the Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation doesn't have enough money to bail them out. The PBGC is in deficit. If you're going to
be a corporate raider, if you're going to be a Governor Romney or whatever and you take over a company,
you do what Sam Zell did with the Chicago Tribune: You loot the pension fund, you empty it out to
pay the bondholders that have lent you the money to buy out the company. You then tell the workers,
"I'm sorry there is nothing there. It's wiped out." Half of the employee stock ownership programs
go bankrupt. That was already a critique made in the 1950s and '60s.
In Chile, the Chicago Boys really developed this strategy. University of Chicago economists
made it possible, by privatizing and corporatizing the Social Security system. Their ploy was to
set aside a pension fund managed by the company, mostly to invest in its own stock. The company would
then set up an affiliate that would actually own the company under an umbrella, and then leave the
company with its pension fund to go bankrupt – having already emptied out the pension fund by loaning
it to the corporate shell.
So it's become a shell game. There's really no Social Security problem. Of course the government
has enough tax revenue to pay Social Security. That's what the tax system is all about. Just look
at our military spending. But if you do what Donald Trump does, and say that you're not going to
tax the rich; and if you do what Alan Greenspan did and not make higher-income individuals contribute
to the Social Security system, then of course it's going to show a deficit. It's supposed to show
a deficit when more people retire. It was always intended to show a deficit. But now that the government
actually isn't using Social Security surpluses to pretend that it can afford to cut taxes on the
rich, they're baiting and switching. This is basically part of the shell game. Explaining its myth
is partly what I try to do in my book.
SHARMINI PERIES: If the rich people don't have to contribute to the Social Security base, are
they able to draw on it?
MICHAEL HUDSON: They will draw Social Security up to the given wage that they didn't pay Social
Security on, which is up to $120,000 these days. So yes, they will get that little bit. But what
people make over $120,000 is completely exempt from the Social Security system. These are the rich
people who run corporations and give themselves golden parachutes.
Even for companies that have engaged in massive financial fraud, the large banks, City Bank, Wells
Fargo – all these have golden parachutes. They still are getting enormous pensions for the rest of
their lives. And they're talking as if, well, corporate pensions are in deficit, but for the leading
officers, arrangements are quite different from the pensions to the blue collar workers and the wage
earners as a whole. So there's a whole array of fictitious economic statistics.
I describe this in my dictionary as "mathiness." The idea that if you can put a number on something,
it somehow is scientific. But the number really is the product of corporate accountants and lobbyists
reclassifying income in a way that it doesn't appear to be taxable income.
Taking money out and giving it to the richest 5%, while making it appear as if all this deficit
is the problem of the 95%, is "blame the victim" economics. You could say that's the way the economic
accounts are being presented by Congress to the American people. The aim is to popularize a "blame
the victim" economics. As if it's your fault that Social Security's going bankrupt. This is a mythology
saying that we should not treat retirement as a public obligation. It's becoming the same as treating
healthcare as not being a public obligation.
We have the highest healthcare costs in the world, so out of your paycheck – which is not
increasing – you're going to have to pay more and more for FICA withholding for Social Security,
more and more for healthcare, for the pharmaceutical monopoly and the health insurance monopoly.
You'll also have to pay more and more to use public services for transportation to get to work, because
the state is not funding that anymore. We're cutting taxes on the rich, so we don't have the money
to do what social democracies are supposed to do. You're going to privatize the roads, so that now
you're going to have to pay to use the road to drive to work, if you don't have public transportation.
You're turning the economy into what used to be called feudalism. Except that we don't have outright
serfdom, because people can live wherever they want. But they all have to pay to this new hereditary
"financial/real estate/public enterprise" class that is transforming the economy.
SHARMINI PERIES All right, Michael. Many, many, many things to learn from your great book, J Is
For Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in the Age of Deception. Michael is actually on the road promoting
the book. So if you have an opportunity to see him at one of the places he's going to be speaking,
you should check out his website, michael-hudson.com
So I thank you so much for joining us today, Michael. And as most of you know, Michael Hudson
is a regular guest on The Real News Network. We'll be unpacking his book and some of the concepts
in it on an ongoing basis. So please stay tuned for those interviews.
It's 10 bagger time for sure. A house in the tropics with servants at your beck and call. Breakfast
on the veranda. Lunch at the club. An afternoon sail. Dinner at the house of a famous author.
Or some native woman who cooks spicy food and is hotter than the sun. No shuffleboard and pills!
You need to stay buff if you wanna live like this. You can't be flabby and short of breath.
Yves's remark on retirement by sector is apt. I laugh bitter tears when I see that a financial
CEO contract always includes a "pension," as if the tens of millions of dollars in salary and
bonuses weren't enough.
A "pension" is for those who, broken by a life of hard physical labor, finally can't work any
more for their crust of bread. It's not another revenue line-item that's barely enough to refuel
the yacht.
There was a time when people "saved for retirement." With real rates of return being negative,
and all assets priced arbitrarily at the whim of the central bank's policy du jour, I am perfectly
frank when people ask "what should they invest in": nothing. Pay down your debt, and spend whatever
you have beyond an emergency cushion right now, while you can enjoy it. Savings will inevitably
be wasted, by inflation, the "health-care system," or financial-sector scammers. Do not ask for
whom the bell tolls; if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
This is all in the context of the Federal Government already spending 20% of GDP, a number
that was never designed to happen. It is the States that were supposed to be in charge of the
people's welfare, not the national authority. So the argument that we should increase Federal
taxes to somehow redistribute wealth is also wrong, because that wealth will simply be wasted,
spent by people who are responsible to no one.
At moments like this there are no good choices. Most Europeans have long learned to live with
governments that were hostile to them, and that is where we stand now.
Tocqueville's Democracy In America is tough going in spots, but my gosh, what a beautiful world
he depicts, when the average Pennsylvanian's tax liability beyond his township was $4 a year.
I won't argue too hard about your "Federal vs State" argument, but note that if the state is
in charge of most taxation then Richy Rich can live in a low tax state next door and employ the
well-educated, healthy (single-payer) people in your state.
"Classical and neo-classical economics, as dominant today, has used the deductive methodology:
Untested axioms and unrealistic assumptions are the basis for the formulation of theoretical dream
worlds that are used to present particular 'results'. As discussed in Werner (2005), this methodology
is particularly suited to deriving and justifying preconceived ideas and conclusions, through
a process of working backwards from the desired 'conclusions', to establish the kind of model
that can deliver them, and then formulating the kind of framework that could justify this model
by choosing suitable assumptions and 'axioms'. In other words, the deductive methodology is uniquely
suited for manipulation by being based on axioms and assumptions that can be picked at will in
order to obtain pre-determined desired outcomes and justify favoured policy recommendations. It
can be said that the deductive methodology is useful for producing arguments that may give a scientific
appearance, but are merely presenting a pre-determined opinion."
"Progress in economics and finance research would require researchers to build on the correct
insights derived by economists at least since the 19th century (such as Macleod, 1856). The overview
of the literature on how banks function, in this paper and in Werner (2014b), has revealed that
economics and finance as research disciplines have on this topic failed to progress in the 20th
century. The movement from the accurate credit creation theory to the misleading, inconsistent
and incorrect fractional reserve theory to today's dominant, yet wholly implausible and blatantly
wrong financial intermediation theory indicates that economists and finance researchers have not
progressed, but instead regressed throughout the past century. That was already Schumpeter's (1954)
assessment, and things have since further moved away from the credit creation theory."
"A lost century in economics: Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence" Richard
A. Werner
Francis Fukuyama talked of the "end of history" and "liberal democracy" in 1989.
Capitalism had conquered all and was the one remaining system left that had stood the test
of time.
With such a successful track record, everything was being changed to a new neo-liberal ideology
and globalization was used to test this new ideology everywhere.
The Great Moderation seemed to indicate that the new ideology was a great success.
"Seemed" is the operative word here.
A "black swan" arrives in 2008 and nothing is the same again, the Central Bankers pump in trillions
to maintain the new normal of secular stagnation.
Sovereign debt crises erupt, the Euro-zone starts to disintegrate, austerity becomes the norm.,
no one knows how to restore growth and the populists rise.
A new ideology comes in that is rolled out globally and seems to work before 2008.
What happened in 2008?
This is the build up to 2008 that can be seen in the money supply (money = debt):
The money supply is flat in the recession of the early 1990s.
Then it really starts to take off as the dot.com boom gets going which rapidly morphs into
the US housing boom, courtesy of Alan Greenspan's loose monetary policy.
When M3 gets closer to the vertical, the black swan is coming and you have an out of control
credit bubble on your hands (money = debt).
The theory.
Irving Fisher produced the theory of debt deflation in the 1930s.
Hyman Minsky carried on with his work and came up with the "Financial instability Hypothesis"
in 1974.
Steve Keen carried on with their work and spotted 2008 coming in 2005.
You can see what Steve Keen saw in the graph above, it's impossible to miss when you know what
you are looking for but no one in the mainstream did.
If you paid off all the debt there would be no money.
Money and debt are opposite side of the same coin, matter and anti-matter.
The money supply reflects debt/credit bubbles.
Monetary theory has been regressing for over 100 years to today's abysmal theory where banks
act as intermediaries and don't create and destroy money.
The success of earlier years was mainly due to money creation from new debt (mainly in housing
booms) globally feeding into economies leaving a terrible debt over-hang.
Jam today, penury tomorrow.
This is how debt works.
Twelve people were officially recognised by Bezemer in 2009 as having seen 2008 coming, announcing
it publicly beforehand and having good reasoning behind their predictions (Michael Hudson and
Steve Keen are on the list of 12).
They all saw the problem being excessive debt with debt being used to inflate asset prices
(US housing).
The Euro's periphery nations had unbelievably low interest rates with the Euro, the risks were
now based on common debt service. Mass borrowing and spending occurs at the periphery with the
associated money creation causing positive feedback.
Years later, it was found the common debt service didn't actually exist and interest rates
correct for the new reality.
Jam today, penury tomorrow.
Why doesn't austerity work? (although it has been used nearly everywhere)
You need to understand money, debt, money creation and destruction on bank balance sheets and
its effect on the money supply. Almost no one does.
Alternative and I would say much more accurate realities:
1) Michael Hudson "Killing the Host", "J is for Junk Economics"
The knowledge of economic history and the classical economists that has been lost and the problems
this is causing. Ancient Sumer had more enlightened views on debt than we have today.
2) Steve Keen "De-bunking Economics"
His work is based on that of Hyman Minsky and looks into the effects of private debt on the
economy and the inflation of asset bubbles with debt.
3) Richard Werner "Where does money come from?"
The only book generally available that tells the truth about money, I don't think there are
any other modern books that do and certainly not in economics textbooks
4) Richard Koo's study on the Great Depression and Japan after 1989 showing the only way out
of debt deflation/balance sheet recessions.
"Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without
limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive
banking system."
The limit for money creation holds true when banks keep the debt they issue on their own books.
The BoE's statement was true, but is not true now as banks can securitize bad loans and get
them off their books.
Before 2008, banks were securitising all the garbage sub-prime mortgages, e.g. NINJA mortgages,
and getting them off their books.
Money is being created freely and without limit, M3 is going exponential before 2008.
Thanks SOS, agree. We're at that 08 point now, in fact it's worse.
Pensions should just be a click of the computer, no borrowings, savings or taxes needed and
they need to be sufficient to live on.
No, we aren't 'winning'
In Australia, we used to give people the 'aged' at 60 for women and 65 for men. Now its 67
for both, the woman's aged cut in was raised for 'equality' reasons, and it going up to 70 for
my kids.
Politicians, judges, CEOs and the c-class, all those 'shiny bums', they can often work well
into their 60s. The rest of us experience age discrimination in a tight job market and are forced
into menial jobs just when society should be funding their well earned retirement.
The whole "there aren't enough workers to support retirees" meme is risible.
Example: Jane funds an IRA for 30 years. For those 30 years, there is one person paying in,
and zero taking out. When Jane retires, the IRA flips to one person taking out, and zero paying
in.
Disaster, or working as advertised?
That Serious Thinkers, elected officials and the SSA themselves advance this trope to explain
why SS is hopeless is proof of willful mendacity.
Now if these folks admit, well yuh, you paid in over all of these years, but the money ain't
there no more, then first, that's an admission of mismanagement (unsurprising), and second, bail
us the fuck out like you did Wall Street.
Most every purported "help" by the government is the exact opposite: your paying into a black
hole.
Look around you. What around you was paid for by the government? The answer is none of it was.
Taxes are a way to keep the bureaucratic structure afloat. What is very clear is that once government
reaches a certain size it begins to massively leach off of those that work and gives it to those
that "manage".
Look at any industry today and you will find, in the private sector, declining or stagnant
wages for the "drones". Then look at the public sector: expanding, better benefits, better wages,
less work etc. Thinking about it makes my blood boil. I see truckers making less now then 10 years
ago, yet, the industry keeps crying that they "don't have enough workers". Yeah, sorry no one
wants to work 25/8 driving around in the day time, sleeping in a truck at night, getting tracked
through GPS & get penalized for going above speed limits when they can work for the DMV, make
the same amount, and sit at a desk for 7 hours a day with plenty of benefits and vacation time.
Its about time for this system to implode. I see globalization and government expansion as
a huge force that will eventually cause a revolution in the States.
Globalization and the government are simply red herrings meant to distract Trump voters while
shareholder value driven corporate overlords continue looting.
Look around you . The government employs less people than pretty much for my whole
life. Please get informed before you go off on a multi-paragraph rant.
maybe noone should work in trucking, freight trains are much more energy efficient as far as
a means of transporting goods over long distances. Nah I'm not faulting truckers, just saying
it makes no societal sense is all except maybe for the last few miles, but then neither do a lot
of things. I doubt many people want to work at the DMV, but then maybe the benefits are enough
to make a distasteful job seem worth it.
As usual, the abuse of history is the outstanding credibility-buster in this piece. When an
author says this,
Nobody anticipated in the 19th century that people would have to pay for their own retirement.
That was viewed as an obligation of society.
why should I believe anything else that he has to say?
The sole instance given is of Bismarck's Germany, actually ground-breaking in its social welfare
policies, which came only in the last part of the 19th century.
For most of the 19th century, just about everywhere, nobody who worked for a living expected
to live long enough to retire.
Indeed, retirement in past centuries had a different denotation. Its common use was among the
aristocracy, when one of that number determined to remove himself from active (urban) social or
political life and withdraw (hence the etymology, "re-tirer"), usually to the country.
Haygood had to resuscitate "rusticate" for the other day, to achieve a modern equivalent of
that.
All of this is common knowledge. In case you don't think so, spend five minutes with any book
of demographics or social history; and that's just for Europe. Don't let's even ask what "nobody
expected to pay for their retirement" meant in early nineteenth-century Alabama.
By the way, Hudson does this all the time. When I can fact-check offhand, from my fund of common
knowledge, he is often casually abusing the truth. I can be pretty sure that the rest of what
he says is just as unreliable.
You may be correct about the 19th century, but it is 2017. And his points about the US tax
system, the banks, the wealthiest 1% and our gov't deceiving the middle and lower class are solid.
A very basic retirement and healthcare should be provided to all in any decent marginally successful
society. Not to mention a supposedly "great" one.
I think this is where some progressive get tripped up and don't understand why their policies
aren't more popular to the wide swaths of America outside of their bubble.
Often times, these people (I use this term loosely to include working class whites in Appalachia
as well as Silicon Valley libertarians) like to provide a fair and wide safety net. However, most
policies that are advanced are strictly means tested. This causes significant resentment among
those just outside of the cutoff lines. Think: Social Security has essentially blanket coverage.
Yes, there's some redistribution going on behind the scenes, but if I pay in for 30 years I will
get most of my money back. It's wildly popular, while welfare programs are not.
The same applies for health care – Medicare is popular and Medicaid is not. If I pay in for
a government program, I want to be able to take advantage of it. Save me the crap about not wanting
to subsidize the lifestyles of the 1%; they pay in far more than they would take out of the program.
It's a small price to pay to have universal coverage and buy in from all segments of society.
So extending Medicare down to everyone is a better political strategy than extending Medicaid
upwards to encompass higher income levels.
You read a great deal into a statement that you didn't at all prove was untrue. Not impressive.
The question is, did society believe that it had a responsibility of care for people that got
too old to work? You didn't even address that. Yes we know life was "nasty, brutish and (most
often) short. That doesn't invalidate what he said.
PhilM 'I can be pretty sure that the rest of what he says is just as unreliable.'
No mate, he speaks truth and may have exaggerated, but the point remains that here, the UK,
most of Europe – then the state funds your pension if you need one. It is now a social obligation.
Only in the US, do you have this class of people (the working class) who don't deserve retirement
and must fund their own meagre pensions, and if the 'pool which funds the pensions' becomes insufficient,
well you know the rest.
Taxes see, they fund things, or more often don't, because it's a widely accepted lie to keep
the private bank money creation bullshit going forever.
That's the problem, Dog, I generally agree with his point, and with the responders to my comment,
on policy grounds. My point is that leading with something that is provably false, and even probably
false to common knowledge, is not a winning tactic; some would say it insults the intelligence
of the audience, even.
To me this site, if it's about anything, is about filtering out the BS that is used by people
with an agenda to "enhance" their arguments. Lambert does this with a Lancelot-sized skewer. And
part of the beauty is the crowd-sourced fact-checking from an extraordinarily informed, and sceptical,
community.
I may not have much to add to their expertise, but one thing I do know is some European history,
and it drives me berzerk to see people just misuse history as if it strengthens their argument.
If they don't know that what they are saying is true, they should not say it. And by "know it
is true," I mean, know the source, and the source of the source, and be able to judge its reliability.
That is what scholarship is all about: seeing how far down the turtles go.
So when someone just tosses out an assertion about "what the past thought was right," as if
that created a moral obligation or not in 2017 (which as MBC quite rightly observed it does not,
at least not without a clearer argument), they should be critiqued. When their assertion is based
on sloppy cherry-picked facts and wrongly generalized, they should be called out as either uninformed
or malicious, in hopes they will be less so in the future.
That's all I was saying; I did not have a point to make about pensions, because I agree with
Hudson's viewpoints almost all the time, which is why it is so sad to see him turn out to be so
cheesy, so often.
My personal experience of pensions is this: they are a total scam to lock people into exploitive,
nearly intolerable working conditions on the flimsiest of promises in the private sector; and
in the public sector, they are a way of adding to the debt burden of generations yet to come without
the assent of the people: taxation without representation, in effect.
I have seen professionals crumble morally thanks to the force of the pension. It is despicable
corporate oppression at the subtle level, because it looks as if they are doing a good thing,
which of course they are not. It's more subtle than their obvious screaming cruelties to people
and animals and the land, which, it must also be said, nobody does anything about either.
Yes pension systems aren't perfect, but some people don't have family or money to fall back
on when they get old. I am seeing more and more of my own friends in their 60s struggling to earn
money through work. They want to stop, but can't afford to.
And, I am dismayed and disheartened of seeing people on the sidewalks that could be my parents.
Or, shit, me
I have no sympathy for these people. Read Hillbilly Elegy and see the perspective from the
white working class. More often than not, people who are "struggling" in mid life are those who
made bad choices. They abused drugs, had kids out of wedlock, or didn't make a career for themselves.
Often, they spend poorly – on luxury items and consuming excessively.
I live now just like how I did when I was a poor student – with a carefully limited budget
and spending within my means (more on experiences than products). I save 80% of my income and
plan to retire early. More people can do the same.
My mentor/hero bought a fixer upper house that she repaired by herself. She bikes to work every
day in the snow, and buys her clothes from thrift stores. She makes a six figure salary.
Save for an uncertain future, folks, and you won't find yourself in dire straits later on in
life.
For most of the 19th century, just about everywhere, nobody who worked for a living expected
to live long enough to retire.
I suspect your children or your extended family, were your retirement if you lived long enough
pre-20th century times. Also I cannot imagine there was any sort of defined retirement prior to
20th century for the masses. People simply did whatever they could within their families until
they couldn't. Work loads probably just decreased with the fragility of old age.
Also many people did live long lives. IIRC, heavy mortality was primarily concentrated in children
and childbirth and maybe the occasional mass epidemic or bloody war. Dodge those and you could
probably live a fairly long life.
Quite right; there was a bimodal or multimodal curve, which is why mean averages of life expectancy
are not all that enlightening. But the fact is that most people who worked or fought, worked or
fought their whole lives, until they were incapacitated; then there was their family, or the Church,
or the poorhouse, or starvation, usually leading to mortal illness, if it had not done so before
then.
The other side of that story is that the old folk were there as part of the social and economic
unit: helping to pick the harvest with the very youngest; sharing skills and knowledge across
four or five generations, century after century-rather than being shuffled off to die in some
wretched cubby, doing "retirement" things. There's a terrific little book, Peter Laslett's The
World We Have Lost, that gives a well-sourced and interesting picture of pre-industrial family
life that pushes people to overcome some of their self-satisfaction about this kind of thing.
I remember reading where they found a Neanderthal remains that showed that this guy was definitely
disabled to the point where he couldn't have survived alone. Which means someone else helped him
live longer.
That's what humans have always done pretty much, before money. People paid in by being part of
society, and then their community helped them later. Social insurance is just the money big civilization
version of it isn't it?
I'm just thinking of the people with aging parents and children with parent cosigned student
loans And what if they were responsible for paying the $90,000+ / year nursing home payment and
all the medical bills, instead of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid On top of trying to help
their kids get through college.
The whole scenario is a bad joke and getting worse.
There wasn't 15-20% of the population expecting to live 30 years in retirement and the next
generations to pay for their still mortgaged McMansions and trips to the tropics.
I have no issues paying for retirees. I have issues with asking the younger generations to
pay for lifestyles that are bigger than theirs. The Western retirement lifestyle is too energy
and resource intensive.
I don't think most people collecting a social security check actually have a big lifestyle,
much less trips to the tropics, that's a Charles Schwab commercial, not a reality for most people.
What Social Security has done is mostly reduce the number of old people living in poverty. Ok
so young and middle age people are still living in poverty, making everyone live in poverty including
people that are old and frail and sick is not an improvement. Are retired people's lifestyles
actually shown to be more energy intensive, I think in many ways they would be less so, ie not
making that long commute to the office everyday anymore etc..
Sorry, but your comment is delusional. It is impossible for someone retired on only Social
Security to "pay for their still mortgaged McMansions and trips to the tropics". In what universe
is that possible on a MAXIMUM annual income of less than $32,000? Googling "maximum social security
benefits" generates the following info:
"The maximum monthly Social Security benefit payment for a person retiring in 2016 at full retirement
age is $2,639. However, the maximum allowable benefit amount is only payable to those who had
the maximum taxable earnings for at least 35 working years. Depending on when you retire and how
much you made while working, your benefits may be considerably less. The estimated average monthly
benefit for "all retired workers" in 2016 is $1,341."
I suspect a lot of people (younger than boomers) might be still mortgaged to a small degree
when they retire as housing costs have gone up so that people can't afford a mortgage when they
are young, so if they buy real estate at all it's at middle age, buy the first home in their 30s
or 40s or 50, for a 30 year mortgage. But McMansions have nothing to do with that.
The income distribution table shows that the younger retirees 65-75 are not suffering when
compared to the working population they seem to have a good thing going for them
Merging all these data points, it becomes quite apparent that there is a large percentage of
retirees who still carry debt while collecting social security.
Increasing social security to some group means making another group pay
As usual, the abuse of history is the outstanding credibility-buster in this piece. When
an author says this,
Nobody anticipated in the 19th century that people would have to pay for their own retirement.
That was viewed as an obligation of society.
why should I believe anything else that he has to say?
The sole instance given is of Bismarck's Germany, actually ground-breaking in its social
welfare policies, which came only in the last part of the 19th century.
For most of the 19th century, just about everywhere, nobody who worked for a living expected
to live long enough to retire.
Indeed, retirement in past centuries had a different denotation. Its common use was among
the aristocracy, when one of that number determined to remove himself from active (urban) social
or political life and withdraw (hence the etymology, "re-tirer"), usually to the country.
Historically, he is right and you are entirely wrong, which is not surprising as Michael Hudson
is originally a philologist and historian and has specialised in economic history.
The modern conception of retirement is mostly a 20th Century invention, but throughout history,
there are many versions of 'retirement', and they were almost always paid out of current expenditures.
Roman soldiers were paid lump sums and frequently given land on reaching retirement age through
the Aerarium Militare. Militaries throughout ancient and medieval history had similar schemes,
and not just for officers, but again, these were rarely if ever paid out of a contribution scheme
– it was considered an obligation of the State.
In many, if not most societies, it was accepted that aristocratic employers and governments
had obligations to elderly staff – for example, fuedal workers would keep their homes when they
were no longer capable of working, and this extended well into the 19th Century. Organised religions
would almost always have systems for looking after retired religious members, again, always paid
out of current revenues, not some sort of investment fund. The concept of a fixed retirement age
(outside of the military) is a relatively modern one, but the concept of 'retirement' is not modern
at all.
This is the worst strawmanning bull**** I have seen in a while; it is simply infuriating. I
don't have the time to put all of what follows into perfect order, but here's what I can tap out
in a minute or two.
If, PK, you are trying to prove that some people in the past have stopped work and still gotten
paid, as part of their lifetime compensation for the work they have done, and that this is, de
facto, compensation during what we would now call "retirement," you win. Straw man knocked
over.
So let me again quote what Hudson says, just so your argument can be demonstrated as the pointless
distraction that it is:
"Nobody anticipated in the 19th century that people would have to pay for their own retirement.
That was viewed as an obligation of society."
That couldn't be clearer. "Nobody anticipated," as in "nobody." Meaning it was a generally
accepted social value that . what follows. What follows is "people," as in "people"; not just
soldiers, or priests, or servants; "people," ie, Gesellschaft; and then, "their own retirement,"
(which can only imply a period when they were old enough still to do something productive that
earned money, but chose not to, instead; because otherwise it would be called "disability," right?).
"That was viewed as an obligation of society," meaning, it was a right, not a privilege or gift
or compensation, and it was universal, because it applied to "people," and "nobody" thought otherwise.
There is just nothing there that is justifiable in any way based on the history of the nineteenth
century. The only exception is Bismarck's Germany, which is adduced as proof of the statement,
which is totally insupportable on its face.
If you stand by that, and are trying to suggest that "retirees," meaning as a group everyone
in society beyond a pre-defined age, as opposed to the disabled, were ever perceived as having
a societally based right to welfare support before the very late nineteenth or early twentieth
century, and that only in a very few, very advanced places, you fail three times over.
You do this in classically ahistorical ways: you conflate Gesellschaft with Gemeinschaft; you
adduce the military of the ancient world, which is just hilariously anachronistic, but even those
prove you wrong when examined closely; you completely misconstrue the rules of the corporately
organized ancien regime, which by the way was ancient history as far as the post-Dickensian industrializing
Europe that Hudson speaks of; you adduce the military and the priesthood as if they were representatives
of "society" as a whole, which they were not–they were adherents of the body that made the rules,
and liked to keeps its friends close, and could reward them. The same, while you are at it, was
true of some different varieties of public servants–but not many, and again, not before the late
nineteenth century, and certainly not in the US:
"Like military pensions, pensions for loyal civil servants date back centuries. Prior to the
nineteenth century, however, these pensions were typically handed out on a case-by-case basis;
except for the military, there were few if any retirement plans or systems with well-defined rules
for qualification, contributions, funding, and so forth. Most European countries maintained some
type of formal pension system for their public sector workers by the late nineteenth century.
Although a few U.S. municipalities offered plans prior to 1900, most public sector workers were
not offered pensions until the first decades of the twentieth century. Teachers, firefighters,
and police officers were typically the first non-military workers to receive a retirement plan
as part of their compensation."
Your ad hominem appeal to Hudson's authority as a historian is amusing: it is actually
not surprising that Hudson is wrong, and I am right; because he is an economic historian,
with a special faculty, apparently, for conducting contemporary policy polemics; and I would be
happy to give you my professional authority, except that this is the internet, so appeals to professional
authority don't mean anything at all, but I'll just put it to you that it is more than sufficient;
but leaving that aside, I am without a polemical agenda, except just this one: that the past needs
to be respected in its totality, and that even when being used to score points in contemporary
policy arguments. I know which of us has more credibility here just by reading Hudson's sentences,
which are devoid of historical meaning or sensitivity; and I know that I, as a historian, would
never knowingly misuse the past to make a point about the present, because that is being a bad,
bad doctor.
You bring up three cases: military, clergy, and servants. Those are exactly not what
Hudson is talking about when he mentions Bismarck, or the nineteenth century, or retirement and
its old age provisions as a whole, so you basically proved my point just by failing to address
the actual argument. What Hudson is referring to-because he says so with his one example-is the
Bismarckian "Gesellschaft" obligation to what had in previous centuries been called the the third
estate in generic terms. Not, mind you, the first and second estates and their servants and adherents.
If Hudson were talking about pensions for the military, he would have said so, and his argument
would have ended there, in a paragraph, because they are fully protected in that regard and have
been, at least more than the average citizen, since the GI Bill. Pensions for the military is
not part of some kind of "social obligation" for retirees; it is a reward for long service, and
therefore not some kind of "right of social welfare," but a kind of compensation, and it was not
much, at that, in the 19th century.
The regular clergy, which made up most of the clergy until the dissolutions, did not retire:
their jobs were for life, because they lived a life of prayer, and that was not something that
ever ended. The Church supported all clergy as a corporate, spiritually mandated obligation,
not as a generalized "social obligation" like social security, or what Bismarck instituted.
If your point is that certain corporate groups took care of their privileged members when they
no longer worked, that is one thing; if your point is that "retirement" as a condition that merited
social welfare, in general, the clergy don't make that for you. They were exceptions to the general
rule that people had to fend for themselves, a rule that applied to the entire third estate by
definition from time immemorial.
Lastly, servants: those who "retired" in the nineteenth century very often did not have the
same treatments as servants in the ancien regime, many of whom died in harness in any case. But,
if their employing families did continue to provide for them, they did so not out of a sense they
were meeting the "obligation of society to the retired," but as a matter of family or community
duty, noblesse oblige. It was completely at the mercy and discretion of the family involved. It
was a matter of personal honor, and still is, when servants have been your friends and companions
and have prepared and eaten the same food you have, and cleaned your mess and watched your back
and brushed your horses and trained you to ride, and seen your youthful foolishness, sometimes
for generations. Those are not "obligations of society"; they are personal and family and moral
obligations. So Cato the Elder took some heat for his recommendations on discarding old and broken
down slaves, but nobody suggested it was up to the Republic to pay for them instead. Since you're
going to the ancient world, you might better have used that example than that of the soldiers.
And so all that is what Hudson is not talking about. He's talking about Bismarck's
social security as a moral precedent, reflecting a widely held belief in the popular right to
a social safety net after a certain age.
So of course some people were "pensioned." They were called "pensioners," and many of them
were not at all "retired," but had gone on to work at other things, like soldiers who opened up
fish-and-chips shops (q.v.). That does not mean that there was ever a Gesellschaft-like concept
of "retirement" as a condition that brought the right to support by the commonwealth; not before
Bismarck. That's what Hudson's reference tries to imply, that such a concept was common in the
19th century, at a widespread societal level in Western Civilization, and it is provably, demonstrably,
obviously wrong. If it weren't, why would the Old-Age Pensions Act 1908 have ever been passed?
"Nobody anticipated in the 19th century that people would have to pay for their own retirement.
That was viewed as an obligation of society."
You simply cannot construe that to have any truth, given the facts of the century. You can
straw-man me about the concept of "retirement" all you like, although you are still wrong there,
because the groups you name aren't people who "work for a living," which is the third estate;
they are the first and second estates, and their adherents: those who fight for a living, and
pray for a living, and those who obey them.
So the fact remains that Hudson's statement was just polemical fluff, and no historian worth
the name should have uttered it. I guess I'll sit here and wait for his response, because yours,
well .
"He didn't call FICA wage withholding a tax, but of course it is."
This just drives me to apoplexy. 1, that it is not called a tax, and 2, that wage taxes are
never ever reduced.
Incessant yammering about "incentives" – but doesn't a wage tax disincentivise both employers
and employees with regard to wage work? – – Endless talk about how CEO's can't do ANYTHING unless
their taxes are REDUCED!!!!!!! But somehow .that just goes out the window when it comes to wages
– TAXES MUST GO UP.
Cheney – deficits don't matter .except apparently with regard to social security ..
The other scam about FICA and its "separate" funding is that social security being in balance
is OH SO IMPORTANT – deficits will be the death of it. Yet the general fund is in deficit (see
Mish today for a bunch of stuff on the hypocrisy of repubs on the deficit) and ever more deficit
and nobody seriously cares about it or worries about it. MONEY can always be found for invading
for Iraq, and paying for invading anybody is NEVER a problem. Feeding old folks, on the other
hand, sure strains the resources
Its like it is as important to keep a reserve army of the impoverished as it is to keep the empire.
FD -'This just drives me to apoplexy' Breathe, buddy.
Yes, mate, feeding old folks – looking after the oldies so they have health care, decent food
and a home.
How well each country does it reflects their views on whether it's a social obligation. For
many countries, there is no safety net and families provide the care, if they can.
It's becoming that way in the west too. I don't see many governments increasing welfare for
our poorest people, benefits are being gutted and those that did save for retirement are seeing
their funds looted and zero interest paid
Life in Indian joint family is great- no retirement work- food for life for a member- great
lack of boredoms and lonely depressions- life, life ,- exquisite vegetarian food fit for Gods-
low tech human scale towns- GREAT TO BE ALIVE ON 3 dollars a day! This talk of retirement and
working and senior junior savings is so pathetic that my sex drive just evaporated into thin air
reading it! Get a life.
It's good to read Michael Hudson's call-out of FICA as a mechanism to crush workers and transfer
wealth to the already rich.
FICA is indeed the worse sort of deductive reasoning. It is based on the premise that the rich
are entitled to be rich, and that the masses want to take their money from them. In America in
particular, wealth has historically been based on grants from the sovereign to loot the commons
(timber, agriculture, mineral extraction, railroads, military procurement, data mining, etc.).
These grants to loot the commons have nearly always been based on corrupt practices of cronyism
and bribery. Alchemists like Greenspan simply provide theo-classical mumbo-jumbo after-the-fact
justification for their piracy.
Ironically, I was just reading about impending failure of the Oroville Dam, a prime example
of America as the seat of greed. It was well-known that the spillways were inadequate and crumbling
due to 50 years of use. However, the Reagan-ites of Southern California refused to tax themselves
in order to save Oroville and Yuba City, 450 miles away.
It's sad that everyone, especially the rich, think that they can blow-up the United States
and then fly to their bolt-hole in New Zealand or Australia - or if you're not so rich to a shack
in Panama or Thailand. I suspect that we will soon find ourselves to be unwelcome pariahs in those
places.
How is FICA a redistribution to the wealthy? If anything, what you pay in buys you a share
of the distributions when you retire. That means the output is roughly proportional to the input
you contribute. The wealthy stop contributing after roughly the $120,000 limit, but that doesn't
mean they take an outsized distribution. They take home exactly the same (pre-tax) as someone
who only made $120,000 per year.
If anything there's a bit of redistribution behind the scenes that favours the poor. See my
earlier post. If you make too many changes to Social Security such that it becomes another welfare
program, it will lose its popular backing and eventually get axed.
Neoliberalism is OUT-DATED. Rather, for the past four decades, it's been fiat currency for
the .01% and gold standard straitjacket ideology for everyone else.
"The mainstream view is no longer valid for countries issuing their own non-convertible currencies
and only has meaning for those operating under fixed exchange rate regimes,
'The two monetary systems are very different. You cannot apply the economics of the gold standard
(or USD convertibility) to the modern monetary system. Unfortunately, most commentators and professors
and politicians continue to use the old logic when discussing the current policy options. It is
a basic fallacy and prevents us from having a sensible discussion about what the government should
be doing. All the fear-mongering about the size of the deficit and the size of the borrowings
(and the logic of borrowing in the first place) are all based on the old paradigm. They are totally
inapplicable to the fiat monetary system' (Mitchell, 2009).
We might now consider the opportunity afforded by the new monetary reality, effectively modelled
by MMT. A new socio-political reality is possible which throws off the shackles of the old. The
government can now act as a currency issuer and pursue public purpose. Functional finance is now
the order of the day. For most nations, issuing their own fiat currency under floating exchange
rates the situation is different to the days of fixed exchange rates. Since the gold window closed
a different core reality exists – one which, potentially at least, provides governments with significantly
more scope to enact policies which benefit society.
However, the political layer, in the way it interacts with monetary reality, has a detrimental
effect on the power of democratic governments to pursue public purpose. In the new monetary reality
political arrangements that sprang up under the old regimes are no longer necessary or beneficial.
They can largely be considered as self-imposed constraints on the system; in short the political
layer contains elements which are out-of-date, ideologically biased and unnecessary. However,
mainstream economists have not grasped this situation – or perhaps they cannot allow themselves
to- because of the vice-like grip that their ethics and 'traditional' training has on them.
MMT provides the best monetary models out there and highlights the existence of additional
policy space acquired by sovereign states since Nixon closed the gold window and most nations
adopted floating exchange rates. We just need to encourage the use of the space to enhance the
living standards of ordinary people."
Heterodox Views of Money and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) by Phil Armstrong (York College)
2015
A new socio-political reality is possible which throws off the shackles of the old. The
government can now act as a currency issuer and pursue public purpose. Functional finance is
now the order of the day. For most nations, issuing their own fiat currency under floating
exchange rates the situation is different to the days of fixed exchange rates. Since the gold
window closed a different core reality exists – one which, potentially at least, provides governments
with significantly more scope to enact policies which benefit society.
What I especially like about your post is that it finally takes the mask off and openly admits
what everyone who tries to learn about MMT has realized at once: that for all of its utility in
understanding money systems, it is designed and propounded with an agenda: to undermine the mores
underlying centuries of private-property-based liberal capitalism. Those mores, which remain more
than illusions despite the encroachments of central banks, are the last barrier to prevent state
capitalism from becoming completely authoritarian, because as long as "taxation" is, at least
theoretically, the limit on state spending and therefore power, then "representation" actually
means something, and so representative democracy and property rights, which are the keys to a
functioning productive civil society and underlie all human progress for eight hundred years,
can survive a bit longer.
The very real and useful core of MMT, which describes what we see happening since the gold
standard fell, and is therefore unimpeachable from a certain objective turn of mind, is Janus-faced.
On the one hand, it acknowledges what the Framers knew intuitively when they gave the Federal
government the power of issuing money: the sovereign makes the money. On the other, as often used
here, and especially in your comment, it is a rationale for a government unrestrained by property
rights and representative constraints on its power of expenditure. That will not end well, simply
because it will not last long, and it will end in a military despotism or landed aristocracy (if
you're lucky). Because it always has, and you are not going to change that, are you?
In one of the recently discovered lectures (1940) by Karl Polanyi, in referring to post-war
Europe (post 1918) he argued:
"The alternative was between an integration of society through political power on a democratic
basis, or if democracy proved too weak, integration on an authoritarian basis in a totalitarian
society, at the price of the sacrifice of democracy."
It is still the same issue today which PhilM nicely illuminates when he states: "..What I especially
like about your post is that it finally takes the mask off and openly admits what everyone who
tries to learn about MMT has realized at once: that for all of its utility in understanding money
systems, it is designed and propounded with an agenda to undermine the mores underlying centuries
of private-property-based liberal capitalism. These mores, which remain more than illusions despite
the encroachments of central banks, are the last barrier to prevent state capitalism from becoming
completely authoritarian, because as long as "taxation" is, at least theoretically, the limit
on state spending and therefore power, then "representation" actually means something "
The national security state already has a potentially totalitarian hold on us and in the future
the MMT scenario "as a rationale for a government unrestrained by property rights and representative
constraints on its powers of expenditure" might nicely finish us off.
It would no longer be the neo-liberal present where the whole of society must be subordinated
to the needs of the market system, but the other extreme, where the whole of society must be subordinated
to the needs of the state supposedly working in the "public interest."
it is designed and propounded with an agenda: to undermine the mores underlying centuries
of private-property-based liberal capitalism.
You say that like it's a bad thing :-)
the last barrier to prevent state capitalism from becoming completely authoritarian
State capitalism? If this is supposed to be a topical reference I don't get it.
as long as "taxation" is, at least theoretically, the limit on state spending and therefore
power, then "representation" actually means something
How so? Did "taxation" restrain Bush from spending trillions on invasions? Can't you have representation
without taxation?
representative democracy and property rights, which are the keys to a functioning productive
civil society and underlie all human progress for eight hundred years
I thought that was the Catholic Church
"Property rights"-the private monopolisation of the gifts of nature-at least in their traditional
form, seem to me to be the third fundamental flaw in our political economy, along with Capitalism
(narrowly defined) and our bogus monetary ludibrium. We need a new Church.
MMT: great stuff. With you 100%. The issue is corruption and this culture of privilege and
corruption we live in. You better believe the government will be issuing currency for other than
the public interest. The fact is we live in an MMT economy now, it's just that the currency created
by the government is being passed out to the ethnically privileged .001%. The talk of deficits
and national debt is all a smoke screen to cover up this fact. It is way past time to educate
the masses on this theme, kudos to Michael Hudson & Steve Keen.
One part of society parasitical on the productive part .. starts small. $1 per $1000, then
$10 per $1000 until it gets to $1000 per $1000. Neither bought politicians, nor bought citizens,
stays bought.
Of course we shouldn't expect women and children to work that is destructive of reproduction
and child raising. Some women should work some children should work but only a few. Otherwise
obvious system dynamics will reduce the net population in quality and quantity.
You're going to privatize the roads, so that now you're going to have to pay to use the
road to drive to work, if you don't have public transportation.
This is a zero-sum game for the elite. They're already soaking us. If they soak us on tolls,
they'll have to take less money soaking us another way.
In contrast, Fed Gov reducing spending is not a zero-sum game for the elite. That means less
money to be soaked up from the public. Unless of course, the public compensates by taking out
more private debt. In which case, ka ching for the elite again.
That said, I don't think the mind-set really is to reduce Fed Gov spending. Rather, the mind-set
is to reduce entitlements so that other Fed Gov spending can be increased, namely on defense,
intelligence communities, etc. And I really don't think the elite have much of a dog in that fight.
After all, the elite suck up all the money regardless of how it's spent by the Fed Gov. So my
guess is that this campaign to reduce entitlement spending is being waged by the other agencies
in the Fed Gov and the eco-system that feeds off them.
In the 1980s Greenspan pushed for massive increases in FICA. And Reagan spent it on Star Wars.
Recently I've read that that wasn't really a missile shield project but a cyber technology project.
Today we read that the CIA has disseminated all this accumulated and obsolete technology; leased
it out to private contractors; or variously bribed the Europeans with it. Etc. Fast-back to the
1930s and FDR took the same SS money for WW2. In the 60s, JFK agonized about the budget and the
value of the dollar and could see no reason to go into Vietnam, but oops. LBJ bulldozed through
Congress our Medicare plan, which upped SS contributions, and he went promptly into Vietnam, spending
it all and stuffing the retirement funds with treasuries. Shouldn't we all be looking at how transitory
these achievements (or disasters) have been. Maybe nothing more than boosting the economy for
a few years every other decade or so. Money could achieve much more than this if we accepted as
fact the fleeting benefits of misspending it and instead concentrated on a steady economy benefiting
all. Hubris rules, but it doesn't ever make things better.
'it's a myth that Social Security should be pre-funded by its beneficiaries' - Sharmini
Peries
If it's a myth, it's one that's incorporated in the Social Security Act of 1935, as well as
(for private pensions) the ERISA Act of 1974.
After about a century of experimentation, we know how to fund pensions securely: estimate the
present value of the future liability using an appropriate discount rate, and then keep it funded
on a current basis.
Social Security grossly violates this model in three respects. First, it is only about 20 percent
funded, headed for zero in 2034 according to its own trustees.
Second, because Social Security does not avail itself of the Capital Asset Pricing Model developed
in the 1960s, it invests in low-return Treasuries, which causes required contributions to be cruelly
high. Had Soc Sec been invested in a 60/40 mix of stocks and bonds, FICA taxes could have been
half their current level and funded higher benefits.
Third and finally, Social Security is treated as an off balance sheet obligation in the Financial
Report of the United States. Unlike the legally enforceable obligation of private pension sponsors
to make good on their promises, the government refuses to take responsibility and put itself on
the hook. The Supreme Court has ruled that Social Security essentially is a welfare program, which
Congress can cut back or cancel at will. So much for "security" - there isn't any.
Social Security is part of a general pattern of government taking a sleazy, second-rate approach
to its social promises, by exempting itself from well-established prudential rules mandating best
practices. Frank Roosevelt wanted his constituents to be forever dependent on the kindness of
perfidious politicians. He got his wish.
>we know how to fund pensions securely: estimate the
C'mon Jim you can do better than that. Here is dictionary.com, do you see the problem with
your statement?
know:
verb (used with object), knew, known, knowing.
1. to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to apprehend clearly and with certainty:
estimate
verb (used with object), estimated, estimating.
1.to form an approximate judgment or opinion regarding the worth, amount, size, weight, etc.,
of; calculate approximately:
When you lend money to the profligate, they are happy. When you ask to be repaid, they are
furious. It turns out that is just as true when workers who payroll taxes on their whole income
"lend money" to the wealthy by paying excess amounts to the SS trust fund which in turn, enabled
tax cuts for the wealthy. The wealthy are incensed that the SS trust fund, which has "lent" trillions
to the treasury is now demanding to be "repaid" with interest.
That's the trick about S.S. that gets me. You cannot pay in 15% of your income with some amount
of reasonable compounding interest for your entire career and not have a massive nest egg at the
end. But the math is done straight up such that there never was interest on the payments, so we
are entitled to very little, despite every other form of investing on the planet returning some
kind of interest.
It's one of the reasons I argue for a Sovereign Wealth Fund to retain and manage all SS recepts,
so at least the contributions and return on investment are accounted for in plain sight, so nobody
can bait and switch.
And heaven forbid the Sovereign wealth fund could also be used as government bank that loans
(our) money direct to citizens, without private banks getting a cut.
It ain't utopia, but it is a way of playing their game and still winning results and the pr
war even in the face of the most anti-sociailst conservative.
We need to keep up with the Feudalism 2.0 Moniker.
We continue to refine society towards only 4 classes of people:
Warlords/Politicians
Productivity Owners
Rent Extractors
The Oppressed
Over the last 35 years the productivity owners have been making a run, vacuuming up all the
productivity improvements leaving everybody else stagnant, before considering inflation, but with
the robotic age coming, they are just getting warmed up.
>but with the robotic age coming, they are just getting warmed up.
Hmmm.
Henry Ford II: Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues?
Walter Reuther: Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?
Apparently not an actual quote, but one Reuther certainly endorsed.
You know "they" are just planning to kill 2/3 of us off, don't you? The elite are evil and
sure many of them are stupid, but far from all of them.
"You're turning the economy into what used to be called feudalism. Except that we don't
have outright serfdom, because people can live wherever they want. But they all have to pay to
this new hereditary 'financial/real estate/public enterprise' class that is transforming the economy."
Spot.On.
From Marx's "Capital", Chapter 26 (The Secret of Primitive Accumulation):
"The industrial capitalists, these new potentates, had on their part not only to displace
the guild masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, the possessors of the sources of
wealth. In this respect, their conquest of social power appears as the fruit of a victorious struggle
both against feudal lordship and its revolting prerogatives, and against the guilds and the fetters
they laid on the free development of production and the free exploitation of man by man. The chevaliers
d'industrie, however, only succeeded in supplanting the chevaliers of the sword by making use
of events of which they themselves were wholly innocent. They have risen by means as vile as those
by which the Roman freedman once on a time made himself the master of his patronus.
The starting point of the development that gave rise to the wage labourer as well as to
the capitalist, was the servitude of the labourer. The advance consisted in a change of form of
this servitude, in the transformation of feudal exploitation into capitalist exploitation. "
"... Wasn't there a recent discussion about how 401(k)s are a sham? ..."
"... Hillary should have campaigned on this policy of diverting savings to Wall Street in order to help exports. This would have gotten more voters to the polls.... Call it a private Wall St. tax on savers. ..."
"... from Miles Kimball the supply-sider ..."
"... how would Brad Setser think about an 8 percent tax on Chinese consumers that the Communist sovereign wealth fund could invest abroad for their retirement? That would boost Wall Street some more. ..."
"As I explained in my May 14, 2015 column "How Increasing
Retirement Saving Could Give America More Balanced Trade":
I talked to Madrian and David Laibson, the incoming chair
of Harvard's Economics Department (who has worked with her on
studying the effects of automatic enrollment) on the
sidelines of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau research
conference last week. Using back-of-the-envelope calculations
based on the effects estimated in this research, they agreed
that requiring all firms to automatically enroll all
employees in a 401(k) with a default contribution rate of 8%
could increase the national saving rate on the order of 2 or
3 percent of GDP."
Wasn't there a recent discussion about how 401(k)s are a
sham?
Progressive neoliberals....
Hillary should have campaigned on this policy of diverting
savings to Wall Street in order to help exports. This would
have gotten more voters to the polls.... Call it a private
Wall St. tax on savers.
how would Brad Setser think about an 8 percent tax on Chinese
consumers that the Communist sovereign wealth fund could
invest abroad for their retirement? That would boost Wall
Street some more.
Peter K. -> Peter K....
, -1
The other benefit of Kimball's plan - from a prog neolib
viewpoint - is that it would weaken Social Security.
In the nondescript
world of public
policy, oopsies don't
get any bigger than
this.
In a remarkable
story (#) in Tuesday's
Wall Street Journal,
several early
champions of 401(k)s,
the now-ubiquitous
tax-deferred plans
that help workers sock
away retirement funds,
expressed regrets for
what their efforts
later yielded: Private
pensions have
withered. Individual
workers now shoulder
risks that large
corporations once
bore. Investment fees
chip away at account
owners' returns. The
typical American
worker is badly
underprepared for old
age.
"I helped open the
door for Wall Street
to make even more
money than they were
already making," said
benefits consultant
Ted Benna - sometimes
known, according the
Journal's Timothy W.
Martin, as the "father
of the 401(k)." "We
weren't social
visionaries," said
former Johnson &
Johnson
human-resources
executive Herbert
Whitehouse, who helped
popularize the plans.
"The great lie is that
the 401(k) was capable
of replacing the old
system of pensions,"
said Gerald Facciani,
the former head of the
American Society of
Pension Actuaries.
Whoops.
Older Americans'
fear of leaving the
workforce with nothing
saved surely added to
the economic unease
that Donald Trump
channeled in his
campaign. ...
Instead, a Republican
Congress and the
incoming Republican
president are
preparing to repeal
Obamacare and replace
it with individual
health savings
accounts, or something
else, or perhaps
nothing at all. At the
least, the new regime
in Washington should
heed a lesson from the
401(k) debacle: When
you fiddle with the
safety net, you should
consider how people
and corporations
behave in real life.
...
Herbert Whitehouse was
one of the first in
the U.S. to suggest
workers use a 401(k).
His hope in 1981 was
that the
retirement-savings
plan would supplement
a company pension that
guaranteed payouts for
life.
Thirty-five years
later, the former
Johnson & Johnson
human-resources
executive has
misgivings about what
he helped start.
What Mr. Whitehouse
and other proponents
didn't anticipate was
that the tax-deferred
savings tool would
largely replace
pensions as big
employers looked for
ways to cut expenses.
Just 13% of all
private-sector workers
have a traditional
pension, compared with
38% in 1979.
"We weren't social
visionaries," Mr.
Whitehouse says.
Many early backers
of the 401(k) now say
they have regrets
about how their
creation turned out
despite its emergence
as the dominant way
most Americans save.
Some say it wasn't
designed to be a
primary retirement
tool and acknowledge
they used forecasts
that were too
optimistic to sell the
plan in its early
days.
Others say the
proliferation of
401(k) plans has
exposed workers to big
drops in the stock
market and high fees
from Wall Street money
managers while making
it easier for
companies to shed
guaranteed retiree
payouts.
"The great lie is
that the 401(k) was
capable of replacing
the old system of
pensions," says former
American Society of
Pension Actuaries head
Gerald Facciani, who
helped turn back a
1986 Reagan
administration push to
kill the 401(k). "It
was oversold."
Misgivings about
401(k) plans are part
of a larger debate
over how best to boost
the savings of all
Americans. Some early
401(k) backers are now
calling for changes
that either force
employees to save more
or require companies
to funnel additional
money into their
workers' retirement
plans. Current
regulations provide
incentives to set up
voluntary plans but
don't require
employees or companies
to take any specific
action. ...
The advent of
401(k)s gave
individuals
considerable
discretion as to how
and even whether they
would save for
retirement. Just 61%
of eligible workers
are currently saving,
and most have never
calculated how much
they would need to
retire comfortably,
according to the
Employee Benefit
Research Institute and
market researcher
Greenwald &
Associates.
Financial experts
recommend people amass
at least eight times
their annual salary to
retire. All income
levels are falling
short. For people ages
50 to 64, the bottom
half of earners have a
median income of
$32,000 and retirement
assets of $25,000,
according to an
analysis of federal
data by the New
School's Schwartz
Center for Economic
Policy Analysis in New
York. The middle 40%
earn $97,000 and have
saved $121,000, while
the top 10% make
$251,000 and have
$450,000 socked away.
Savings gap
And the savings gap
is worsening.
Fifty-two percent of
U.S. households are at
risk of running low on
money during
retirement, based on
projections of assets,
home prices, debt
levels and Social
Security income,
according to Boston
College's Center for
Retirement Research.
That is up from 31% of
households in 1983.
Roughly 45% of all
households currently
have zero saved for
retirement, according
to the National
Institute on
Retirement Security.
More than 30
million U.S. workers
don't have access to
any retirement plan
because many small
businesses don't
provide one. People
are living longer than
they did in the 1980s,
fewer companies are
covering retirees'
health-care expenses,
wages have largely
stagnated and low
interest rates have
diluted investment
gains.
"I go around the
country. The thing
that people are
terrified about is
running out of money,"
says Phyllis C. Borzi,
a U.S. Labor
Department assistant
secretary and
retirement-income
expert.
Some savers
underestimate how much
they will need to
retire or accumulate
too much debt. Lucian
J. Bernard is among
those wishing he had a
do-over. The
65-year-old lawyer
from Edgewood, Ky.,
doesn't have much
savings beyond a small
company pension and
Social Security. He
cashed out a 401(k) in
the 1980s to fund law
school and never
replenished it. He
implores his daughter
to start saving.
"It's a little
easier saying it than
doing it," he says.
Defenders of the
401(k) say it can
produce an ample
retirement cache if
employers provide
access to one and
people start saving
early enough. People
in their 60s who have
been socking away
money in 401(k)s for
multiple decades have
average savings of
$304,000, according to
the Employee Benefit
Research Institute and
Investment Company
Institute.
"There's no
question it worked"
for those who
committed to saving,
says Robert Reynolds,
who was involved in
Fidelity Investments'
first sales of 401(k)
products several
decades ago.
He considers
himself among the
success stories. At
64, he could retire
comfortably today
after saving for three
decades. "It's a very
simple formula," he
says. "If you save at
10% plus a year and
participate in your
plan, you will have
more than 100% of your
annual income for
retirement."
The 401(k) can be
traced back to a 1978
decision by Congress
to change the tax
code-at line 401(k)-so
top executives had a
tax-free way to defer
compensation from
bonuses or stock
options.
At the time,
defined
benefit-pension plans,
which boomed in
popularity after World
War II, were the most
common way workers
saved for retirement.
A group of
human-resources
executives,
consultants,
economists and policy
experts then jumped on
the tax code as a way
to encourage saving.
Ted Benna, a benefits
consultant with the
Johnson Companies, was
one of the first to
propose such a move,
in 1980, leading some
in the industry to
refer to him as the
father of the 401(k).
Selling it to
workers was a
challenge. Employees
could put aside money
tax-free, but they
were largely
responsible for their
own saving and
investment choices,
meaning they could
profit or lose big
based on markets. They
also took home less
money with each
paycheck, which is why
401(k)s were commonly
called "salary
reduction plans."
Traditional pension
plans, on the other
hand, had weaknesses:
Company bankruptcies
could wipe them out or
weaken them, and it
was difficult for
workers to transfer
them if they switched
employers.
Companies embraced
the 401(k) because it
was less expensive and
more predictable to
fund than pensions.
Company pay-ins ended
when an employee left
or retired.
Employees, for
their part, were drawn
to an option that
could provide more
than a company's
pension ever would.
Two bull-market runs
in the 1980s and 1990s
pushed 401(k) accounts
higher.
Economist Teresa
Ghilarducci, director
of the Schwartz Center
for Economic Policy
Analysis, says she
offered assurances at
union board meetings
and congressional
hearings that
employees would have
enough to retire if
they set aside just 3%
of their paychecks in
a 401(k). That assumed
investments would rise
by 7% a year.
"There was a
complete overreaction
of excitement and
wow," says Kevin
Crain, who as a young
executive at Fidelity
Investments in the
1990s recalled
complaints about some
of its funds
underperforming the
S&P 500. "People were
thinking: Forget that
boring pension plan."
Two recessions in
the 2000s erased those
gains and prompted
second thoughts from
some early 401(k)
champions. Markets
have since recovered,
but many savers are
still behind where
they need to be. ...
That seems to be the point of the
article. People find easy excuses/good reasons/ essentials
require them to pull out their 401k funds. That is sooo
wrong!
Yes it is possible to create a sizeable retirement fund if you have a stable job with 401K plan.
But many people don't and changing companies create difficulties for them (and associated losses).
Also you intimately depend on the stability of dollar during retirement as your holdings are not
indexed to inflation as for Social Security and a typical pension. As well on the stability of
bond and stock market. Then there is such phenomenon as inherent instability of financial sector
under neoliberalism (aperiodic market crashes).
Also you do not have the time to follow the market so you either use index funds (where returns
can be wiped out due to sharp recession and associated market crush close to your retirement) or you
run unbalanced portfolio and eclectic trading strategy with oversize risks. Especially if your
investing is fashion/sentiment driven.
Getting something like 2008 events on your first year of retirement can cut your funds almost in
one third if not more, if you panic and sell at low point.
I think you do not understand the most despicable part about 401k: It offload all the risk to
individual and remunerates (wildly) Wall Street, which became the middleman between the man and his
money, charging an annual fee.
This offloading of all the risks to individual is an immanent feature of neoliberalism, so we
have what we have. In this sense 401K is a perfect neoliberal invention, perfect for redistribution
of wealth up.
Also many people are not trained to distrust all wealth management and fund manager types and get
into various types of traps, when fool and his money are soon parted.
Let me remind you what happened with 401K accounts in 2008 -- they dropped for a year around 30%.
And similar volatility you can experience several times during your lifespan, on average probably
once is a decade, or even more often. And quick recovery like in 2003 or 2009-2010 is not guaranteed
at all.
There is also element of adverse selection in many if not most 401K plans companies providing
401K plan often hire intermediaries which handle 401K for some other services, and as a result 401k
provide limited selection of expensive and inappropriate for retirement funds which are not suitable
for balanced portfolio. Usually 401K are overloaded with stock funds, some with high fees and risky
strategy (international stock market, emerging markets, etc).
A good example here is Wall Mart which behaves as for 401K as a real predator hunting its pray in
a pack with another predator (Merrill Lynch)
If all 401K participants are allowed to invest in 30 year government bonds without any financial
change (but not via evergreen bond funds, who are in reality money vampires) that will be a slight
improvement over the current situation were bond funds provided are often real financial sharks (say
0.5% annually on 2% return or 25% of nominal return). Which is somewhat true even for Vanguard (to
say nothing about Fidelity). These ghastly, lazy, incompetent predators don't care much about 401K
investors.
401K also created that whole parasitic branch of financial industry, with a lot of people
employed. But to manage a sizable mutual fund is not a very exiting job either, if you try to do it
honestly. There are way too many variables beyond your control.
Employee pensions funds can do the same staff more economically (but they require higher
participation from the companies -- around 10% instead of 3-4% matching in 401K). So along with
offloading of risk switching to 401K also confiscated a part of your retirement fund.
401K funds are also not free from fraud (hidden fees) and mismanagement. The 401K plans typically
promote neoliberal "Cult of equities" which benefits Wall Street and large speculators, like Goldman
Sacks. As well of day traders and HFT as they create daily volume.
And last but not least 401K created those huge companies like Fidelity and Vanguard which
dominate the boards of most publicly trading companies, making the USA a classic case of rentier
capitalism (monopolization of holding of stocks). They also create a perfect playing field for
shorting shocks and facilitating derivatives such an options.
And this "greed is good" manta is corrupting even better of them such as Vanguard, which now started
offering some shady services and such.
"... I helped open the door for Wall Street to make even more money than they were already making ..."
"... "The great lie is that the 401(k) was capable of replacing the old system of pensions," said Gerald Facciani, the former head of the American Society of Pension Actuaries. ..."
In the nondescript world of public policy, oopsies don't
get any bigger than this.
In a remarkable story (#) in Tuesday's Wall Street
Journal, several early champions of 401(k)s, the
now-ubiquitous tax-deferred plans that help workers sock
away retirement funds, expressed regrets for what their
efforts later yielded: Private pensions have withered.
Individual workers now shoulder risks that large
corporations once bore. Investment fees chip away at
account owners' returns. The typical American worker is
badly underprepared for old age.
"
I helped open the door for Wall Street to make
even more money than they were already making
," said
benefits consultant Ted Benna - sometimes known, according
the Journal's Timothy W. Martin, as the "father of the
401(k)." "We weren't social visionaries," said former
Johnson & Johnson human-resources executive Herbert
Whitehouse, who helped popularize the plans.
"The
great lie is that the 401(k) was capable of replacing the
old system of pensions," said Gerald Facciani, the former
head of the American Society of Pension Actuaries.
Whoops.
Older Americans' fear of leaving the workforce with
nothing saved surely added to the economic unease that
Donald Trump channeled in his campaign. ...
Instead, a Republican Congress and the incoming Republican
president are preparing to repeal Obamacare and replace it
with individual health savings accounts, or something
else, or perhaps nothing at all. At the least, the new
regime in Washington should heed a lesson from the 401(k)
debacle: When you fiddle with the safety net, you should
consider how people and corporations behave in real life.
...
Herbert Whitehouse was one of the first in the U.S. to
suggest workers use a 401(k). His hope in 1981 was that
the retirement-savings plan would supplement a company
pension that guaranteed payouts for life.
Thirty-five years later, the former Johnson & Johnson
human-resources executive has misgivings about what he
helped start.
What Mr. Whitehouse and other proponents didn't
anticipate was that the tax-deferred savings tool would
largely replace pensions as big employers looked for ways
to cut expenses. Just 13% of all private-sector workers
have a traditional pension, compared with 38% in 1979.
"We weren't social visionaries," Mr. Whitehouse says.
Many early backers of the 401(k) now say they have
regrets about how their creation turned out despite its
emergence as the dominant way most Americans save. Some
say it wasn't designed to be a primary retirement tool and
acknowledge they used forecasts that were too optimistic
to sell the plan in its early days.
Others say the proliferation of 401(k) plans has
exposed workers to big drops in the stock market and high
fees from Wall Street money managers while making it
easier for companies to shed guaranteed retiree payouts.
"The great lie is that the 401(k) was capable of
replacing the old system of pensions," says former
American Society of Pension Actuaries head Gerald Facciani,
who helped turn back a 1986 Reagan administration push to
kill the 401(k). "It was oversold."
Misgivings about 401(k) plans are part of a larger
debate over how best to boost the savings of all
Americans. Some early 401(k) backers are now calling for
changes that either force employees to save more or
require companies to funnel additional money into their
workers' retirement plans. Current regulations provide
incentives to set up voluntary plans but don't require
employees or companies to take any specific action. ...
The advent of 401(k)s gave individuals considerable
discretion as to how and even whether they would save for
retirement. Just 61% of eligible workers are currently
saving, and most have never calculated how much they would
need to retire comfortably, according to the Employee
Benefit Research Institute and market researcher Greenwald
& Associates.
Financial experts recommend people amass at least eight
times their annual salary to retire. All income levels are
falling short. For people ages 50 to 64, the bottom half
of earners have a median income of $32,000 and retirement
assets of $25,000, according to an analysis of federal
data by the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic
Policy Analysis in New York. The middle 40% earn $97,000
and have saved $121,000, while the top 10% make $251,000
and have $450,000 socked away.
Savings gap
And the savings gap is worsening. Fifty-two percent of
U.S. households are at risk of running low on money during
retirement, based on projections of assets, home prices,
debt levels and Social Security income, according to
Boston College's Center for Retirement Research. That is
up from 31% of households in 1983. Roughly 45% of all
households currently have zero saved for retirement,
according to the National Institute on Retirement
Security.
More than 30 million U.S. workers don't have access to
any retirement plan because many small businesses don't
provide one. People are living longer than they did in the
1980s, fewer companies are covering retirees' health-care
expenses, wages have largely stagnated and low interest
rates have diluted investment gains.
"I go around the country. The thing that people are
terrified about is running out of money," says Phyllis C.
Borzi, a U.S. Labor Department assistant secretary and
retirement-income expert.
Some savers underestimate how much they will need to
retire or accumulate too much debt. Lucian J. Bernard is
among those wishing he had a do-over. The 65-year-old
lawyer from Edgewood, Ky., doesn't have much savings
beyond a small company pension and Social Security. He
cashed out a 401(k) in the 1980s to fund law school and
never replenished it. He implores his daughter to start
saving.
"It's a little easier saying it than doing it," he
says.
Defenders of the 401(k) say it can produce an ample
retirement cache if employers provide access to one and
people start saving early enough. People in their 60s who
have been socking away money in 401(k)s for multiple
decades have average savings of $304,000, according to the
Employee Benefit Research Institute and Investment Company
Institute.
"There's no question it worked" for those who committed
to saving, says Robert Reynolds, who was involved in
Fidelity Investments' first sales of 401(k) products
several decades ago.
He considers himself among the success stories. At 64,
he could retire comfortably today after saving for three
decades. "It's a very simple formula," he says. "If you
save at 10% plus a year and participate in your plan, you
will have more than 100% of your annual income for
retirement."
The 401(k) can be traced back to a 1978 decision by
Congress to change the tax code-at line 401(k)-so top
executives had a tax-free way to defer compensation from
bonuses or stock options.
At the time, defined benefit-pension plans, which
boomed in popularity after World War II, were the most
common way workers saved for retirement.
A group of human-resources executives, consultants,
economists and policy experts then jumped on the tax code
as a way to encourage saving. Ted Benna, a benefits
consultant with the Johnson Companies, was one of the
first to propose such a move, in 1980, leading some in the
industry to refer to him as the father of the 401(k).
Selling it to workers was a challenge. Employees could
put aside money tax-free, but they were largely
responsible for their own saving and investment choices,
meaning they could profit or lose big based on markets.
They also took home less money with each paycheck, which
is why 401(k)s were commonly called "salary reduction
plans."
Traditional pension plans, on the other hand, had
weaknesses: Company bankruptcies could wipe them out or
weaken them, and it was difficult for workers to transfer
them if they switched employers.
Companies embraced the 401(k) because it was less
expensive and more predictable to fund than pensions.
Company pay-ins ended when an employee left or retired.
Employees, for their part, were drawn to an option that
could provide more than a company's pension ever would.
Two bull-market runs in the 1980s and 1990s pushed 401(k)
accounts higher.
Economist Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz
Center for Economic Policy Analysis, says she offered
assurances at union board meetings and congressional
hearings that employees would have enough to retire if
they set aside just 3% of their paychecks in a 401(k).
That assumed investments would rise by 7% a year.
"There was a complete overreaction of excitement and
wow," says Kevin Crain, who as a young executive at
Fidelity Investments in the 1990s recalled complaints
about some of its funds underperforming the S&P 500.
"People were thinking: Forget that boring pension plan."
Two recessions in the 2000s erased those gains and
prompted second thoughts from some early 401(k) champions.
Markets have since recovered, but many savers are still
behind where they need to be. ...
Progressives have already homed in on Republican efforts to privatize Medicare as
one of the major domestic political battles of 2017. If Donald J. Trump decides
to gut the basic guarantee of Medicare and revamp its structure so that it hurts
older and sicker people, Democrats must and will
push back hard
. But if Democrats focus too much of their attention on
Medicare, they may inadvertently assist the quieter war on Medicaid - one that
could deny health benefits to millions of children, seniors, working families and
people with disabilities.
Of the two battles, the Republican effort to dismantle Medicaid is more certain.
Neither Mr. Trump nor Senate Republicans may have the stomach to fully own the
political risks of Medicare privatization. But not only have Speaker Paul D. Ryan
and Tom Price, Mr. Trump's choice for secretary of health and human services,
made proposals to deeply cut Medicaid through arbitrary block grants or "per
capita caps," during the campaign, Mr. Trump has also proposed block grants.
If Mr. Trump chooses to oppose his party's Medicare proposals while pushing
unprecedented cuts to older people and working families in other vital safety-net
programs, it would play into what seems to be an emerging strategy of his: to
publicly fight a few select or symbolic populist battles in order to mask an
overall economic and fiscal strategy that showers benefits on the most well-off
at the expense of tens of millions of Americans.
Without an intense focus by progressives on the widespread benefits of Medicaid
and its efficiency, it will be too easy for Mr. Trump to market the false notion
that Medicaid is a bloated, wasteful program and that such financing caps are
means simply to give states more flexibility while "slowing growth." Medicaid's
actual spending per beneficiary has, on average, grown about 3 percentage points
less each year than it has for those with private health insurance,
according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- a long-term trend
that is projected to continue. The arbitrary spending caps proposed by Mr. Price
and Mr. Ryan would cut Medicaid to the bone, leaving no alternative for states
but to impose harsh cuts in benefits and coverage.
Mr. Price's own proposal, which he presented as the chairman of the House budget
committee, would cut Medicaid by about $1 trillion over the next decade. This is on
top of the reduction that would result from the repeal of the Affordable Care Act,
which both Mr. Trump and Republican leaders have championed. Together, full repeal
and block granting would cut Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program
funding by about $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years - a 40 percent cut.
Photo
Tom Price, President-elect Trump's choice for secretary of
health and human services, has made proposals to deeply cut Medicaid.
Credit
Joshua Roberts/Reuters
Even without counting the repeal of the A.C.A. coverage expansion, the Price plan
would cut remaining federal Medicaid spending by $169 billion - or one-third - by the
10th year of his proposal, with the reductions growing more severe thereafter. The
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
estimated
that a similar Medicaid block grant proposed by Mr. Ryan in 2012 would
lead to 14 million to 21 million Americans' losing their Medicaid coverage by the
10th year, and that is on top of the 13 million who would lose Medicaid or children's
insurance program coverage under an A.C.A. repeal.
The emerging Republican plan to "repeal, delay and replace" the A.C.A. seeks to
further camouflage these harmful cuts. Current Republican plans to eliminate the
marketplace subsidies and A.C.A. Medicaid expansion in 2019 would create a health
care cliff where all of the Medicaid funds and subsidies for the A.C.A. expansion
would simply disappear and 30 million people would lose their health care.
In the face of such a manufactured crisis, the Trump administration could cynically
claim to be increasing Medicaid funding by offering governors a small fraction of the
existing A.C.A. expansion back as part of a block grant. No one should be deceived.
Maintaining a small fraction of the current Medicaid expansion within a tightly
constrained block grant is not an increase.
Some might whisper that these cuts would be harder to beat back because their impact
would fall on those with the least political power. Sweeping cuts to Medicaid would
hurt tens of millions of low-income and middle-income families who had a family
member with a disability or were in need of nursing home care. About 60 percent of
the costs of traditional Medicaid come from providing nursing home care and other
types of care for the elderly and those with disabilities.
While Republicans resist characterizations of their block grant or cap proposals as
tearing away health benefits from children, older people in nursing homes or
middle-class families heroically coping with children with serious disabilities, the
tyranny of the math does not allow for any other conclusion. If one tried to cut off
all 30 million poor kids now enrolled in Medicaid, it would save 19 percent of the
program's spending. Among the Medicaid programs at greatest risk would be those
optional state programs that seek to help middle-income families who become
"medically needy" because of the costs of having a child with a serious disability
like autism or Down syndrome.
Democrats at all levels of government must aggressively communicate the degree to
which these anodyne-sounding proposals would lead to an assault on health care for
those in nursing homes and for working families straining to deal with a serious
disability, as well as for the poorest Americans. With many Republican governors and
local hospitals also likely to be victimized by the proposals of Mr. Ryan and Mr.
Price, this fight can be both morally right and
politically powerful
. Republicans hold only a slight majority in the Senate. It
would take only three Republican senators thinking twice about the wisdom of block
grants and per capita caps to put a halt to the coming war on Medicaid.
Gene B. Sperling was director of the National Economic Council from 1996 to
2001 and from 2011 until 2014.
From "One neat trick to stop Social Security 'Reform'" http://angrybearblog.com/2016/12/one-neat-trick-to-stop-social-security-reform.html
=== quote === Republicans constantly try to bring Social Security into ongoing debates about 'Balanced Budgets'.
But they face a fundamental problem with their math. For a variety of reasons, some quite reasonable
and others nakedly political (seniors vote) nearly every 'Reform' proposal out there promises to
hold 55 and older harmless. Meaning you can't have any more than miniscule effects on Cost projections
until today's 54′s and younger start retiring. Except for a handful of early retirees that event
happens 11+ years in the future, which is to say outside the 10 year Budget Scoring window.
You can't have a fix to a problem scored over 10 years with a solution starting Year 11. Sure
the 'Reformers' will blather about "Infinite Future Horizons". But any proposal that spares current
seniors from cuts will score close to zero by CBO and JCT. You just have to count years on your fingers.
... ... ...
GOP plans to "reform" Social Security often take this form
1. Américas $20 trillion public debt is unsustainable
2. Current Budget Deficits add to that debt
So far so good
3. Social Security must be part of that discussion
4. 55 and orders must be shielded from changes that allow them no time to adjust
5. (The Bush/Krasting argument) Payrolll tax increases across the board are neither politically possible
nor econimically wise
All three of these are doubtful. This post points out that 2 and 3 +4 (2nd edit) are incompatible
within a structure that assumes 10 year budget scoring. Argue or acknowledge that specific point
and we can move on. ... ... .. GOP point one is interesting on several fronts. One it is debatable on its own terms. It it is not
clear that current Public Debt is unsustainable on a percentage of GDP basis, especially when you
take that in the form of Debt Service at current and projected 10 year rates. A $10 trillion debt
at 8% (roughly Bush era) is twice as expensive as a $20 trillion debt at 2% in debt service terms
and assuming principal rollover. Simply put Obama years have seen a massive refi of Public Debt.
Much credit for which belongs to the Feds QE1 and QE 2.
... ... ..
Jim A, December 15, 2016 11:31 am
Of course that 22% benefit cut is an illusion created by thinking that the SS trust fund is something
more substantial than your left pocket borrowing from your right pocket and giving it IOUs.
Assuming
that we were to simply run out the clock and make no changes to SS until the trust fund ran out.
On the day before the trust fund ran out we would have combined general revenues and government borrowing
sufficient to redeem the special, non-negotiable bonds held in the trust fund. On the day afterwards,
the general revenue and the ability to the US treasury to borrow money wouldn't have changed. Under
current law we would at that point be forced to cut benefits to all retirees by 22%.
Presumably that
22% of revenue that was NOT being spent to repay the trust fund would be applied as deficit reduction.
Or used for tax cuts or new discretionary spending. Of course those are all political impossibilities,
and would never happen.
It is important to the Republicans that want to reform SS that people never
realize that we can afford to pay the shortfall in SS revenues from the treasury. Because once people
realize that, they will be more comfortable with that than they will be with the alternatives.
First Bush II bankrupted the country by cutting taxes for rich and unleashing Iraq war. Then
Republicans want to cut Social Securty to pay for it
Notable quotes:
"... His nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, a Republican congressman from Georgia, has been a champion of cuts to all three of the nation's large social programs - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. When discussing reforms to Social Security, he has ignored ways to bring new revenue into the system while emphasizing possible benefit cuts through means-testing, private accounts and raising the retirement age. ..."
"... But Mr. Price, who currently heads the House Budget Committee, has found a way to cut Social Security deeply without Congress and the president ever having to enact specific benefit cuts, like raising the retirement age. ..."
"... Mr. Trump's hands-off approach to Social Security during the campaign was partly a strategic gesture to separate him from other Republican contenders who stuck to the party line on cutting Social Security. But he also noted the basic fairness of a system in which people who dutifully contribute while they are working receive promised benefits when they retire. Unfortunately, he has not surrounded himself with people who will help him follow those instincts. ..."
Donald Trump campaigned on a promise not to cut Social Security, which puts him at odds with the
Republican Party's historical antipathy to the program and the aims of today's Republican leadership.
So it should come as no surprise that congressional Republicans are already testing Mr. Trump's hands-off
pledge.
... ... ...
As Congress drew to a close this month, Sam Johnson, the chairman of the House Social Security
subcommittee, introduced a bill that would slash Social Security benefits for all but the very poorest
beneficiaries. To name just two of the bill's benefit cuts, it would raise the retirement age to
69 and reduce the annual cost-of-living adjustment, while asking nothing in the way of higher taxes
to bolster the program; on the contrary, it would cut taxes that high earners now pay on a portion
of their benefits. Last week, Mark Meadows, the Republican chairman of the conservative House Freedom
Caucus, said the group would push for an overhaul of Social Security and Medicare in the early days
of the next Congress.
... ... ...
Another sensible reform would be to bring more tax revenue into the system by raising the level
of wages subject to Social Security taxes, currently $118,500. In recent decades, the wage cap has
not kept pace with the income gains of high earners; if it had, it would be about $250,000 today.
The next move on Social Security is Mr. Trump's. He can remind Republicans in Congress that his
pledge would lead him to veto benefit cuts to Social Security if such legislation ever reached his
desk. When he nominates the next commissioner of Social Security, he can choose a competent manager,
rather than someone who has taken sides in political and ideological debates over the program.
What Mr. Trump actually will do is unknown, but his actions so far don't inspire confidence. By law,
the secretaries of labor, the Treasury and health and human services are trustees of Social Security.
Mr. Trump's nominees to head two of these departments, Labor and Treasury - Andrew Puzder, a fast-food
executive, and Steve Mnuchin, a Wall Street trader and hedge fund manager turned Hollywood producer
- have no government experience and no known expertise on Social Security.
His nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, a Republican congressman
from Georgia, has been a champion of cuts to all three of the nation's large social programs - Medicare,
Medicaid and Social Security. When discussing reforms to Social Security, he has ignored ways to
bring new revenue into the system while emphasizing possible benefit cuts through means-testing,
private accounts and raising the retirement age.
There is no way to mesh those ideas with Mr. Trump's pledge. But Mr. Price, who currently
heads the House Budget Committee, has found a way to cut Social Security deeply without Congress
and the president ever having to enact specific benefit cuts, like raising the retirement age.
Recently, he put forth a proposal to reform the budget process by imposing automatic spending
cuts on most federal programs if the national debt exceeds specified levels in a given year. If Congress
passed Mr. Trump's proposed tax cut, for example, the ensuing rise in debt would trigger automatic
spending cuts that would slash Social Security by $1.7 trillion over 10 years, according to an analysis
by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. This works out to a cut of $168 a month
on the average monthly benefit of $1,240. If other Trump priorities were enacted, including tax credits
for private real estate development and increases in military spending, the program cuts would be
even deeper.
Mr. Trump's hands-off approach to Social Security during the campaign was partly a strategic
gesture to separate him from other Republican contenders who stuck to the party line on cutting Social
Security. But he also noted the basic fairness of a system in which people who dutifully contribute
while they are working receive promised benefits when they retire. Unfortunately, he has not surrounded
himself with people who will help him follow those instincts.
Susan Anderson is a trusted commenter Boston 1 hour ago
There is a simple solution to Social Security.
Remove the cap, so it is not a regressive tax. After all, Republicans appear to be all for
a "flat" tax. Then lower the rate for everyone.
There is no reason why it should only be charged on the part of income that is needed to pay
for necessary expenses should as housing, food, medical care, transportation, school, communications,
and such. Anyone making more than the current "cap" is actually able to afford all this.
There is no reason the costs should be born only by those at the bottom of the income pyramid.
As for Republican looting, that's just despicable, and we'll hope they are wise enough to realize
that they shouldn't let government mess with people's Social Security!
Thomas Zaslavsky is a trusted commenter Binghamton, N.Y. 1 hour ago
The idea hinted in the editorial that Trump has any principle or instinct that would lead him
to protect benefits for people who are not himself or his ultra-wealthy class is not worthy of
consideration. No, Trump has none such and he will act accordingly. (Test my prediction at the
end of 2017 or even sooner; it seems the Republicans are champing at the bit to loot the government
and the country fro their backers.)
Christine McM is a trusted commenter Massachusetts 2 hours ago
I wouldn't hold Trump to any of his campaign promises, given how often he changes positions, backtracks,
changes subjects, or whatever. His biggest promise of all was to "drain the swamp" and we know
how that turned out.
He might have a cabinet of outsiders, but they are still creatures from outside swamps. That
said, if there is even the barest of hints that this is on the agenda, I can pretty much bet that
in two years, Congress will completely change parties.
Imagine: cutting benefits for people who worked all their lives and depend on that money in
older age, all in order to give the wealthiest Americans another huge tax cut. For a fake populist
like Trump, that might sound like a great idea (he has no fixed beliefs or principles) but to
his most ardent supporters, that might be the moment they finally get it: they fell for one of
the biggest cons in the universe.
Rita is a trusted commenter California 2 hours ago
Given the Republican desire to shut down Medicare and Social Security, it is not hard to predict
that they will do so a little at a time so that people will not notice until its too late.
But since the Republicans have been very upfront with hostility towards the social safety net,
one can conclude that their supporters want to eliminate social safety net.
Mary Ann Donahue is a trusted commenter NYS 2 hours ago
RE: "To name just two of the bill's benefit cuts, it would raise the retirement age to 69 and
reduce the annual cost-of-living adjustment..."
The COLA for 2017 is .03% a paltry average increase of $5 per month. There was no increase in
2016.
The formula for how the COLA is calculated needs to be changed to allow for fair increases
not reductions.
Mary Scott is a trusted commenter NY 4 hours ago
Republicans have been promising to "fix" Social Security for years and now we are seeing exactly
what they mean. We can see how low they're willing to stoop by their plan to cut the taxes that
high earners now pay on a portion of their benefits and decimate the program for everybody else.
I wouldn't be surprised if they raised SS taxes on low and middle income earners.
There has been an easy fix for Social Security for years. Simply raise the tax on income to
$250,000 thousand and retirees both present and future would be on much firmer footing. Many future
retirees will be moving on to Social Security without the benefit of defined pension plans and
will need a more robust SS benefit in the future, not a weaker one.
Don't count on Donald Trump to come to the rescue. He seems to hate any tax more than even
the most fervent anti-tax freak like Paul Ryan. Mr. Trump admitted throughout the campaign that
he avoids paying any tax at all.
The Times seems to want to give Mr. Trump limitless chances to do the right thing. "Will Donald
Trump Cave on Social Security" it asks. Of course he will. One has only to look at his cabinet
choices and his embrace of the Ryan budget to know the answer to that question. Better to ask,
"How Long Will It Take Trump To Destroy Social Security?"
At least it would be an honest question and one that would put Mr. Trump in the center of a
question that will affect the economic security of millions of Americans.
serban is a trusted commenter Miller Place 4 hours ago
Cutting benefits for upper income solves nothing since by definition upper incomes are a small
percentage of the population. The obvious way to solve any problem with SS is to raise taxes on
upper incomes, the present cap is preposterous. People so wealthy that SS is a pittance can show
their concern by simply donating the money they get from SS to charities.
david is a trusted commenter ny 4 hours ago
We can get some perspective on what Social Security privatization schemes would mean to the
average SSS recipient from Roger Lowenstein' analysis of Bush's privatization scheme.
Roger Lowenstein's Times article discusses the CBO's analysis of how the Bush privatization
scheme for Social Security would reduce benefits.
"The C.B.O. assumes that the typical worker would invest half of his allocation in stocks
and the rest in bonds. The C.B.O. projects the average return, after inflation and expenses,
at 4.9 percent. This compares with the 6 percent rate (about 3.5 percent after inflation) that
the trust fund is earning now.
The second feature of the plan would link future benefit increases
to inflation rather than to wages. Because wages typically grow faster, this would mean a rather
substantial benefit cut. In other words, absent a sustained roaring bull market, the private
accounts would not fully make up for the benefit cuts. According to the C.B.O.'s analysis,
which, like all projections of this sort should be regarded as a best guess, a low-income retiree
in 2035 would receive annual benefits (including the annuity from his private account) of $9,100,
down from the $9,500 forecast under the present program. A median retiree would be cut severely,
from $17,700 to $13,600. "
"... Social Security has succeeded because Roosevelt insisted it be paid for by the workers who would get the benefits, "so no damn politician can take it away from them." ..."
"... "These who pant after the very dust of the earth on the head of the helpless also turn aside the way of the humble; " ..."
The trouble with Sneed's article is that she does not appear to know what she is talking about.
She just wrote down what some "experts" told her with no idea what the words mean.
For example, she says,
"A 65 year-old at the top of the scale, a $118,500 average earner, would see his benefits cut
by 25% when he retired, compared to the current law, and that reduction would grow to 55 percent
compared to current law by the time the retiree was 85 years old."
Well, which is he, "at the top of the scale" or an "average earner"?
The point is probably trivial but I point it out so you will be on your guard if you read her
article.
Additionally she quotes Paul Van de Water, who is someone who actually knows that Social
Security can be fixed entirely and forever by simply raising the payrolll tax one tenth of one percent
per year until the balance between wage growth and growth in the cost of retirement is restored.
But somehow she doesn't bother to mention this, or maybe Van De Water forgot to mention it
because he favors a "tax the rich" solution without understanding that that will turn Social
Security into welfare as we knew it, and lead to its ultimate destruction by those rich who would
then be paying for it.
Social Security has succeeded because Roosevelt insisted it be paid for by the workers who would
get the benefits, "so no damn politician can take it away from them."
But the damn politicians keep lying and journalists keep repeating the lies without spending ten
minutes thinking about them. The basic "facts" about the Republican proposal, introduced by Texas Congressman Sam Johnson appear
to be :
gradually raise the retirement age from 67 to 69.
This amounts to a benefit cut of about 10%, but that's not the worst of it. Raising
the retirement age is simply a death sentence for people whose health is not up to working another
two years, or won't live to collect benefits for more than a few years after they retire.
change the cost of living adjustment to reduce real benefits as the retiree gets older .
This is called a "technical adjustment." They can pretend that the CPI is too generous and
know that most people won't understand the scam.
the size of initial benefits will be cut for most workers by catastrophic amounts .
This turns Social Security into a straight welfare plan. Most people will be paying for
benefits they will never get. The very poorest are promised a larger benefit for awhile until
the bogus cost of living adjustment, and increased retirement age do their work. Moreover it
is not clear what happens to "the rich" who lose their "side income" as they get older.
And of course there is always the fun of going to the welfare office every month to prove that
you don't have any hidden assets.
Meanwhile, the CRFB (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget). an organization dedicated
to the destruction of Social Security by misrepresenting the facts, is playing cute games like "use
our calculator to find out how old you will be when SS runs out of funds."
But SS will never run out of funds as long as the workers are allowed to pay in advance for their
own benefits. With no change at all in SS, SS will pay 80% of "scheduled benefits," but this
is 80% of scheduled benefits which meanwhile have grown 25% in real value. So the GOP "plan
to save SS" is out and out theft.
CRFB has another cute game: "use our calculator to design your own plan to save social security."
But when I used their calculator it did not allow "increase the payroll contribution by one
tenth percent (for each the worker and the employer) per year for twenty years.
There are other ways to accomplish the same end, but this seemed to be the simplest way to fit
the CRFB "calculator." Someone with more time and a newer browser might want to try seeing
what they get. But look at small per year increases in payroll contribution. For example,
I think a 0.4% increase (combined), about two dollars per week for each the worker and the employer,
should solve the problem in ten years, but I haven't done the numbers on that myself.
Meanwhile, something that calls itself "the Bipartisan Policy Center, says "Ultimately, we are
going to need something that's a little more balanced between benefits saving and revenue changes
in order to get a proposal that could pass Congress and get approved by the president," said Shai
Akabas, director fiscal policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center."
It's hard to see how much cuts ("benefit savings") make sense to balance a dollar a week increase
in the payroll tax (revenue changes), but that's the kind of thinking that "Bipartisan" gets
you. "Hey folks, we can save you a dollar a week just by gutting Social Security so it
becomes meaningless as insurance so workers can retire at a reasonable age."
I am getting too discouraged. As long as no one is working to tell the people how this will
work for them, we are just going to stand around like sheep and watch them cut our throats.
As someone who grew up with the promise of Social Security as a minimal income support system
for my old age I can attest to the fact that when the "average" retiree, who has almost no individual
savings accrued, steps in the pile of Social Security "reforms," there will be not just a wailing
and gnashing of teeth.
Modern age old people no longer can rely on extended families for support. Those extended families
have been fragmented by the pressures of "modern" socio-economics. This is prime territory for
a demagogue.
The Twentieth Century had World War 1.0 and a subsequent "Lost Generation." It's increasingly
looking like the Twentyfirst Century will have the GFC, Social Support 'Reforms' and a subsequent
"Euthanized Generation."
Remember, this process will not affect just oldsters. It will suck in those closest to said
oldsters as emergency support resources. It won't be only oldesters who will be watching elites
"over iron sights."
Perhaps someone will enlighten me, but this is one thing that really puzzles me about the Republican
determination over many years to gut social security. I can understand their ideological fixation
with it – what I can't understand is why they are so willing to play electoral fire with it. Surely
this directly attacks millions of core Republican voters?
They may be able to fool many of them with deceptive slogans, but surely when the prospect
of finding their pensions slashed faces them, even the most supine and gullible middle American
Republican voter in their middle to late years is going to realise they've been had. The backlash
could be enormous. I find it hard to see how any rational politician would want to go near it.
They will find a way to blame it on the Democrats, and more importantly, on Blacks, Hispanics
and other minorities. They will sell the cuts and privatizations as the only way to save the system
that has been so badly damage by the fore mentioned, and as long as their base gets their beliefs
from Faux News, Bretbart, etc; it's quite probably the Republicans will succeed in getting what
they want while screwing down the ever hapless Democratic party.
I've met more than a few who'd almost be pleased to suffer as long as they thought blacks were
being made to suffer even more. There's no logic when hate gets this strong.
Exactly, the same way they have mortally wounded our once stellar public education system,
(a system once good enough to educate our "Greatest Generation) – is now a shell, death by a thousand
cuts
Also, if you think income disparity is bad now? – hang on to your wallet, because after 4 years
of Trump and his prospective cabinet picks, it will hit the stratosphere.
"There's no logic when hate gets this strong" – so true.
Smart to point at the educational system.
I have not found many youths who can tell me what they want to do. I find this really weird.
It is true that if you know what you want to do the library will do.
Thanks to Ben Franklin, inventors, engineers had a place to hang out and collect information they
could use.
Maybe you had to live in NYC to have a NYCity library card, but it is a big city.
Meantime Charter schools, which sounded great to us when at Kenwood on the Southside, are gaining
ground and collecting tax money regardless of results.
They are said now in Not Conscious to be handing out diplomas same as Public Schools did to get
some bodies out the door.
I was a graduate, but denied attendance at the diploma hand out thing, cause I refused to pay,
for my public school diploma. Public education, supposed to be free to citizens.
People think I didn't graduate.
The Union believed in Trump. I get sick about lots of things. It will be worse than they think.
Education & Defense are what the government is for.
Twelve years ago the Republicans needed the Democrats to actually plunge the knife on the back.
Democrats like Joe Lieberman dearly wanted to lend a bipartisan hand but Pelosi and Reid actually
rallied to prevent it. Talking Points Memo was all over it then. Now they're on top of Paul Ryan's
machinations to privatize Medicare and this Social Security scam. Kind of raised some old feelings
for TPM, but they're also heavily flogging the CIA Russian hacking dembot campaign.
About the only thing I knew about Hillary's agenda is that she wanted to means test Social
Security and Medicare and start new wars. Obama wanted to do many of the cuts in Sam Johnson's
bill but was foiled by Tea Partiers who couldn't take yes for an answer or were smarter than they
seemed.
Both Schumer and Pelosi said the Democrats would oppose any of these current plans. We'll see.
I would hope they would realize that Social Security and Medicare are issues where the only
winning move is to expand them. IOW, they need to realize this is an area where the campaign donors
need to be told to pound sand, shut up and expect to pony up – as in you ARE going to be paying
more into the system.
But these are people who thought there was no way that Clinton could lose, that this Russia nonsense
is a winning strategy and that ACA was going to be good for Democrats once people got to know
it. IOW, their grasp of reality outside their bubble might as well not exist it is so broken.
So while my fingers are crossed they still want their jobs AND aren't completely delusional, I
also know we better put the fear of the voters into every member of Congress about grannies and
wannabe grannies with canes beating them to a pulp any time they leave their house.
And by grannies I mean anyone on SS, and wanna be grannies everyone who someday might be able
to retire or at least only work part time after retirement age because of SS.
IF they cannot win an election they will not have any donors, and they are rapidly getting
to the point where a Democrat getting elected to a national office is the exception. Not to mention
there are a large number of states where that is pretty much the case. There is no reason to try
to bribe people so you can have them in your pocket if they are powerless.
They are terrible at strategy, but eventually they may figure out they need voters. You do
NOT alienate seniors as seniors are the most reliable voters around. Oh, and most of those seniors
have grandchildren they think deserve Social Security and Medicare as well. The only winning strategy
is to protect and expand.
I forgot to mention the consultant class. Absent a hostile takeover the Democrats may not be
fixable. Their disdain for and disconnect from the voters will do them in.
Would love to see this repeated and repeated, because although it's hard, we need to grasp
this fact:
their grasp of reality outside their bubble might as well not exist it is so broken.
their grasp of reality outside their bubble might as well not exist it is so broken.
their grasp of reality outside their bubble might as well not exist it is so broken.
their grasp of reality outside their bubble might as well not exist it is so broken.
their grasp of reality outside their bubble might as well not exist it is so broken.
Sam Johnson the same Sam Johnson who wrote "I spent seven years in the Hanoy Hilton. The Hanoy
Hilton is no Trump hotel." back in July ? Who milks his Vietnam tour of duty like a rabid milkmaid Who
says "I do not feel like a hero, and I do not call myself one" in the tones of one who thinks
the exact opposite? Who is constant cahoots with McCain (who is currently trying to sink a Trump
presidency) why am I not surprised that a neoliberal faction of the senatorial republican party
in seeking to weaken a populist president-elect is reaching for the third rail with both hands
and smearing all republicans with the same brush. I doubt very much Trump will weaken social security
since he knows it is the only thing his rebellious base of Deplorables can depend on call me simple
but Trump won this election against practically everyone and he knows his base is the only sure
recourse he has.
I don't count on that (Trump knowing not to touch Social Security). I wouldn't be surprised
if he went for privatization. HE will never ever need Social Security so why concern himself over
it? He's already throwing his electoral base under the bus with his cabinet picks. Every single
one of them is a direct violation of his pre-election promises.
I think Hillary also wanted to increase the payroll tax by 3% (an enormous amount of money)
and use it to privatize 3% of the SS funds to make up for shortfalls, ostensibly. They better
have a good insurance policy so that'll be another 3%. All this nonsense because we refuse to
admit we need social policies and social funding of the basic things. We are committing suicide
24/7 these days. Why don't we just call it all insurance?
The financial (rentier) crowd want to get their claws on the SS funds. They'll achieve their
goal unless we kick their puppets out of Congress.
They already have their teeth into your IRA funds, student loans, home mortgages and your bank
funds, It won't be too long before a Trojan Horse Prez signs away your SS. Beware!
We'll see if the Dems stand firm and fight back OR go for the old "bipartisanship!" bullcrap
and instead agree to a lessor CUT. They would then promote it as the two sides working together.
Typical neoliberal Dem establishment move.
Or are the progressive forces ascendant and ready to fight absolutely?
We'll see. In any case, the House will pass it, no question. The test is in the senate where
the Dems still have some teeth available (whether they USE those teeth is another thing altogether).
The Democratic Party must be made to defend Social Security as they rallied
against Bush's privatization plan. They will do so for political advantage, but they
too have attacked Social Security. Obama attacked it on three occasions–the Deficit Commission,
the chained CPI added to a budget proposal, and the timing of married couples claiming benefits–and,
were it not for Monica Lewinsky distracting
Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton would have been attempting to privatize Social Security, not Bush.
Now it the time to contact your senators and representatives: NO CUTS.
As things stand, what you recommend is the best action to take as of right now. It is not enough,
but when letters come in to Dems and Repubs stating the senders will NEVER vote for anyone who
votes to mess with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, there might be some reactions.
BUT it needs to be many, many, many people writing, calling, and meaning it when stating "Representative/Senator
XXX, you mess with this and you will never, ever get a vote from me."
Humm, if you are depending on Bernie or any one politician to save you, then you've lost the
point of Democracy. It's all of you forcing them to do the right thing.
Bernie Sanders has said it himself, even FDR said to Black Activist asking for an anti-discrimination
executive order to the defense industry: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."
They did do it, by threatening a strike during WWII, for which some were sent to jail. That's
what it's going to take, because voting once every 2 or 4 years isn't going to cut it.
They will never attack current beneficiaries. This is a lesson they have learnt over the years.
This is why they changed tack in the 1980s and keep raising the eligibility age which is a very
soft target. One thing the GOPers understand really well is, GOPer Seniors ALWAYS vote and some
Dem Seniors vote sometimes. So they will leave current beneficiaries alone. GOPer Seniors – almost
all of them are driven by the conviction (Tea Party types) that Social Security and Medicare are
under jeopardy because of illegal immigration and because Social Security funds are being raided
and handed over to other beneficiaries like those on Disability etc. They have plenty of traction
on this because if you go ask the average 25 year old or even a 40 year old today whether they
can count on Social Security, most of them being morons and having swallowed the MSM propaganda
will tell you, 'I don't think it will be around when I get to 65'. I am fairly certain there are
polls to back this up. This is what the Greenspan Blue Ribbon Commission cleverly did under Reagan.
The people who are in their 50s today were in their late 20s in the 1980s and clueless about what
exactly Greenspan did to the eligibility age. So telling current beneficiaries that its good to
cut benefits for future beneficiaries makes a lot of sense to current beneficiaries. In any case
SS is toast. I think we will have to wait for the entire cycle of Old Age poverty to take root
again in another 50-60 years and for the tide to turn. It was wide spread old age poverty that
prompted FDR and also Trueman into action for SS and Medicare respectively.
Sewer species like Pete Peterson and the Hedge Funders target SS because it is a very productive
way to create mass unemployment and lower wages. They don't want people removed from the labor
market by SS when they become 65. Their secret longing is to drive down wages to the point where
the per hour rate will equal the human mules you see pulling overloaded hand carts in Mumbai,
India or Shangai, China. This is really the agenda. This is basically the psychology of monopoly
thinking. When you have captured markets up to a 95% level then you start looking like an idiot
because you have closed off growth altogether. Monopolies do not grow because there are no more
markets left. So the next thing to do is increase profits via driving labor costs down – standard
Michael Porter Harvard Business School trick. This is what they have been doing in the last 40
years.
It's how they are selling every sort of deregulation. it destroys the future, but who gives
a damn about their children and grand-kids, the ungrateful snots. Shipping the old folks off to
the retirement home has divorced them from both the care and of caring about their descendants.
Your comment about the old folks home is right on target. The better class of senior housing
establishments are often the most fortified of bubble worlds, and the Seniors there spend hours
ranting to each other about how the younger generation has screwed them over somehow. I've witnessed
it first hand. They've been carefully taught not to give a crap about future generations, including
their own kids and grandkids. It's all about MEEEEEEEEEEE .
Thank you, I think a lot of us have noticed the veracity of this, especially over the last
four decades. Show of hands who else out there is sufficiently paranoid, to consider signing-up
a year early & simply absorbing the hit, with some silly fantasy of being grandfathered-in?
Thanks! I was dizzy from a bad head cold, working in very bagger-ridden environs (a quite literally
Dikensian hell-hole in Pennsyltucky), applying for Medicare and fishing through obfuscatory pleonasm,
picking Plan D & N insurers the 2nd or 3rd page in, they ask you if you're applying for "benefits"
at this time! Jesus Anybody ANYBODY??? I have some meager equity (at least, last time I looked?)
sufficient for a decade or so. But with Republicans dying young?
Increasing the retirement age while the average life expectancy is decreasing seams especially
crewel. Combine that with that piece from the times that showed people like me, born in the 80's
only have a 50% chance of earning more than our parents and that we are already drowning in student
debt and that is a full on assault on the youth of this country. Screw the national debt burdening
future generations, this will actually burden us. This really is the worst country in the world.
Fuck Patriotism.
Anyone who has a chance of affecting the behavior of AARP when it comes to SS and Medicare
needs to step up and apply whatever pressure they can to get that thing to return to its origins
and "work the issue" for their members, present and future. I know, it's mostly just another front
for insurance and other sales pitches and scams and "cruise packages" and other lifestyle crap,
but at least there has to be some skeletal remains of the original bones of the organization in
there somewhere.
Or failing that, is there another entity that might be worth supporting and joining with, to
go on the offensive and fight back? I would hate to think it's all futility and "47%" from here
on out.
AARP's origins? It was founded by an insurance salesman as a slick way to sell, yep you guessed
it, the industry's interests to a powerful bank of less than bright voters.
Some of us question if there won't be mass human extinction before then. Maybe there will be
no old age for many people alive today including yours truly. But nonetheless, if by some miracle
the worst doesn't happen then Social Security is important.
Prez Hope and Change's support for chained-CPI will certainly complicate the fight against
this. If Obama and his Rubinite stable of bean-counting butt-boys were for it then it must be
okay?
They're banking on getting some Democratic support, to make it bipartisan. With weasels like
Mark Warner in the Senate, they might get some Democrats to sign on to this.
Eh? Democrats will line up with their Republican BFFs to screw over the proles. Given how Democrats
are now a very Rump party in this nation, what have they got to lose? Why take of their alleged
"constituents" in the 99% What a laugh. The constituents of the Dem pols are, have always been,
and will continue to be the .01%. So the Dems will happily oblige their real constituents by screwing
over the proles. Anyone who expects a different outcome is not living in reality.
Perhaps it's because "the banks own this place." Also the Republicans, like the Dems, are running
on the fumes of past ideological obsessions and Social Security was always seen as a prime Dem
vote getter and flagship of the hated New Deal. Remember Karl Rove wanted to take the country
back to the McKinley administration. But mostly it's probably because people like Paul Ryan are
creatures of their funders.
Plenty are stupid, but the Democrats are in complete disarray. The GOP will face push back
from their voters, but the Democrats as they are now are not a threat to win any time soon. AARP
recognizing the interests of its members can shake Washington, but right now, the GOP sees no
threat to its rule.
Many of the not so weathy Repubs are 'rich wannabes'. So they'll gladly toe the line on cut
social security cuts and free market memes. They think that they have noting to worry about because
they'll be wealthy before they retire and they won't need SS. Boy, do I have a few bridges and
lots of swamp land to sell them!
One can note the Social Security "reform" is usually pushed by wealthy individuals who feign
concern about saving a system for the future of less well off Americans.
Also, Social Security is a system that is of little import to the wealthy as they will not
be depending on it for basic living expenses.
The wealthy's real fears are of a raising of the income cap that will hit them directly or
of an effort to support higher wages for the citizens currently paying into Social Security, hitting
their business profits.
While it may seem unexpected they can get help from Democrats in this effort (Obama, Bill Clinton )
but I suspect this is so because wealthy donors support the effort and the Democrats can pitch
the "saving" aspect while collecting campaign cash.
If a politician is not re-elected as a result, they might have a more lucrative career at a
think tank or as a lobbyist.
Of course, if the wealthy are so concerned about the alleged Social Security problem that is
looming in the future, where were far sighted wealthy Americans when it came to questioning the
Iraq War, the drug war, the lack of financial reform, and all the USA military/covert actions
that have done great harm to public finances?
Strangely, Social Security "reform" is a big concern of theirs, and the other USA efforts that
have caused much harm, are not.
Then there is climate change, again, wealthy individuals are more concerned about "saving social
security" than saving the planet.
Also the "reform minded" politicians do not appear to allow that current social security benefits
probably are used by many entire low income families. So cutting grandma's benefits also could
immediately hit her kids/grandkids financially.
A secondary effect is that lowering SS benefits means the wages of current workers can be lowered
in concert as their SS payments, which flow to current recipients, can be lowered, perhaps even
allowing another Social Security reform effort to be promoted.
The ability of TPTB to sell this to the American public should not be underestimated as the
advertising/public relations/MSM has been successful in promoting/maintaining many bad ideas.
The wealthy are not concerned about saving anything unless they can make money off it. They
are already getting richer from the endless wars on terror and drugs, and taking planetary resources
for themselves. The only reason they talk about "reforming" Social Security and Medicare is to
get their hands on that money as well. And please do not expect the corporate media to explain
any of this to the dumbed-down masses.
The Republicans can afford to play with potential policial backlash for two reasons: First,
they relentlessly beat out false narratives about the demise of SS and its inadequacies so that
their flase story becomes a part of the consciousness of citizens. (This is the same thing done
to attack teachers, unions, the post office, government, etc. You put out the lie long enough,
it becomes the truth.) Second, they have been engaged in not one knife to the heart of the program
but an attempt to promote its demise by a thousand cuts, little by little, until the program is
no longer viable. I know for a fact that young people have bought into the lies put forth by them
and do not think the program will be there for them because they too have bought the lie. Those
pushing to kill the most effective program in US history, one that has kept the elderly from complete
poverty, are nothing more than evil. They want no public programs, and all revenue funnelled into
corporate models that enrich the 1%.
Conservatives love destruction for its own sake. Smashing the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, smashing
the ancient city of Baghdad, spilling oil all over North Dakota, wrecking Social Security, all
these things have a political component, but it is the destruction itself that makes them absolutely
adorable to Conservatives. Bear in mind this pervasive love of destruction, and many Conservative
initiatives will become more clear.
And the "base" goes along with it, because many of them have been inculcated with the theory
that it is more pleasurable to do someone else harm than to do one's self good. Given a choice
to make, they will always pick the former. Hope this helps.
Me, I find NC's alarm and amazement at the Republican plans to wreck Social Security ingenuous.
What did you think would happen? God knows you were warned.
Who warned us? Not the media. Not Obama. Who? I'm thinking naked capitalism.com, best Paul
Revere substitute I can come up with at the moment.
Nobody here needed warning. Nobody is alarmed or amazed. And nobody stuck their heads in the
sand and figured everything is going to be peachy. What we did need was a well written reminder.
People drunk a whole lot of Koolaid like "it takes a Democrat to cut social security". Koolaid
was spilled all over in drunken Koolaid orgies at one point toward the end of election silly season.
But the party is over and all that is left is the wreckage. Of course Hillary may have done the
same thing as we weren't exactly getting any encouragement from her that she wouldn't and rather
in fact got hints that she might (support for Peterson committee, her retirement plans for private
investment etc. – to supplement Social Security of course). None of which were absolute certainty
that she would cut it of course, but they aren't always honest about that are they, so not encouraging
either.
It's best seen as an all out effort to wreck any good that the government does for common people
so that they can beat the war drum of government failure. This then serves as the smoke screen
to hide just how much ultra rich directly benefit from government support through bailouts, privatization,
tax cuts, subsidies, and out right theft and fraud. And just how much more they will get when
Social Security and Medicare are privatized and benefits are shrunk. Those are large streams of
government controlled funds, and they want it.
Social Security and Medicare work extremely well, and should be expanded. But don't delude
yourself into thinking this is obvious to most people. Both political parties are dedicated to
killing Social Security and Medicare and are extremely adept at spouting the " we must kill it
to save it" BS.
Ds movement to the right and their continuation of R policies, no matter how vile, actually
redeems the R party for the next election. If they take turns governing only on behalf of the
.9, .09 and .01% they take turns redeeming the other branch of the money party. The colluding
media will propagandize every bit of corruption and sleazebaggery as 'no other option' trot out
imaginary deficits.
The voted out politicians will enthusiastically do it because they enter office looking for
the big sellout as they will receive the only objective they ever had in achieving elected office .
lucrative appointments and sinecures at parasitizing corporations, think tanks, scam foundations
and presidential libraries.
Exactly. But not everyone has a reflex sight or scope. And a lot of people who do have such
a very wrong notion of who the targets ought to be, the ones that actually pose the greater=st
immediate threat
Though 4,000 veterans appearing at Cannon Ball with the #NoDAPL presence probably have or are
developing a correct "sight picture" and target designation
Oh H-! Where is my 3-9X40 when I need it?
The late lamented science fiction writer Mack Reynolds penned a screed along these line a ways
back about a pissed off ageing Lord Greystoke and the fate of the old in America called "Relic."
The plan will be structured to only hurt future retirees. The solution to this political problem
is to have anyone who will be affected demand that they be allowed to opt out from now on and
to receive a refund, with interest, of all of their previous contributions to the system because
the "earned benefits" have been taken away. Ownership in America is a sure winner politically.
I don't expect Democrats to have the balls to actually propose this, but it would leave the
plans in tatters because without the tax stream and the already contributed taxes it won't be
able to pay current retirees. Now that would get the current retirees attention!
Not only can old people no longer depend on their extended families for support I'm afraid
many young people in that extended family have had to rely on the older people for support. My
young adult children are not doing terribly well in the new economy and I don't see things improving
for them any time soon - if at all. I've had to step in and help a little here and little there
more and more as the costs for those unplanned surprise expenses keep blindsiding my children.
And maybe that is what the author thought, but it doesn't work. Wages above the SS max don't
get taxed and don't add to the final benefit, so people who have an average salary equal to the
max have a benefit that is below the max. The difference would depend on how much the salary fluctuates,
year by year.
Perhaps a serious attack on welfare for the rich would persuade the enemies of Social Security
that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones?
To make such an attack, one needs must take over the "reins of power." In short, your suggestion
is revolutionary. (I'm not averse to such, just observing.)
I mean an ideological attack since much welfare for the rich is not yet recognized as such
(e.g. government provided deposit insurance instead of a Postal Checking Service or equivalent,
e.g. interest on reserves, e.g. other positive yeilding sovereign debt).
Yes it is. It is part of the means by which the poor, the least so-called creditworthy, are
forced to loan to depository institutions to lower the borrowing costs of the rich, the most so-called
credit worthy.
The ethical alternative is an inherently risk-free Postal Checking Service or equivalent for
all citizens, their businesses, etc. Then the poor need no longer lend (a deposit is legally a
loan) to banks, credit unions, etc or else be limited to unsafe, inconvenient physical fiat, aka
"cash."
Interesting that maybe 4,000 veterans showed up and formed up at Cannonball/DAPL, to stand
against the thugs and "government" and with the Native Americans who seem to have found a set
of honest and attractive memes to present to the rest of us. The Bonus Marchers got the MacArthur
Fist way back when, but I'm wondering how all those troops trained in maneuver-and-fire would
take to further (planned) assaults on their livelihoods and families, while they are ever more
being "deployed" to protect the as-s-ets and post-national "interests" of the Few
Not to worry. Organization is taking place. In New York State the Bernie delegates have kept
in touch since the convention. They have organized into 25 affiliates state wide. We have had
a conference already. The Lower Hudson Valley affiliate may be able to defeat the Trump agenda
all by itself. We tuned into the Our Revolution call and decided to do our own thing.
https://twitter.com/NYPANetwork
Any similar initiative in Massachusetts? The last time the Republicans tried to gut SS under
Bush, the Democrats came out in force and held meetings on weekends around Rhode Island (where
I was living at the time) to fire up opposition to the plan. I'm anticipating Elizabeth Warren
and other MA democrats will oppose this, but want to be ahead of that by looking for other avenues
of opposition like Bernie's coalition, such that it is.
I seriously doubt anyone would be enthused by a Democrat party still headed by that Super Frisco
Water Carrier Pelosi. I know I would not for one. The bell tolls for Bernie but the man has been
struck dumb.
If you already have an OR local or state group and you want to be affiliated with national,
or at least talk to national DM me on twitter and I can get you in touch, I have a friend who
works for them. https://twitter.com/UserFrIENDlyyy
Social security has already been cut over the last several years without a peep out of anyone.
No cost of living adjustments in 3 of the last 8 years. Actual inflation is at least 2 points
higher than the reported figures. Social security has been cut 15-20% since the financial crisis.
Yep. And I have elderly friends who are suffering bc of it. But everyone is very passive having
bought into the propaganda that this is "just the way it is," and "there's just not enough money"
to provide anymore via SS. So we have a very passive population, who've mostly all bought the
propaganda about how "broke" Soc Sec is we proles, yet again, have to suck it up bc the wealthy
certainly cannot be expected to have the income cap raised heave forfend.
Just got my Soc Security statement. My net gain, for 2017, after an increased deduction for
MediCare, is .nothing. See, there's no inflation (except my car insurance, home insurance, health
insurance, food, etc have all gone up). And to add insult to injury, our benefits (derived from
involuntary deductions from our paychecks) are called "entitlements."
As our elected "representatives" are so adamantly opposed to these programs, and would like to
reduce them to table scraps, I am eagerly awaiting the announcement that Congressional pensions
and healthcare benefits are going to be discontinued.
Same here. Any small gain was offset by increase in deduction for Medicare. In addition to
the rising costs you cite, I find I am paying increased local taxes, among other things. So, like
most people, we must contend with stagnant income to pay rising cost of living (and I mean the
necessities).
I started paying into the system in 1965. Medicare used to be no cost and cover all medical expenses,
so that is a cut in itself. I knew that I could not rely on SS in my old age, and I live modestly.
I agree with your last comment. I have never seen why our representatives in Congress should receive
any different coverage than the citizens they are elected to represent. As individuals, they can
supplement it, just as we have to.
I was notified yesterday via letter that my SS benefits will increase 4.00 / mo next year.
This will be a great help because my rent went up 7.00 / mo to 1600.00 for my studio apt.
Current law says that in approximately 13 years all benefits will be cut – across the board
– by 20-25%.
That is an unacceptable outcome.
What to do with this reality? The answer is "Something" must get done. The wrong answer is,
"Don't do anything, wait 13 years, and then fall off a cliff".
The proposal that in the author's words "Guts" SS actually increases benefits by 9% for the
bottom 20% of beneficiaries. The cost of the proposal falls on those who have high incomes before
AND after reaching age 65. The proposal stabilizes SS for the next 75 years, and there are no
new taxes required. Exactly what is wrong with that?
In the post pension plan age, I think the 20%-90% bracket needs it. Maybe up to the 99% bracket
once our current 401K bubble bursts and Housing Bubble II bursts.
So the only option are things that actually punish today's working class and weaken the system
by eliminating the all in/all the same position? No, it isn't. The problem is that the answer
is to slowly raise the payroll tax AND eliminate the cap – something that should have been done
decades ago once it became clear that the people who lived the longest on SS were largely those
who stopped paying payroll taxes at some point throughout the year. But we cannot consider those.
Nope we have to talk about raising the retirement age when life expectancy for most is dropping
and we have to go with things that mean that you need to start living like you have to choose
between drugs and eating cat food from day one because your benefit will never increase regardless
of how much more your food, housing or medicare premium increase, or there even if they allow
cost of living they write off things because you can give up steak for chicken over and over.
Instead of a expanding to a more universal program, you support turning SS farther into a program
that categorizes individuals, assigns a hierarchy and then ranks them according to some random
definition of human and who is most deserving.
There's nothing wrong at all with having nothing but contempt for others and hiding behind
some made up term of 'cost'. It's perfectly reasonable to deny the means to the dignity of housing
and food to others.
The fact the last two Dim-o-crat presidents (Clinton and Obama) and not a few Dim-o-crat Senators
and Congressmen are in agreement about "saving" Social Security doesn't help either. Clinton's
plan was derailed by the Lewinski thing and Obama's because the Republicans wouldn't take yes
for an answer (didn't want him to get credit for it but don't mind doing it themselves)
In case anyone has not noticed, they are already cutting SS benefits by stealth means. There
have been no cost of living increases in 3 of the last 5 years, and for my personal SS benefits,
the measly .3% increase next year goes away entirely with the increase in medicare payments. I
suspect many folks, like my sister who is 78 and still working full time, do not realize that
the increases they are receiving are due entirely to their still being in the work force. In addition,
with the cutbacks that have been forced on the administrative side of SS, more mistakes are being
made. A friend of mine was declared "dead" by SS (something that also happened to me with my tiny
pension plan). When she attempted to correct the error, the SS employee discovered that "thousands"
of people had been similarly affected. This happened last summer and my friend is finally receiving
her benefits, but a month late and for some reason the agency cannot issue that catch-up check.
She is still working and so not completely bereft, but what in the world are the folks doing who
have no other income??? I suppose our overlords will be most pleased that the constant annoyances
they are causing us will result in our passing away from sheer anger and frustration.
That's interesting. I have a friend, who is still in her 50s, who was working on her will,
etc, and discovered that she was no longer "alive" as far as Soc Sec was concerned. She got it
rectified, and it didn't have a negative impact on her (she's still comparatively young and working).
But it's decidedly odd about how all these citizens are suddenly dead as far as Soc Sec is concerned.
And yes, it takes some effort to get back on the database of the living. For those who are really
elderly, this could be a very difficult thing to do.
It boggles my mind why any one would ever want to gut social security. Companies already push
people out at 55 and then you have a good 8 to 12 years of somehow managing until social security
comes to your rescue. Younger people do think social security will not be in place when they are
in their 60s which makes them angry. And who can ultimately rely on the stock market etc. to give
them the money they will need when older – shivers. Is the economy that sound? Plus many people
cannot manage to work so long due to health reasons which do start creeping up on people in their
late 50s or the work they do is too labor intensive for them to imagine keeping at it until 69
or even 67. Bodies give out at some point. That is reality. Everyone wants to work until 70 but
the companies don't want older workers – they want young, fresh, vital. If anything, social security
should start at 60.
Two reasons come to my mind, a desire to reduce or eliminate the employer half of payroll taxes
AND the pool of money that the financial industry thinks should be theirs to rape and pillage.
But I'm sure there are others.
Recent posts and comments have noted both more billionaires and a rapid concentration of wealth
amongst them. But it's mo' po', too, what Turchin calls 'popular immiseration'. To decrease the
effects of 'interelite competition' the wealthiest cannot just bestow unto their favorites, they
must tend to the rich on the downslope. Those are the ones with resources to engage in attrition.
So there is a long history of shoving the costs onto those who can't fight back, and the unlanded
are easier to slap down.
A personal case: Pearl was a delightful very elderly lady a few doors down. Her house was in
trust until she died, and she had a daughter and a grandaughter living with her. When she died,
one of her (all over-55) children had medical debt needing paid and so he vetoed keeping the house.
It sold, the land was lost to the family, and daughter and grandaughter were homeless.
That interelite competition was apparent in the election. Our choice of two New York billionaires
was a choice over which aspect of the FIRE sector would dominate, Finance or Real Estate. But
those differences seem to get averaged out below a scale of 10^8 or so dollars.
Re Companies that push people out at 55 and don't want older workers and prefer younger ones,
this leaves a lot of people in that 55-70 age bracket in a difficult (and in some cases, a terrible)
situation if they're not in the minority of those who have a secure gig until they retire (usually
people that I know that have government gigs w/ pensions.) The Presidency nor the Congress have
no solution for older workers who get pushed out and face discrimination due to their age when
they seek employment. They would prefer to not hear about it and if they're sleeping in cars or
in tents under bridges, that's their problem.
continuing what's been going on for the past 8 years, ever heard of quantitative easing, the
ACA, or chained CPI? Foam the runway with HAMP, maybe, or endless war as the only jobs guarantee
available. Sorry, but trump is just more of the same, only a little more forthright. You should
be used to it by now.
No argument here. Put the Dems in control and they will find all kinds of excuses for doing
the same thing, all bight more subtlety. Clinton was going to privatize Social Security and Obama
proposed chained CPI. Not to mention the effects of TPP.
Another columnist whose "answers" are predicated on the assumption that taxes provision government
programs. Just one question: Where do tax payers get the dollars to pay taxes with if government
doesn't spend them out into the economy first?
If that's too much thinking: Where was all this "we're out of money" talk when the Fed, according
to its own audit, pushed $16 – $29 trillion out the door to save the financial sector from its
own frauds? Yet government routinely denies it makes the money when the orders-of-magnitude demands
of safety net programs appear. Taxes make the money valuable; they do not, and obviously cannot,
provision government.
As long as this isn't common knowledge, we're all condemned to austerity. Even public policy
makers sympathetic to workers (e.g. Dilma Rousseff) are in peril if they adopt the "inevitable
austerity" routine.
Unfortunate that I had to scroll this far down to find the first person with a correct understanding
of government finance. I've explained MMT point blank to people multiple times and they still
cannot grasp it. Until people start caring and get a general understanding of how this thing works
we are in a lot of trouble. I am hoping that Trump will be godawful enough to bring about such
a conviction for revolution to the average American
As the Henry Ford saying goes (oft-quoted by Ellen Brown):
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system,
for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
Exactly right and if the powers that be were really concerned about funding SS from those who
will receive it all they have to do is raise the income cap to cover total income for everyone
- not just middle income workers. Problem solved and no need to worry about the fact that the
government can't run out of dollars.
I see the Trust Fund as having been accumulated over the decades by my generation - by paying
higher FICA tax to purchase fed bonds with. TF running out now supposed to be the big to do? Wasn't
it supposed to run out? Aren't we supposed to use what we saved?
I like to say: have an SS retirement shortfall today? Do it all over again: hike FICA, lower
income tax and accumulate bonds. Mmm.
But, just yesterday I had a brainstorm. If Repubs want to cut benefits so FICA shortfall doesn't
have to made up by income tax cashing bonds (covering about 25% of outgo just before our bonds
run out, then, Repubs want to steal our savings that we forgave immediate gratification to accumulate
all those long years.
Always suspected income tax payers who are hit for as much as 39% would balk at cashing the
bonds when the time came - but on the basis of the usual world run for the haves idea. Never thought
of it in terms of outright theft - before yesterday.
PS. Really shouldn't use up all bonds. Right now there are about four years of full replacement
in the TF. Legal solvency is defined as one year - needed to cover temporary shortfall while Congress
moves to fill in - happened couple of times.
No. Defined benefit plans are supposed to be funded so that the assets earn enough to pay promised
benefits. If the assets run out, the plan is not only mismanaged, it's bankrupt.
Seriously, if your checking account were emptied by a hacker, would you ask "Wasn't it supposed
to run out?" You are a crime victim.
Educate, Agitate, Organize, yup, expanding on cry shop's comment above, it's more than breitbart
and Fox these days. The mainstream media may be (usually) more polite and more subtle, but they
will not report the basic info accurately like Yves and Lambert do here. Our Revolution is a good
start. There need to be alternative sources of information such that education can happen. That
is why the "fake news" attacks on alternative media are such a big deal. The founders of the US
understood the importance of information too, one reason the postal service was established with
low rates for all periodicals. "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean
to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives", wrote Madison.
We really are sheep without knowledge. Some like it that way .
Donald Trump, at his rallies, consistently lied to his fervent fans that he was going to save
Soc Sec & Medicare. What a laugh.
I've been blogging and telling people throughout the election process that Trump made a very
public DEAL with Paul Ryan that he, Trump, was totally behind cutting and gutting SS & Medicare.
That is the main (possibly only) reason why Ryan gave Trump his very tepid "endorsement." But
this was very public knowledge and not hidden.
But of course, Trump lies constantly, so his fans were mainly enthralled with what a bully
he is and believed what they wanted to believe. Made up fantasies. Some of his fans are waking
up to the fact that they've been screwed over royally. Of course the M$M will happily oblige by
somehow finding a way to blame it all on Obama, Clinton, the Democrats, whatever (not that the
Dems aren't equally happy to cut and gut SS & Medicare, as well) and the proles will buy it.
Although various states have now passed laws to legalize what's called "assisted suicide,"
there's still a lot of resistance to it, esp from those of various religious persuasions. Also
assisted death in these cases is only available for those already in the latter stages of terminal
illnesses, and generally extreme poverty doesn't fall under that definition. So sucks to be you.
I guess dying from hunger and exposure, due to extreme poverty, is our just deserts. No rest
for the wicked. When you die, you have to die as painfully and slowly as possible just to impress
upon you how worthless and awful you truly are. The punishments will continue until morale improves.
This was posted hours ago. How many readers have taken the time to email their congressmen?
Please do! You don't have to be lengthy or learned. You can simply state a couple of talking points
you all know and intimate that tampering with benefits is not going to be accepted. This is definitely
one of those "if you're not with us you're against us" issues, and the sooner your elected representatives
understand you mean that the better.
"I think a 0.4% increase (combined), about two dollars per week for each the worker and
the employer, should solve the problem in ten years, but I haven't done the numbers on that
myself. "
WHUT? Why are space cadets like this even allowed on the internet?
Trying to patch Soc Sec's $10 trillion hole with an 0.4% FICA tax hike is like trying to empty
the Atlantic Ocean with a teaspoon.
Net present value, Dale - I'm afraid you cut class that day. Now it's too late.
The attempt by the right to "fix" Social Security is nothing more than an attempt to make the
trust fund disappear, and to mark all the obligations that fund was supposed to have met null
and void.
If this sounds like they are trying to steal the trust fund, that is not the case. They have
already stolen it. Now they just have to fix the accounting to say they didn't, which they will
do by setting the system to never need to cash a bond from the trust fund.
Tin foil hat, you say? Fine, but do me a favor. Whenever a bill is introduced to "fix" Social
Security, do the accounting for how it will play out. The trust fund will no longer be needed?
Something about this strikes me as a hilarious farce of unintended consequences. People worried
about "government debt" and demanding its reduction are getting exactly what they wished
for.
I'm not quite sure of your meaning here. It sounds like you are mocking people for not being
able to get out from under a propagandist educational/media system and a corrupt government. Then
again, it also seems to be gloating and that people deserve to be immiserated.
This is called a "technical adjustment." They can pretend that the CPI is too generous and
know that most people won't understand the scam.
I am a 100% disabled veteran and several years back they tied our COLA to the SS COLA.
The result is that since mid 2013 in this region we have lost about 40% of our purchasing power.
Our standards of living have dropped by that much.
Of course there is NO INFLATION, the letters I have been getting actually claimed that because
of this DISINFALTIONARY economic environment . That is no inflation so no raise this year.
Now, I am going to be 59 this spring, I worked at a lot of things between 1973 and 2005 when
a judge ruled in my favor regarding my disability and awarded me SSD. But, because I spent so
many years fighting SS and did not have the quarters of income recent enough my SSD amounts to
$1,013 per month.
Now for all the republicans out there who think SS is too generous, I would ask you to stick
your filthy little brains, or rather pull them out of your exhaust holes. You can claim it is
too generous when you have spent a lifetime paying in and then someone tells you that 12 grand
a year is too generous.
MY RENT IS MORE THAN THAT and this place s a hovel in the sticks. The only way I can have a
roof over my head for less is to live in my vehicle.
Fortunately I also have a bit in VA disability and between the two I thought of myself as middle
class if just barely only 36 months ago, now I would consider myself in dire poverty at 20k a
year, anything less and we are talking eating at the mission and sleeping in shelters. Vehicle?
Right. The fact that they refuse to acknowledge inflation and use quite literally half a dozen
tricks to disappear it from the headlines does NOT mean it does not exist. If you can eat gasoline
and flat screen TV's you are certainly doing great, otherwise you are experiencing something never
known in the USA, structural downward mobility for 90% of us.
And it is these facts that drove the angry and the stupid to vote for Trump, they were not
the majority of voters, but between them and antiquated laws giving voters in small states far
more power than in urban areas (where people actually live) that Orange Hitler dude got in, and
so did the GOP majority of fascists who have as a holy mission class warfare and getting rid of
diversity of any kind, racial, sexual, or gender.
They are going to gut every bit of progress since Teddy Roosevelt. They are going to bring
back segregation, this time though via school vouchers. They are not going to FORCE non white
non middle class kids into slum condition schools, so they will plausibly claim HEY it is NOT
segregation and those parents have an equal right to move their kids to private schools also.
No, instead these kids will be abandoned in schools that the government will slash funding to
as white upper and middle class people are partially paid the tuition to send their kids to private
schools which are exempt from federal discrimination laws. I am NOT holding my breath for this,
I have a one way ticket to Australia for the first week of January.
THAT is going to be the story of all government for a while, social security is just one of
MANY functions of government they are going to kill off. If you think people were angry in 2016
just you wait till 2020.
It is already so bad that unless the GOP grows a conscience and a heart in the next 2-4 years
the USA will break up the way the Soviet Union did. The nation now has what so many married couples
cite in divorce proceedings, IRRECONCILABLE differences.
And the worst of it is that no matter if you like it or hate it the USA is the rock of stability
that has keep civilization working since the end of WWII. You break up the USA and bingo there
is no uni in the unipolar geopolitical world. What we will have is chaos and war and humanity
will fail. USA FAIL=Humanity FAIL.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For your plainspoken honesty. This should be copied and posted
everywhere, starting with senators and representatives.
They should have an option for an opt out of social security, medicare/Medicaid, Affordable
Health Care. Not having that kind of freedom to me is not worth it. I am not buying any other
excuses such as I am not shrewd to invest my money. Taking money is the easy part. Getting back
is always laborious if you are lucky to get.
right. many people opt out of "mandantory" auto insurance by just not
getting it. it's been estimated that in FL at different times as many as
one third of the drivers on the road are not insured. and really, if they
get injured, they get treated in an emergency room until they are stabilized
(the law) and if they were sued for damages, what could be recovered?
but, let's remember, while they are on their "ride" they are "free." Yep.
a lot of people think like that.
Social Security, let's lay it to rest once and for all Social security has nothing to do
with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax leviedon employer and
employee. If you reduce the outgo of Social Security, that money would not go into the general
fund or reduce the deficit. It would go into to the Social Security Trust Fund. So Social Security
has nothing to do with balancing a budget or lowering the deficit.
would someone explain why the greenspan changes , which were supposed to keep social security
solvent, did not, I've googled the history and the only answers seem to be that the trust had
trillions in surplus that were used to pay off other obligations, , which I do know that the funds
were used to lower the deficits in previous years, but wouldn't the surplus still be there? Explanation
please by someone knowledgeable about the history and why the problems now
"Well, which is he, "at the top of the scale" or an "average earner"?"
Oops. Even I understand that one. It means he earned an AVERAGE of $118,500, the maximum that
SS taxes.
Next question: what kind of idiot actually introduces a bill to cut Social Security? One who
plans on a lucrative retirement from politics, that's what kind.
Protesting the proposed policies of President who owns real properties of value in media-drenched
major cities that require the labor of lower income workers on a daily basis might be more effective
than protesting a President whose wealth is almost entirely stored in secret, offshore bank accounts.
"The trouble with Sneed's article is that she does not appear to know what she is talking about.
She just wrote down what some "experts" told her with no idea what the words mean."
You missed the question, is it the writer or the policy of the site?
"... Second, it is important to note that the size of the projected shortfall in the Medicare Part A program (the portion funded by its own tax) has fallen sharply in the Obama years. The shortfall for the 75-year planning horizon was projected at 3.53 percentage points of payroll in 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency. It has now fallen by 80 percent to just 0.73 percent of payroll. This reduction is due to a sharp slowdown in the projected growth of health care costs. Some of this predates the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but some of the slowdown is undoubtedly attributable to the impact of the ACA. ..."
"... On Chris Wallace's question, we know now from Hillary Clinton's Wall Street speeches that her plan on debt and entitlements is to support the elitist Bowles-Simpson project, the centerpiece of which was raising the age for Medicare and Social Security. Who do you think Hillary is lying to about benefits - everyday Americans like you (who she deplores) or her Wall Street backers? ..."
"... Japan has been doing this deficit spending thing for 20+ years and borrowed an enormous amount of money. It has not solved anything. Growth continues to be elusive. Progressive economists keep whistling by the graveyard. And the conservatives just want to cut taxes. Both groups look like medieval doctors who prescribe bloodletting no matter what the illness is. Oh, the dismal science! ..."
"... She proudly proclaimed that her programs would not add to the national debt implying no increase in deficit spending. She ridiculed Trump because his tax plan would add significantly to the deficit and national debt. Clearly she wants to portray an image of fiscal responsibility and Wallace's question allowed her to go down that path. ..."
At the debate last night, moderator Chris Wallace challenged both candidates on the question of cutting
Social Security and Medicare. The implication is that the country is threatened by the prospect of
out of control government deficits. The question was misguided on several grounds.
First, as a matter of law the Social Security program can only spend money that is in the trust
fund. This means that, unless Congress changes the law, the program can never be a cause of runaway
deficits.
Second, it is important to note that the
size of the projected shortfall in the Medicare Part A program (the portion funded by its own
tax) has fallen sharply in the Obama years. The shortfall for the 75-year planning horizon was projected
at 3.53 percentage points of payroll in 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency. It has now
fallen by 80 percent to just 0.73 percent of payroll. This reduction is due to a sharp slowdown in
the projected growth of health care costs. Some of this predates the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but
some of the slowdown is undoubtedly attributable to the impact of the ACA.
Anyhow, the implication of Wallace's question, that these programs are somehow out of control
and require some near term fix, is not supported by the data. We will have to make changes to maintain
full funding for Social Security, but there is no urgency to this issue.
On the more general point of deficits, the country's problem since the crash in 2008 has been
deficits that are too small, not too large. The main factor holding back the economy has been a lack
of demand, not a lack of supply. Deficits create more demand, either directly through government
spending or indirectly through increased consumption. If we had larger deficits in recent years we
would have seen more GDP, more jobs, and, due to a tighter labor market, higher wages.
The problem of too small deficits is not just a short-term issue. A smaller economy means less
investment in new plant and equipment and research. This reduces the economy's capacity in the future.
In the same vein, high rates of unemployment cause people to permanently drop out of the labor force,
reducing our future labor supply if these people become unemployable. (Having unemployed parents
is also very bad news for the kids who will have worse life prospects.)
The Congressional Budget Office now puts potential GDP at about 10 percent lower for 2016 than
its projection from 2008, before the recession. Much of this drop is due the decision to run smaller
deficits and prevent the economy from reaching its potential level of output. We can think of this
loss of potential output as a "austerity tax." It currently is at close to $2 trillion a year or
more than $6,000 for every person in the country.
It is unfortunate that Wallace chose to devote valuable debate time to a non-problem while ignoring
the huge problem of needless unemployment and lost output due to government deficits that are too
small.
On Chris Wallace's question, we know now from Hillary Clinton's Wall Street speeches that her
plan on debt and entitlements is to support the elitist Bowles-Simpson project, the centerpiece
of which was raising the age for Medicare and Social Security. Who do you think Hillary is lying
to about benefits - everyday Americans like you (who she deplores) or her Wall Street backers?
and the nerve of this Wallace dude and the nerve of all these other... so called journalist on
this show?
Wallace even didn't notice - the whole time!! - that it was Alec Baldwin -(and not Trump) -
who answered his silly questions - and then the nerve of the so called 'media' to praise Wallace
- that he didn't notice that Alec Baldwin answered his questions.
I am perfectly fine with running deficits to get out of a recession and compensate for temporary
shortfall in private demand. Isn't this the original idea behind deficit spending? But we are
7 years out of a recession.
Japan has been doing this deficit spending thing for 20+ years and borrowed an enormous
amount of money. It has not solved anything. Growth continues to be elusive. Progressive economists
keep whistling by the graveyard. And the conservatives just want to cut taxes. Both groups look
like medieval doctors who prescribe bloodletting no matter what the illness is. Oh, the dismal
science!
The Japanese yen is severely overvalued and therefore Japan's exports no longer can sustain GDP
growth as they did in the past. Combined with Japan's anemic consumer demand, there is nothing
but government spending to spur growth. If Japan now cut its deficit spending, its economy would
collapse.
My point is that American health care is profit driven. The private health insurer companies drive
up the costs in all sectors of health care - whether that be for a simple phlebotomy test or a
urinary catheter or...., or for a visit to a cardiologist after initial treatment for angina in
an emergency dep't.
Health care should be considered a basic human right in any country and not one that is affected
by the amount a person can pay - or the quality of private insurance a person can afford. I worked
in the field for 33 years before retiring and what I saw was, in many cases, very sad and unfortunate.
Those who had money went on with their lives and those who did not often simply died. That is
no way to manage any society.
Dear Michael,I am in TOTALl agreement with you but, as a very satisfied Kaiser Permanente member,
I am a little defensive about maligning the term "HMO" which, I believe, is a beacon of hope for
"Best Practices" in our current profit driven health delivery mess. I am a retired RN who watched
first hand as the system became ruled by consolidation and greed. I remember in the 1980s being
told that consolidation would bring cost down. What a joke that was. So I am working for single
payer, Medicare for all. Carol
"It is unfortunate that Wallace chose to devote valuable debate time to a
non-problem while ignoring the huge problem of needless unemployment
and lost output due to government deficits that are too small." -D. Baker
We should have a Full Employment Fiscal Policy coupled with a Federal Job Guaranty would put an
end to this discussion. Funding the entitlements are not an issue - although the law may need
to be revised - as the government can issue its currency without a problem - inflation being the
constraint. (The increase in demand for apartments, cable subscriptions, and shuffleboards are
unlikely to trigger uncontrolled inflation.)
Dean thinks the debt is not a problem but the majority of voters Clinton was trying to reach probably
do think it is a problem. She proudly proclaimed that her programs would not add to the national
debt implying no increase in deficit spending. She ridiculed Trump because his tax plan would
add significantly to the deficit and national debt. Clearly she wants to portray an image of fiscal
responsibility and Wallace's question allowed her to go down that path.
I did not say that she did not propose to increase spending - just that she would not increase
the debt because everything is "paid for". If everything is paid for by tax increases then there
is no near term stimulus to the overall economy. There may be long term benefits if the projects
are worthwhile but that will take years to surface. She also declined to defend the benefits of
fiscal stimulus after the financial crisis. People hear what they want to hear from these debates.
I think you are wrong about the near term benefits of taxing wealthy people and then using that
money for public spending. The propensity of the wealthy for spending is low and therefore if
you take some of their money and spend it it will be stimulative.
I am aware of this ptc argument but find it weak. I know plenty of "wealthy" couples who save
very little. Anyhow, even if there is some merit to the argument why not borrow now at almost
zero cost and ensure the maximum stimulus.
Another factor - public spending may not find its way into the lowest income levels of our
society. Infrastructure projects, for example, will enrich contractors and materials industries
as much or more than the individual workers. Also, they take a long time to get started as there
really is no such thing as shovel ready. Couple the protracted startup with higher taxes and you
get very little near term benefit.
This whole discussion is of course mute since running deficits does not crowd out investing. And
increasing the debt has no negative implication other then the political effects. The government
can print money and spend money. If it runs deficits it can keep interest rates low by buying
securities.
We need to stimulate DEMAND Now to get the economy revved up and the money flowing. Best way is
the change Social Security such that it doesn't kick in until the earner has made $10,000 (i.e.)
and account for that by lifting the cap accordingly such that 90% of all earned income is taxed:
just as it used to be when Reagan/?? fixed it. Just think what all that money would do in the
economy. It would not be used to by back stock or inflate golden parachutes. It would be immediately
spent. It would be DEMAND.
The $173 Trillion Austerity Tax in the Infinite Horizon
By Lara Merling and Dean Baker
The Peter Peterson-Washington Post deficit hawk gang keep
trying * to scare us into cutting Social Security and
Medicare. If we don't cut these programs now, then at some
point in the future we might have to cut these program or
RAISE TAXES.
There are many good reasons not to take the advice of the
deficit hawks, but the most immediate one is that our economy
is suffering from a deficit that is too small, not too large.
The point is straightforward, the economy needs more demand,
which we could get from larger budget deficits. More demand
would lead to more output and employment. It would also cause
firms to invest more, which would make us richer in the
future.
The flip side in this story is that because we have not
been investing as much as we would in a fully employed
economy, our potential level of output is lower today than if
we had remained near full employment since the downturn in
2008. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that
potential GDP in 2016 is down by 10.5 percent (almost $2.0
trillion) from the level it had projected for 2016 back in
2008, before the downturn.
This is real money, over $6,200 per person. But if we want
to have a little fun, we can use a tactic developed by the
deficit hawks. We can calculate the cost of austerity over
the infinite horizon. This is a simple story. We just assume
that we will never get back the potential GDP lost as a
result of the weak growth of the last eight years. Carrying
this the lost 10.5 percent of GDP out to the infinite future
and using a 2.9 percent real discount rate gives us $172.94
trillion in lost output. This is the size of the austerity
tax for all future time. It comes to more than $500,000 for
every person in the country.
By comparison, we can look at the projected Social
Security shortfall for the infinite horizon. According to the
most recent Social Security Trustees Report, ** this comes to
$32.1 trillion. (Almost two thirds of this occurs after the
75-year projection period.) Undoubtedly many deficit hawks
hope that people would be scared by this number. But compared
to the austerity tax imposed by the deficit hawks, it doesn't
look like a big deal.
"... When I signed up for a 401k at my previous job, I wanted to invest in the S&P index fund, as it was the lowest cost option. Given that Putnam used their own fund, it charged 0.35% at a time when Vanguard was at 0.07% and Fidelity at 0.10%. ..."
"... Rule of 72 says that at 7% return for ten years would be $20,000 not $136K. ..."
"... Washington has proven itself incapable of managing its money (our taxes) prudently and efficiently because of our corrupt representatives putting their electoral and personal interests first. The 401K experiment has failed. Very few individuals will be able to rely on them for retirement security, and of those most hail from the higher income brackets. They do virtually nothing for retirement security for the vast, vast majority of the country. ..."
"... Social Security is a proven, cost effective, and reliable deliverer of retirement income for our entire population. 401K's will never come close, and in fact aren't worth shit to most people. But that is not what matters in Washington. ..."
"... The Plan administrator has a fiduciary obligation to manage the options. The administrator can put pressure to make non-Sponsor funds available. With a total company 401k of only about $5mm, I was able to pressure our 401K plan Sponsor to provide access to lower cost equivalent portfolios for investment options such as S&P 500, Russell 2000 and a long-term bond yield (via Vanguard and Fidelity). ..."
"... Difficult to reconcile this with the Department of Labor's new fiduciary rule, which reportedly requires financial advisers to place the interests of clients with retirement-saving accounts ahead of their own. I have read that it will be implemented sometime next year, assuming there are no additional delays. (hat tip Barry Ritholtz) ..."
Thanks for this analysis. I have a 403b through my institution of higher Ed, specifically Tiaa.
Their funds are kind of lousy (compared, say, to a vanguard index) and there's little choice in
which funds seem to be available from one institution to another.
The idea that workers will somehow sit down and process the numbers surrounding badly performing
funds, and then redistribute, is a fantasy. Who has the financial literacy to do that? Like healthcare,it's
another area of personal finance where people are expected to take on time consuming and complex
administrative duties.
Mandatory 401s sounds just great. Can't wait. "You give me your money, you tell me where to
put it among crappy options, wait forty years, and you may or may not ever see it again, based
on the quality of your choices. Pleasure doing business with you."
I love the last line, because it applies to almost everything in our society today: far more
scrutiny and oversight. Thanks to Naked Capitalism for turning up the scrutiny.
We are going to have a fight on our hands if and when HRC gets elected. The fact that our politicians
have gotten away with weakening New Deal programs that actually worked well is all the evidence
I need to believe they are not finished with their attack.
When I signed up for a 401k at my previous job, I wanted to invest in the S&P index fund,
as it was the lowest cost option. Given that Putnam used their own fund, it charged 0.35% at a
time when Vanguard was at 0.07% and Fidelity at 0.10%.
If you put $10k into the fund at 35 bps, you'd have $136k at the end of 10 years (assuming
7% gross return). if you got it at 7 bps, you'd have $137k. Now, if you'd bought a loaded A share
American Fund with a 5.75% sales load and a 65 bps expense ratio, you'd have $126k.
The principle of low fees is important, but you're effectively there with the 35 bps fund.
"…investors might be vigilant enough to recognize that their interests are not being well served…"
Come on. Really. I would wager that the percentage of people knowledgeable and sophisticated
enough to do so at well under 0.1% of the population. The entire system of 401 retirement plans
has been constructed for the purpose of fleecing undisclosed fees from us suckers forced into
these plans.
Washington has proven itself incapable of managing its money (our taxes) prudently and
efficiently because of our corrupt representatives putting their electoral and personal interests
first. The 401K experiment has failed. Very few individuals will be able to rely on them for retirement
security, and of those most hail from the higher income brackets. They do virtually nothing for
retirement security for the vast, vast majority of the country.
Social Security is a proven, cost effective, and reliable deliverer of retirement income
for our entire population. 401K's will never come close, and in fact aren't worth shit to most
people. But that is not what matters in Washington.
I see this as akin to a Board of Driectors governance issue.
The Plan administrator has a fiduciary obligation to manage the options. The administrator
can put pressure to make non-Sponsor funds available. With a total company 401k of only about
$5mm, I was able to pressure our 401K plan Sponsor to provide access to lower cost equivalent
portfolios for investment options such as S&P 500, Russell 2000 and a long-term bond yield (via
Vanguard and Fidelity).
All it required was performing the minimums of being a 401k plan administrator. Quarterly monitoring
of fund performance versus peers via a service like Morningstar (took 4 hours to prebuild screens
that displayed QonQ, YonY and 3Yon3Y), pressing the Sponsor for alternatives and then refusing
the steak dinner to discuss with the Sponsor. I mean for crying out loud this is really simple.
And of course if your plan administrator isn't doing this minimum I'm sure they have fiduciary
insurance so there are alternatives.
Of course many people aren't willing to ask/press these questions of their employer/HR. I've
seen plans administered exceptionally well (utility with a union for about 1/3 of employees and
small family energy firm) and poorly (some larger energy companies). Why somebody doesn't provides
this administrator function as an outsource is beyond me. The real liability can be quite high
and pushing off to a 3rd party who does just that would seem worth the $.
My 401K was administered by Fidelity and I believe there were no restrictions whatsoever. I
could invest in any Fidelity fund or actually any fund through a brokerage account. If you didn't
use a Fidelity brokerage account offered by the plan as an option your choices were restricted.
They are often dodgy too. Great-west/Empower does a real bait and switch on the options offered
for certain 401A funds were there is deeply buried disclosure about proprietary versions charging
much higher fees, than the term sheet prominently displayed as "this is what you're buying if
you select this fund". This is a real racket
Yves, article and analysis insightful, thanks again. "Doggy" in title makes sense, but "dodgy"
may apply as well to Fidelity specifically, read on. Stumbled on to Reuters write up by Tim McLaughlin
about Fidelity this month and began a search for a new money management firm with a "fiduciary"
bone in it's body:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fidelity-family-specialreport-idUSKCN1251BG .
Though the article indicates Fidelity's behavior is not "illegal nor unethical" – Yale University
law professor John Morley said Fidelity runs the risk of losing investors by competing with the
funds that serve them.
"What they're doing is not illegal, not even unethical," Morley said. "But it's entirely appropriate
for mutual fund investors to take their money elsewhere because Fidelity has made a decision to
take away some of their potential returns."
Many of us are trapped in the DC funds our employers establish for us. As cdub referenced,
pressuring plan administrators is one way to change options or broaden offerings – but one needs
to understand what pressure to apply.
Difficult to reconcile this with the Department of Labor's new fiduciary rule, which reportedly
requires financial advisers to place the interests of clients with retirement-saving accounts
ahead of their own. I have read that it will be implemented sometime next year, assuming there
are no additional delays. (hat tip Barry Ritholtz)
So: Hillary Clinton has already said that she will raise Social Security taxes on people who make
less than $118,500 per year, but Donald Trump has not indicated whether he will impose Social Security
taxes on income above $118,500 per year.
Other proposals that have been pushed in order to "replenish the Social Security Trust Fund" -
or to achieve the long-term stability of the Social Security system - mainly focus on three approaches:
One is privatizing Social Security, as Wall Street wants, and which proposal is based on private
gambles that the assets that are
purchased by the Wall
Street firm for the individual investor will continually increase in value, never plunge, and never
be reduced by annual charges to pay Wall Street's fees for management and for transactions, throughout
the worker's career until retirement.
Another approach is gradually reducing
the inflation-adjuster for benefits, the inflation-adjusted value of the benefits that Social
Security recipients will be receiving. President Obama had been trying to get congressional Republicans
to agree with him to do that (which some call "the boiling-frog approach" because it's applied so
gradually), but they continued to hold out for privatizing Social Security, and thus nothing was
done.
And the third option is to increase the retirement-age, as Obama also wanted to do (and which
is really just another form of "boiling-frog approach"), but also couldn't get congressional Republicans
to accept that. (Trump's comment to "Not increase the age and to leave it as it is" is a clear repudiation
by him of this approach. And his promise to not increase taxes would, if taken seriously, also prohibit
him from endorsing Hillary Clinton's approach.)
"... Mr. James recommended a proposal by Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at The New School in New York, to create a retirement savings plan for everyone based on 3% annual salary contributions shared equally among employees and employers. The federal government would guarantee a 2% return, through a modest insurance premium on such accounts . "With corporate profits at an all-time high, this should be a manageable burden," he said, adding that the approach "is going to require us to look beyond the next election cycle." ..."
Blackstone Group's Tony James, likely to be Clinton's Sec of Treasury, advocates a hedgfund enriching
scheme involving MANDATORY government savings plan on all Amercans.
Tony James head of the crooked Blackstone Group, a giant hedge fund connected to many state pension
funds, is likely to be Clinton's Treasury Sec. Hedge funds have donated 125 million to Crooked Hillary,
20k to Trump. This is thievery on the grand, epic biblical scale with the usual bs about "helping"
people.
"We absolutely have to start now," Mr. James said at a Center for American Progress conference
in Washington on Wednesday. " It has to be mandated . Nothing short of a
mandate will provide future generations a secure retirement."
Mr. James recommended a proposal by Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz Center for Economic
Policy Analysis at The New School in New York, to create a retirement savings plan for everyone
based on 3% annual salary contributions shared equally among employees and employers. The federal
government would guarantee a 2% return, through a modest insurance premium on such accounts . "With
corporate profits at an all-time high, this should be a manageable burden," he said, adding that
the approach "is going to require us to look beyond the next election cycle."
Mr. James also called for redirecting $120 billion in annual retirement tax deductions to give
every worker a $600 annual tax credit to save for retirement.
small search brings up deluge of corruption, payoffs etc.
Contrary to What AP Tells You, Social Security Is NOT a Main Driver of the Country's Long-term
Budget Problem
The New York Times ran a short Associated Press piece * on Social Security and "why it matters."
The piece wrongly told readers that Social Security is "a main driver of the government's long-term
budget problems." This is not true. Under the law, Social Security can only spend money that is in
its trust fund. If the trust fund is depleted then full benefits cannot be paid. The law would have
to be changed to allow Social Security to spend money other than the funds designated for the program
and in that way contribute to the deficit.
The piece also plays the "really big number" game, telling readers:
"the program faces huge shortfalls that get bigger and bigger each year.In 2034, the program faces
a $500 billion shortfall, according to the Social Security Administration. In just five years, the
shortfalls add up to more than $3 trillion.
"Over the next 75 years, the shortfalls add up to a staggering $139 trillion. But why worry? When
that number is adjusted for inflation, it comes to only $40 trillion in 2016 dollars - a little more
than twice the national debt."
Since this is talking about shortfalls projected to be incurred over a long period of time, it
would be helpful to express the shortfall relative to the economy over this period of time, not debt
at a point in time. This is not hard to do, since there is a table ** right in the Social Security
trustees report that reports the projected shortfall as being equal to 0.95 percent of GDP over the
75-year forecasting horizon. By comparison, the costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan came to
around 1.6 percent of GDP at their peaks in the last decade.
The piece also gets the reason for the projected shortfall wrong. It tells readers:
"In short, because Americans aren't having as many babies as they used to. That leaves relatively
fewer workers to pay into the system. Immigration has helped Social Security's finances, but not
enough to fix the long-term problems.
"In 1960, there were 5.1 workers for each person getting benefits. Today, there are about 2.8
workers for each beneficiary. That ratio will drop to 2.1 workers by 2040."
Actually the drop in the birth rate and the declining ratio of workers to beneficiaries had long
been predicted. The reason that the program's finances look worse than when the Greenspan commission
put in place the last major changes in 1983 is the slowdown in wage growth and the upward redistribution
of wage income so that a larger share of wage income now goes untaxed.
In 1983, only 10 percent of wage income was above the payroll tax cap. Today it is close to 18
percent. This upward redistribution explains more than 40 percent *** of projected shortfall over
the next 75 years.
It is also worth noting that the loss in wage income for most workers to upward redistribution
swamps the size of any tax increases that could be needed to maintain full funding for the program.
While AP wants to get people very worried over possible tax increases in future years, it would rather
they ignore the policies (e.g. trade, Federal Reserve policy, Wall Street policy, patent policy)
that have taken money out of the pockets of ordinary workers and put it in the hands of the rich.
fewer workers to pay into the system. Immigration has helped Social Security's finances, but
not enough to fix the long-term
"
~~dB~
Fewer workers who on balance draw smaller pay-check-s within a World of rising prices.
Can you see the long trend of inflation? Do you see how the price of a t-bond has risen steady
on during the past 35 years? As the bond price rises the yield falls. Do you see how much?
This is a long term unstoppable inflation that raises the price of all ships. All nursing
homes and all ships!
That's 139 Trillion with a capital
"T", and that rhymes with "P", and that stands for pool!
And don't look at guys like me to
save Social Security. My unfunded liability for kids shoes alone is over $20,000, and that's
assuming they leave home at 18.
The country's major banks are like trouble-making adolescents. They constantly get involved
in some new and unimagined form of mischief. Back in the housing bubble years it was the pushing,
packaging and selling of fraudulent mortgages. Just a few years later we had JP Morgan, the
country's largest bank, incurring billions in losses from the gambling debts of its "London
Whale" subsidiary. And now we have the story of Wells Fargo, which fired 5,300 workers for
selling phony accounts to the bank's customers.
It is important to understand what is involved in this latest incident at Wells Fargo. The
bank didn't just discover last month that these employees had been ripping off its customers.
These firings date back to 2011. The company has known for years that low-level employees were
ripping off customers by assigning them accounts -- and charging for them -- which they did
not ask for. And this was not an isolated incident, 5,300 workers is a lot of people even for
a huge bank like Wells Fargo.
When so many workers break the rules, this suggests a problem with the system, not bad behavior
by a rogue employee. And, it is not hard to find the problem with the system. The bank gave
these low level employees stringent quotas for account sales. In order to make these quotas,
bank employees routinely made up phony accounts. This practice went on for five years.
As it became aware of widespread abuses, it's hard to understand why the bank would not
change its quota system for employees. One possibility is that they actually encouraged this
behavior, since the new accounts (even phony accounts) would be seen as good news on Wall Street
and drive up the bank's stock price.
Certainly Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, as a major share and options holder, stood to gain
from propping up the stock price, as pointed out by reporter David Dayan. In keeping with this
explanation, Carrie Tolsted, the executive most immediately responsible for overseeing account
sales, announced her resignation and took away $125 million in compensation. This is equal
to the annual pay of roughly 5,000 starting bank tellers at Wells Fargo. That is not ordinarily
the way employees are treated when they seriously mess up on the job.
Regardless of the exact motives, the real question is what will be the consequences for
Stumpf and other top executives. Thus far, he has been forced to stand before a Senate committee
and look contrite for four hours. Stumpf stands to make $19 million this year in compensation.
That's almost $5 million for each hour of contrition. Millions of trouble-making high school
students must be very jealous.
There is little reason for most of us to worry about Stumpf contrition, or lack thereof.
His bank broke the law repeatedly on a large scale. And, he was aware of these violations,
yet he nonetheless left in place the incentive structure that caused them. In the adult world
this should mean being held accountable.
This is not a question of being vindictive towards Stumpf, it's a matter of getting the
incentives right. If the only price for large-scale law breaking by the top executives of the
big banks is a few hours of public shaming, but the rewards are tens of millions or even hundreds
of millions in compensation, then we will continue to see bankers disregard the law, as they
did at Wells Fargo and they did on a larger scale during the run-up of housing bubble.
There is another aspect to the Wells Fargo scandal that is worth considering. Insofar as
the bank was booking revenue on accounts that didn't exist, it was also ripping off the banks'
shareholders. The shareholders' interests are supposed to be protected by the bank's board
of directors.
It doesn't seem the shareholders got much help there....
Cellino & Barnes? I hope these
plaintiffs have been attorneys than that. But yea - having a government agency make your case
is a good idea as I'm sure top Wells Fargo management has hired some nasty defense attorneys.
California has
some of the strongest whistle blower protections in the country.
I find it remarkable that(and I have tried but failed to find any evidence) not one of these
mistreated employees filed a lawsuit years ago. The firings started in 2011. Are you telling
me these employees sat around for 5 years without a single one of them taking action?
The other part that bothers me is this bonus level goal. Wells Fargo is not the only company
in the world that sets their bonus levels at points that are almost impossible to obtain.
Not talking whistle blower protections.
Firms like Cellino and Barnes only take cases where they know they can win. Then again - I
am talking about a dirt bag law firm. Why bring a case when the odds are stacked against you?
But I think what you are pointing out is they is a new sheriff in town with respect to gathering
the facts - which of course is always key in winning any law suit.
"not one of these mistreated
employees filed a lawsuit years ago".
A lot of women who have been raped don't bother to
prosecute the creep thinking they can't win anyway. This may have been the thinking of these
employees until now.
I am not saying the law firm is incompetent, I am saying it seems to me they are taking
a case where WF might not want to deal with more bad pr and settle.
The only people, from what I have seen of this case, that have a chance to win on the merits
are those who claimed they called the ethics department at Wells and were fired for that action.
Yes, the lawyers are circling
like vultures.
But it just shows that lawyers evaluate cases before taking them on, and that the cases' prospects
depend on public opinion.
In addition, it is much easier for people to feel empowered, talk
to lawyers, and fight back if they don't feel isolated and vulnerable to retaliation.
"the executive most immediately
responsible for overseeing account sales, announced her resignation and took away $125 million
in compensation. ... That is not ordinarily the way employees are treated when they seriously
mess up on the job."
Based on (public) evidence available to me, I have to inform you that
this *is* ordinarily the way how the higher executive ranks are treated when the have to leave
because of a serious blunder. In many cases, the termination package is written into their
contract, with exceptions mostly for criminal malfeasance, breach of contract, and that type
of thing, or if the management/board deems it is better for everybody else to "convince" the
undesired executive to leave without a big splash, then they will sweeten the deal.
As I have seen in tech, in many companies the rank-and-file are treated to similar arrangements,
only the amounts are several orders of magnitude lower. But it is not very common for somebody
to be outright fired without severance. There are commonly provisions like a few weeks of salary
continuation per year of service, or offering a small sum to get a quick exit instead of a
drawn out and arduous process of managing somebody out and "documenting" everything.
Here's the part that bothers
me about this.(and once again I will mention that I feel almost dirty defending bank execs).
" large-scale law breaking by the top executives of the big banks".
I don't get this at all. It seems that setting huge bonus numbers is somehow large scale
law breaking.
But let's look at the real numbers is some perspective here(which is usually Baker's thing).
The idea seems to be that Stumpf came up with this idea to open accounts that people did
not know they had. Those accounts would both generate revenue and allow him to talk about the
growth of accounts in the bank.
I have seen nothing that shows how many accounts were opened illegally(I would like to see
that) and nothing to show how many legal accounts were opened during this time frame. With
that info you could put this into perspective how Stumpf and other high level execs gained
from this action.
That being said I know one thing. People who had accounts opened illegally were returned
the fees that they paid. That total is $5 million. Not a lot of revenue but it kind of makes
sense. You cannot charge people a lot of fees with products they do not even know they have.
there is no way in the world that anyone can think there was going to be a lot of money made
on accounts that were, to all intents and purposes, dead.
Meanwhile, in the time period that this case covers, Wells Fargo had profits of almost $100
billion. To think the CEO is going to worry about such an insignificant amount of revenue by
"planning" an illegal action is absurd.
I am all in in the bank CEOs committing fraud during the bubble, there was a huge amount
of profit to be made. But to think this thing came from the top, or even five or six levels
down, is silly. There is no reason.
This was the case of front line people committing fraud to make money. It was also the case
of their managers to encourage and/or allow that fraud to make money.
Wells certainly deserves the punishment for allowing this fraud to happen, but thinking
it originated in the executive offices makes no sense from an standpoint.
'a retirement plan ultimately depends on the future
earning power of the economy'
That's why all modern pension plans hold some equities.
An individual's cost to own one diversified equity fund and one diversified bond fund is about 0.1%
per year. Whereas the expected benefit (compared to SocSec's all Treasury portfolio) is about 3.0% annually.
The seminal research pointing to an equity premium was done in the U.S. in the early 1960s, resulting
in Nobel prizes for several participants. A half century on, their work has had zero effect on the politically
petrified SocSec system - 20% funded, headed for zero in 2033.
Seminal research - Fisher/Lorie paper of 1964, establishing the equity premium and founding
CRSP which serves as the database for nearly all U.S. equities research:
Nobel Prizes 1990 - Harry Markowitz, Merton Miller, William Sharpe - for Modern Portfolio Theory,
which implies in conjunction with the equity premium that the optimal risk-reward portfolio should
include equities:
Zero effect:
"Since the beginning of the Social Security program [in 1935], all securities
held by the trust funds have been issued by the Federal Government."
Headed for zero:
"The dollar level of the theoretical combined trust fund reserves declines
beginning in 2020 until reserves become depleted in 2034."
- SocSec Trustees Report 2015,
page 3.
Can you spell "secular stagnation" ? And can you explain to us
what returns are expected for stocks in the "secular stagnation"
regime in comparison with bonds?
And what will you do if S&P500 drops to 660 like it did in 2008.
And stays at this level for a couple of years like oil prices recently
did.
LTCM was founded in 1994 by John W. Meriwether, the former
vice-chairman and head of bond trading at Salomon Brothers. Members
of LTCM's board of directors included Myron S. Scholes and Robert
C. Merton, who shared the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Sciences for a "new method to determine the value of derivatives".[3]
I think that comprehensive financial planners now do a lot of the work that
family attorneys did in generations past. This is partly because the sort of
person who goes to law school now is much more intellectual -- and thus often a
little more introverted and socially inept–than in years past. Watergate caused
that, I believe. All of a sudden everybody was interested in the mechanism of
the law. Fifty years ago a right-of-way agreement from the local utility was
three sentences. Now it's five pages single spaced, in some English derived
technical gibberish.
Anyway, you really need the professional when somebody dies. That
professional is far more likely to be the financial planner than the lawyer
these days, in part because the financial planner is paid by assets under
management, rather than hundreds of dollars per hour, so the financial planner
would be paid anyway. I think it is rare to see attorneys designated as
executors of estates these days. They charge six percent by statute, and that's
too much for many people's blood. God forbid that one should be appointed to
manage a trust with multiple beneficiaries. They'll stretch it out thirty
years.
In reading the following NYT article about the Greek Crisis, with an emphasis on pensions and
pensioners, I recalled Professor Hamilton's post on the US Social Security system. To borrow Warren
Buffet's phrase about finding out who is skinny dipping when the tide goes out, I wonder if the
tide has just receded faster for Greece than for the US, in terms of over promised and under-funded
Social Security and pension plans, especially in regard to vastly underfunded state and local
government pension plans. And of course, federal government owns both the asset and the liability
for the Social Security Trust Fund
Greece's social security system was troubled even before the crisis, already divided into
more than 130 funds and offering a crazy quilt of early-retirement options that were a monument
to past political patronage.
In 2012, the pension funds, which were obliged under Greek law to own government bonds*,
were hit by a huge debt write-down as those bonds plummeted in value. As a result they lost
about 10 billion euros, or $11.1 billion - roughly 60 percent of their reserves.
Greece's creditors, seeking to make the Greek labor market more competitive, insisted that
the government reduce the amount companies and workers must contribute toward pensions. And
they insisted that Greece reduce its minimum wage so that those who do contribute have smaller
outlays.
At the same time, the pension system was becoming an even bigger component of the social
safety net, absorbing thousands. People like Ms. Meliou retired early, either because of the
sale of state-owned companies, because they feared their salaries would be cut and thus their
pensions would be smaller, or simply because their businesses failed. Few are living comfortably,
and many support unemployed children.
"... Hey, if the plutocrats won't raise wages then they will need to raise the payroll tax cap on Social Security. They should have thought of that before starting so many wars. The Bonus Army will not be denied. ..."
"... Raise it my foot, they need to eliminate it. The cap has always been more welfare for the rich. ..."
"... Why not eliminate the income cap ($118k) entirely and start taxing capital gains and dividends for Social Security too? Members of Congress pay this tax on 65% of the salaries ($174k), while 95% of all wage earners pay this tax on 100% of their earnings. ..."
An Aging Society Is No Problem When Wages Rise: Eduardo Porter
discusses the question of whether retirees will have sufficient
income in twenty or thirty years. He points out that if no
additional revenue is raised, Social Security will not be able to
pay full scheduled benefits after 2034.
While this is true, it is important to note that this would have
also been true in the 1940, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. If projections
were made for Social Security that assumed no increase in the
payroll tax in the future, there would have been a severe shortfall
in the trust fund making it unable to pay full scheduled benefits.
We have now gone 25 years with no increase in the payroll tax, by
far the longest such period since the program was created. With
life expectancy continually increasing, it is inevitable that a
fixed tax rate will eventually prove inadequate if the retirement
age is not raised. (The age for full benefits has already been
raised from 65 to 66 and will rise further to 67 by 2022, but no
further increases are scheduled.)
The past increases in the Social Security tax have generally not
imposed a large burden on workers because real wages rose. The
Social Security trustees project average wages to rise by more than
50 percent over the next three decades. If most workers share in
this wage growth, then the two or three percentage point tax
increase that might be needed to keep the program fully funded
would be a small fraction of the wage growth workers see over this
period. Of course, if income gains continue to be redistributed
upward, then any increase in the Social Security tax will be a
large burden.
For this reason, Social Security should be seen first and foremost
as part of the story of wage inequality. If workers get their share
of the benefits of productivity growth then supporting a larger
population of retirees will not be a problem. On the other hand, if
the wealthy manage to prevent workers from benefiting from growth
during their working lives, they will also likely prevent them from
having a secure retirement.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said...
Hey, if the plutocrats won't raise wages then they will need
to raise the payroll tax cap on Social Security. They should have
thought of that before starting so many wars. The Bonus Army will
not be denied.
DrDick -> Darryl, Ron...
"they will need to raise the payroll tax cap on Social Security"
Raise it my foot, they need to eliminate it. The cap has always
been more welfare for the rich.
Bud Meyers -> DrDick...
Why not eliminate the income cap ($118k) entirely and start
taxing capital gains and dividends for Social Security too? Members
of Congress pay this tax on 65% of the salaries ($174k), while 95%
of all wage earners pay this tax on 100% of their earnings.
mulp
"We have now gone 25 years with no increase in the payroll tax,
by far the longest such period since the program was created. With
life expectancy continually increasing, it is inevitable that a
fixed tax rate will eventually prove inadequate if the retirement
age is not raised."
Illogical!
If wages of younger workers were maintaining the same gains over
their previous generation peers, and in fact, gained even more due
to reduced supply of workers relative to steady demand for labor as
the large boomer cohort leaves the labor force to the smaller
subsequent generation.
Instead, conservative free lunch economicntheory, itself grossly
illogical, has led to cuts in wages as a matter of policy based on
the idea that workers are not consumers, so gdp can grow faster if
workers are paid less, leading to a larger supply of consumers with
pockets of money being created by the tinker bell of wealth.
While changing demographics might require higher payroll taxes, say
younger generations having more kids than the boomer generation and
being stay at home parents than boomers were, in reality, the
younger generations are moving further along the trend line of
working more, just like the boomers.
Incomes are falling leading to reduced gdp growth because that is
driven by labor incomes which are labor costs, and lower gdp means
lower wage income means lower tax revenue with a fixed tax rate.
Social Security has structural problems simply because
conservatives have sold Americans a bill of goods, promising
something for nothing.
TANSTAAFL
As a leading edge boomer, I've had the best of both good and bad
policy. Great big government benefits when young to give me a great
start in life, followed by bad policy tax hikes for me paid for by
screwing the generation of children I did not have, and now 68,
getting the great big government Social Security benefits Reagan
signed into law in 1983, doubly great because, my big government
start in life lasted to 2001 and made me very rich from simply
working and living like my parents who were shaped by the
depression. And Republicans can not cut my benefits because I'm
hidden in the biggest block of the Republican base who almost all
depend on Social Security.
... ... ... EF: More recently, one of your areas of research has been retirement
finance and the investment decisions of workers thinking about their retirement. In recent decades,
we've seen a tremendous shift in the private sector from defined benefit retirement programs to
defined contribution programs. Was this mainly a response by firms to the tightening of the regulatory
environment for defined benefit plans, to changing demand from workers, or to something else?
Poterba: I think it's a bit of everything. A number of factors came together
to create an environment in which firms were more comfortable offering defined contribution plans
than defined benefit plans. One factor was that when firms began offering defined benefit plans,
in World War II and the years following it, the U.S. economy and its population were growing rapidly.
The size of the benefit recipient population from these plans relative to the workforce was small.
It was also a time when life expectancy for people who were aged 65 was several years less than
it is today. Over time, the financial executives at firms came to a greater recognition of the
true cost of defined benefit plans.
I also think the fiduciary responsibilities and the financial burdens that were placed on firms
under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA, have discouraged firms from
continuing in the defined benefit sector. ERISA corrected a set of imbalances by requiring firms
to take more responsibility for the retirement plans they were offering their workers and to fund
those plans so that these were not empty promises. ERISA was enacted in the aftermath of some
high-profile bankruptcies of major U.S. firms and the discovery that their defined benefit plans
were not well-funded, leaving retirees with virtually no pension income.
But ERISA and the growing recognition of the costs of defined benefit plans are probably not
the full story. The U.S. labor market has become more dynamic over time, or at least workers think
it has, and that has led to fewer workers being well-suited to defined benefit plans. These plans
worked very well for workers who had a long career at a single firm. Today, workers may overestimate
the degree of dynamism in the labor market. But if they believe it is dynamic, they may place
great value on a portable retirement structure that enables them to move from firm to firm and
to take their retirement assets with them.
Most workers who are at large firms, firms that have 500 employees or more, have access to
defined contribution plans. Unfortunately, we still don't have great coverage at smaller firms,
below, say, 50 employees. For workers who will spend a long career at a small firm, the absence
of these employer-based plans can make it harder to save for retirement. A key policy priority
is pushing the coverage of defined contribution plans further down the firm size distribution.
That's hard, because smaller firms are less likely to have the infrastructure in place in their
HR departments or to have the spare resources to be able to learn how to establish a defined contribution
plan and how to administer it. They are probably also more reluctant to take on the fiduciary
burdens and responsibilities that come with offering these plans.
Another concern, within the defined contribution system, is the significant amount of leakage.
Money that was originally contributed for retirement may be pulled out before the worker reaches
retirement age.
EF: What is causing that?
Poterba: Say you've worked for 10 years at a firm that offers a 401(k) plan
and you've been contributing all the way along. You decide to leave that firm. In some cases,
the firm you are leaving may encourage you to take the money out of their retirement plan because
they may not want to have you around as a legacy participant in their plan. Sometimes, the worker
may choose to move the funds from the prior 401(k) plan to a retirement plan at their new employer,
or to an IRA. Those moves keep the funds in the retirement system. But sometimes, the worker just
spends the money. When an individual leaves a job, they may experience a spell of unemployment,
or they may have health issues. There may be very good reasons for tapping into the 401(k) accumulation.
Using the 401(k) system as a source of emergency cash, sort of as the ATM for these crises, diminishes
what gets accumulated for retirement.
Inadequate social insurance for workers who lose their jobs leads to inadequate retirement savings.
So while there may be a "very good reason" for this from an individual's perspective, from a larger
social perspective this is a problem connected to our unwillingness to provide adequate social insurance
for those who are the unlucky losers to the dynamism inherent in capitalism that propels us forward.
Those who benefit so much from the dynamism could and should do more to help those who pay the costs.
pgl:
"I also think the fiduciary responsibilities and the financial burdens that were placed on
firms under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA, have discouraged firms
from continuing in the defined benefit sector. ERISA corrected a set of imbalances by requiring
firms to take more responsibility for the retirement plans they were offering their workers and
to fund those plans so that these were not empty promises. ERISA was enacted in the aftermath
of some high-profile bankruptcies of major U.S. firms and the discovery that their defined benefit
plans were not well-funded, leaving retirees with virtually no pension income."
Gee we corporations liked pushing the responsibility of provided retirement benefits onto others
and now that government regulations made that more difficult for us to do - we don't want to take
any responsibility whatsoever!
Which is exactly why Mark's closing here is so correct.
likbez said in reply to pgl:
"Gee we corporations liked pushing the responsibility of provided retirement benefits onto
others and now that government regulations made that more difficult for us to do - we don't want
to take any responsibility whatsoever!"
Not only that. 401K opens huge possibilities of shadow deals between financial firms/mutual
funds and providers of 401K plans. They can agree on a bad set of funds (for example with high
annual costs or with bad diversification -- heavily tilted toward stocks) in exchange of discounted
services in other areas.
This is actually how such deals are done by all major corporations. Providers of 401 mutual
funds in this case typically perform other services for the corporation. Some like Wall-Mart are
especially cruel to their workers in this respect and fleece them mercilessly.
Also the amount of contributions from the company is usually much less then in defined benefit
plan and all risks are transferred to employees.
The other negative side effect was tremendous growth of mutual fund industry which increased
the "Financialization of the economy" -- hallmark of the neoliberal social system (aka casino
capitalism).
This industry which has developed over the decades between 1980 and 2000 created preconditions
for the situation, in which financial leverage tended to override capital (equity), and financial
markets dominate the traditional industrial econ
by the Wall Street firm for the individual investor will continually increase in value, never plunge, and never be reduced by annual charges to pay Wall Street's fees for management and for transactions, throughout the worker's career until retirement.
