670
Senator Bernie Sanders Report Warns Nearly Half of Older Americans 'Have No Retirement Savings'
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
670 points (99.1% liked)
News
23409 readers
4368 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think it more closely follows social insurance than simply asking for a handout from everyone else's kids. Afterall, you are paying into it until you are eligible, and when you are eligible, a person just one year younger than you is supporting you. Saying that it's just "kids" paying into it makes it seem like we all stop paying into Social Security when we turn 25. I agree that the onus falls to the next generation in so much that it is their burden to pay into, but making it seem like we are forcing them into baby farms to push out kids to pay for our retirement is a bit dramatic. The population would have to take a pretty drastic nosedive over one generation to cause the system to collapse for the current retired generation, and the population numbers of the US don't support that line of logic.
The biggest issue that we are running into with Social Security is the Wage Base Limit that stops the payment of Social Security tax after you are taxed a certain amount. It adjusts for inflation each year, which is great, but it doesn't adjust for the disparity in wealth. Sure, the average person makes a certain amount per year, but that average doesn't mean anything anymore when it's the smallest percentage of earners in America. There are too many that don't pay up to the cap due to their low wage, and too many that make more than the cap and don't pay any more, and so we are left with a shrinking bank of fund as the wealth disparity increases each year. If we want to fix Social Security, we don't need to set up "generation funds", we need to abolish the Wage Base Limit and force everyone to pay in the 6.8% they owe, instead of just relying on the bottom 60% of Americans to do what they can.
As far as 401(k) goes, those are dependant on a volatile market, and often struggle to meet inflation, making them just slightly better than hiding your money in a mattress, but if you hide it in your mattress you don't have to pay a fee if there is a medical emergency you needs the funds for. 401(k) is great for people with true disposable income in the excess of thousands a month, but there aren't enough of those people around anymore, and they aren't the ones that will rely on Social Security, anyway.
I think more importantly, it suggests having children is necessary. And it is not. I say that as a loving parent.
It doesn’t require having children, but working population growth in general. Some of that is people having children, some is immigration, some of that is increasing workers by raising retirement age
Endless population growth is both unnecessary and harmful to the environment. That's one of the reasons we only had one child. One child replaces two of us.
That’s not the topic of discussion. Funding of social security is designed around increasing working population, regardless of whether that’s desirable in other ways
While I also think the wage cap should be lifted, it won’t have as big an effect as you expect. Remember ss is somewhat progressive (higher income get less percentage return), ss benefits on the high end are subject to income tax, and that benefits are also capped to match the wage cap. High earners are putting in more for less getting back, at least to some extent
If you raise the wage cap, there’s an argument the benefits should increase for higher earners as well. Remember this is not welfare, it’s meant to be a social insurance program, which has implications