CDZ The projected path we're on

[task0778]

At 69 years of age I'll probably be dead by then anyway. But I do kinda feel sorry for you poor young effers that'll have to deal with the shitstorm that's coming your way.

It's going to get very ugly. Because I'm not afraid of MATH, I realized when I first started working that SS was going to be insolvent by the time I retire. So, I've saved and invested instead. If I get anything, it will be pure upside.

I advise: pay yourself first.

Smart. I think SS will be there, but maybe not as much. I would imagine the high earners may have to pay more and get less at some point.

Millennials are so screwed. As they have no hope of getting SS, they will be reluctant to endure the hyper tax increases that will be required to keep the system afloat. So, I expect to see means testing with no SS at all above a certain level of income/wealth. Also, states that don't tax SS payments will start doing so.

Long past due

No, what is long past due is to get rid of SS altogether and replace it with private investment accounts (similar to Chile's system).

OTOH:

Chile's privatized social security system, beloved by U.S. conservatives, is falling apart

Promoters of privatizing the U.S. Social Security system have never tired of holding up Chile's privatized program as an example of how this can make workers rich. The trick is that they never ask ordinary Chilean workers and retirees how they feel about it.

That may be because they know what the answer would be. It was visible last month in the streets of the capital, Santiago, where crowds estimated at 100,000 to 200,000 marched to demand reform.

President Michelle Bachelet responded promptly in a televised speech this week, ordering up changes that include requiring employers to contributed to the system for the first time. As Bloomberg reported, Bachelet acknowledged workers' rage that pension benefits have fallen well below what was initially promised when the system was created in 1981, under dictator Augusto Pinochet. That promise was that pensions would provide 70% of a worker's final wages at work; the real figure is 38%, the lowest rate among developed countries other than Mexico.

"We need to build a solidarity system that doesn't leave all responsibilities to the individual and that abandons them when they're left behind," Bachelet said.

The Chilean program was promoted relentlessly by its creator, Jose Pinera, who got himself a sinecure at the Cato Institute out of the deal. From there he fed American conservatives' fantasies of "an obvious free market solution that works," he wrote for a Cato audience in 1997. (In that same article he declared that "America's Social Security system will go bust in 2010." Umm, no.) He boasted of how he single-handedly "decided to undertake a structural reform [of Chile's bankrupt retirement system] that would solve the problem once and for all."

Chilean government pensions lag those of most other developed countries as a percentage of working income.

Pinera and his fans talked up the Chilean workers' apparent gains during the system's early years, when it seemed to be delivering double-digit returns and lavish pensions to its lucky beneficiaries. What the promoters never much emphasized was how the program actually had been made to work. As I explained in a 2005 book, everyone entering formal employment after 1981 was required to deposit 10% of earned wages into individual accounts managed by a handful of investment companies appointed by the Pinochet regime. Workers enrolled in the old system were goaded into abandoning it by cuts in existing benefits. Chile financed the transition by draining its large government surplus. An unprecedented bull market in Chilean stocks did the rest.

But the seams soon showed. The World Bank determined that fees charged by those favored investment firms consumed fully half the pension contributions of the average worker retiring in 2000. The government surplus disappeared, and those outsized stock market gains faded away.

A series of reforms of the reform followed. But not enough. Many workers can't afford to pay the 10% minimum contribution, and others have been moved out of the system by a shift toward contract labor. The average pension for retirees is about $400 a month, Bloomberg reports, but 40% of retirees are getting less than $260.

Remarkably, some supposed experts in America still argue that the system works just fine. Wharton economist Olivia Mitchell, who served on a Chilean reform commission in 2014-15, attributed some of the problems to Chilean workers' "widespread ignorance of how the system actually works" and the citizenry's "financial illiteracy." (Of course, as we demonstrated recently, despite her lofty academic perch, Mitchell's grasp of her own country's Social Security program isn't all that impressive.)

Chilean workers undoubtedly know the most important fact about their program: It's not delivering the retirement security they were promised. The program now stands exposed as a simple-minded device to get the government out of paying for pensions by slathering risk onto the workers. "The system was imposed during the dictatorship," economist Claudia Sanhueza, an advisor to President Bachelet, observed to Bloomberg. "Given its origins and the results, the system has no legitimacy."

Chile's privatized social security system, beloved by U.S. conservatives, is falling apart


It might work if it is better designed and managed. But frankly I have little faith/trust in our gov't or in most people to invest their own money.

 

[william the wie]

If the Blue wall begins disintegrating into default prior to the mid-terms then jobs and workers will go red state but beyond that I need to polish my crystal ball.

 

[boedicca]

It's going to get very ugly. Because I'm not afraid of MATH, I realized when I first started working that SS was going to be insolvent by the time I retire. So, I've saved and invested instead. If I get anything, it will be pure upside.

I advise: pay yourself first.

Smart. I think SS will be there, but maybe not as much. I would imagine the high earners may have to pay more and get less at some point.

Millennials are so screwed. As they have no hope of getting SS, they will be reluctant to endure the hyper tax increases that will be required to keep the system afloat. So, I expect to see means testing with no SS at all above a certain level of income/wealth. Also, states that don't tax SS payments will start doing so.

Long past due

No, what is long past due is to get rid of SS altogether and replace it with private investment accounts (similar to Chile's system).

OTOH:

Chile's privatized social security system, beloved by U.S. conservatives, is falling apart

Promoters of privatizing the U.S. Social Security system have never tired of holding up Chile's privatized program as an example of how this can make workers rich. The trick is that they never ask ordinary Chilean workers and retirees how they feel about it.

That may be because they know what the answer would be. It was visible last month in the streets of the capital, Santiago, where crowds estimated at 100,000 to 200,000 marched to demand reform.

President Michelle Bachelet responded promptly in a televised speech this week, ordering up changes that include requiring employers to contributed to the system for the first time. As Bloomberg reported, Bachelet acknowledged workers' rage that pension benefits have fallen well below what was initially promised when the system was created in 1981, under dictator Augusto Pinochet. That promise was that pensions would provide 70% of a worker's final wages at work; the real figure is 38%, the lowest rate among developed countries other than Mexico.

"We need to build a solidarity system that doesn't leave all responsibilities to the individual and that abandons them when they're left behind," Bachelet said.

The Chilean program was promoted relentlessly by its creator, Jose Pinera, who got himself a sinecure at the Cato Institute out of the deal. From there he fed American conservatives' fantasies of "an obvious free market solution that works," he wrote for a Cato audience in 1997. (In that same article he declared that "America's Social Security system will go bust in 2010." Umm, no.) He boasted of how he single-handedly "decided to undertake a structural reform [of Chile's bankrupt retirement system] that would solve the problem once and for all."

Chilean government pensions lag those of most other developed countries as a percentage of working income.

Pinera and his fans talked up the Chilean workers' apparent gains during the system's early years, when it seemed to be delivering double-digit returns and lavish pensions to its lucky beneficiaries. What the promoters never much emphasized was how the program actually had been made to work. As I explained in a 2005 book, everyone entering formal employment after 1981 was required to deposit 10% of earned wages into individual accounts managed by a handful of investment companies appointed by the Pinochet regime. Workers enrolled in the old system were goaded into abandoning it by cuts in existing benefits. Chile financed the transition by draining its large government surplus. An unprecedented bull market in Chilean stocks did the rest.

But the seams soon showed. The World Bank determined that fees charged by those favored investment firms consumed fully half the pension contributions of the average worker retiring in 2000. The government surplus disappeared, and those outsized stock market gains faded away.

A series of reforms of the reform followed. But not enough. Many workers can't afford to pay the 10% minimum contribution, and others have been moved out of the system by a shift toward contract labor. The average pension for retirees is about $400 a month, Bloomberg reports, but 40% of retirees are getting less than $260.

Remarkably, some supposed experts in America still argue that the system works just fine. Wharton economist Olivia Mitchell, who served on a Chilean reform commission in 2014-15, attributed some of the problems to Chilean workers' "widespread ignorance of how the system actually works" and the citizenry's "financial illiteracy." (Of course, as we demonstrated recently, despite her lofty academic perch, Mitchell's grasp of her own country's Social Security program isn't all that impressive.)

Chilean workers undoubtedly know the most important fact about their program: It's not delivering the retirement security they were promised. The program now stands exposed as a simple-minded device to get the government out of paying for pensions by slathering risk onto the workers. "The system was imposed during the dictatorship," economist Claudia Sanhueza, an advisor to President Bachelet, observed to Bloomberg. "Given its origins and the results, the system has no legitimacy."

Chile's privatized social security system, beloved by U.S. conservatives, is falling apart


It might work if it is better designed and managed. But frankly I have little faith/trust in our gov't or in most people to invest their own money.

Translation: Socialists in Chile are big whinging crybabies just like the ones in the U.S.

And if you don't trust people to invest their own money, why do you trust different people to invest it properly?

 

[task0778]

If the Blue wall begins disintegrating into default prior to the mid-terms then jobs and workers will go red state but beyond that I need to polish my crystal ball.

But here's a question: will those people leaving blue states for red ones continue to vote blue? Red states have democrats too, and they'll do what they always do: promise the moon by raising taxes on the rich. I'm not sure how all that migration stuff is going to play out.

 

[william the wie]

It's going to get very ugly. Because I'm not afraid of MATH, I realized when I first started working that SS was going to be insolvent by the time I retire. So, I've saved and invested instead. If I get anything, it will be pure upside.

I advise: pay yourself first.

Smart. I think SS will be there, but maybe not as much. I would imagine the high earners may have to pay more and get less at some point.

Millennials are so screwed. As they have no hope of getting SS, they will be reluctant to endure the hyper tax increases that will be required to keep the system afloat. So, I expect to see means testing with no SS at all above a certain level of income/wealth. Also, states that don't tax SS payments will start doing so.

Long past due

No, what is long past due is to get rid of SS altogether and replace it with private investment accounts (similar to Chile's system).

OTOH:

Chile's privatized social security system, beloved by U.S. conservatives, is falling apart

Promoters of privatizing the U.S. Social Security system have never tired of holding up Chile's privatized program as an example of how this can make workers rich. The trick is that they never ask ordinary Chilean workers and retirees how they feel about it.

That may be because they know what the answer would be. It was visible last month in the streets of the capital, Santiago, where crowds estimated at 100,000 to 200,000 marched to demand reform.

President Michelle Bachelet responded promptly in a televised speech this week, ordering up changes that include requiring employers to contributed to the system for the first time. As Bloomberg reported, Bachelet acknowledged workers' rage that pension benefits have fallen well below what was initially promised when the system was created in 1981, under dictator Augusto Pinochet. That promise was that pensions would provide 70% of a worker's final wages at work; the real figure is 38%, the lowest rate among developed countries other than Mexico.

"We need to build a solidarity system that doesn't leave all responsibilities to the individual and that abandons them when they're left behind," Bachelet said.

The Chilean program was promoted relentlessly by its creator, Jose Pinera, who got himself a sinecure at the Cato Institute out of the deal. From there he fed American conservatives' fantasies of "an obvious free market solution that works," he wrote for a Cato audience in 1997. (In that same article he declared that "America's Social Security system will go bust in 2010." Umm, no.) He boasted of how he single-handedly "decided to undertake a structural reform [of Chile's bankrupt retirement system] that would solve the problem once and for all."

Chilean government pensions lag those of most other developed countries as a percentage of working income.

Pinera and his fans talked up the Chilean workers' apparent gains during the system's early years, when it seemed to be delivering double-digit returns and lavish pensions to its lucky beneficiaries. What the promoters never much emphasized was how the program actually had been made to work. As I explained in a 2005 book, everyone entering formal employment after 1981 was required to deposit 10% of earned wages into individual accounts managed by a handful of investment companies appointed by the Pinochet regime. Workers enrolled in the old system were goaded into abandoning it by cuts in existing benefits. Chile financed the transition by draining its large government surplus. An unprecedented bull market in Chilean stocks did the rest.

But the seams soon showed. The World Bank determined that fees charged by those favored investment firms consumed fully half the pension contributions of the average worker retiring in 2000. The government surplus disappeared, and those outsized stock market gains faded away.

A series of reforms of the reform followed. But not enough. Many workers can't afford to pay the 10% minimum contribution, and others have been moved out of the system by a shift toward contract labor. The average pension for retirees is about $400 a month, Bloomberg reports, but 40% of retirees are getting less than $260.

Remarkably, some supposed experts in America still argue that the system works just fine. Wharton economist Olivia Mitchell, who served on a Chilean reform commission in 2014-15, attributed some of the problems to Chilean workers' "widespread ignorance of how the system actually works" and the citizenry's "financial illiteracy." (Of course, as we demonstrated recently, despite her lofty academic perch, Mitchell's grasp of her own country's Social Security program isn't all that impressive.)

Chilean workers undoubtedly know the most important fact about their program: It's not delivering the retirement security they were promised. The program now stands exposed as a simple-minded device to get the government out of paying for pensions by slathering risk onto the workers. "The system was imposed during the dictatorship," economist Claudia Sanhueza, an advisor to President Bachelet, observed to Bloomberg. "Given its origins and the results, the system has no legitimacy."

Chile's privatized social security system, beloved by U.S. conservatives, is falling apart


It might work if it is better designed and managed. But frankly I have little faith/trust in our gov't or in most people to invest their own money.

As in you will increase your returns markedly if you get into cash Sept./Oct (avoiding the high holy days of the OT) or more drastically get into cash May day through Halloween. Pretty much everybody knows that but they don't do that.

 

[william the wie]

If the Blue wall begins disintegrating into default prior to the mid-terms then jobs and workers will go red state but beyond that I need to polish my crystal ball.

But here's a question: will those people leaving blue states for red ones continue to vote blue? Red states have democrats too, and they'll do what they always do: promise the moon by raising taxes on the rich. I'm not sure how all that migration stuff is going to play out.

me neither. but the poor, stupid and/or criminal who make up the backbone of the Ds tend to become inmates or at least ineligiblable to vote quickly here in FL

 

[task0778]

Smart. I think SS will be there, but maybe not as much. I would imagine the high earners may have to pay more and get less at some point.

Millennials are so screwed. As they have no hope of getting SS, they will be reluctant to endure the hyper tax increases that will be required to keep the system afloat. So, I expect to see means testing with no SS at all above a certain level of income/wealth. Also, states that don't tax SS payments will start doing so.

Long past due

No, what is long past due is to get rid of SS altogether and replace it with private investment accounts (similar to Chile's system).

OTOH:

Chile's privatized social security system, beloved by U.S. conservatives, is falling apart

Promoters of privatizing the U.S. Social Security system have never tired of holding up Chile's privatized program as an example of how this can make workers rich. The trick is that they never ask ordinary Chilean workers and retirees how they feel about it.

That may be because they know what the answer would be. It was visible last month in the streets of the capital, Santiago, where crowds estimated at 100,000 to 200,000 marched to demand reform.

President Michelle Bachelet responded promptly in a televised speech this week, ordering up changes that include requiring employers to contributed to the system for the first time. As Bloomberg reported, Bachelet acknowledged workers' rage that pension benefits have fallen well below what was initially promised when the system was created in 1981, under dictator Augusto Pinochet. That promise was that pensions would provide 70% of a worker's final wages at work; the real figure is 38%, the lowest rate among developed countries other than Mexico.

"We need to build a solidarity system that doesn't leave all responsibilities to the individual and that abandons them when they're left behind," Bachelet said.

The Chilean program was promoted relentlessly by its creator, Jose Pinera, who got himself a sinecure at the Cato Institute out of the deal. From there he fed American conservatives' fantasies of "an obvious free market solution that works," he wrote for a Cato audience in 1997. (In that same article he declared that "America's Social Security system will go bust in 2010." Umm, no.) He boasted of how he single-handedly "decided to undertake a structural reform [of Chile's bankrupt retirement system] that would solve the problem once and for all."

Chilean government pensions lag those of most other developed countries as a percentage of working income.

Pinera and his fans talked up the Chilean workers' apparent gains during the system's early years, when it seemed to be delivering double-digit returns and lavish pensions to its lucky beneficiaries. What the promoters never much emphasized was how the program actually had been made to work. As I explained in a 2005 book, everyone entering formal employment after 1981 was required to deposit 10% of earned wages into individual accounts managed by a handful of investment companies appointed by the Pinochet regime. Workers enrolled in the old system were goaded into abandoning it by cuts in existing benefits. Chile financed the transition by draining its large government surplus. An unprecedented bull market in Chilean stocks did the rest.

But the seams soon showed. The World Bank determined that fees charged by those favored investment firms consumed fully half the pension contributions of the average worker retiring in 2000. The government surplus disappeared, and those outsized stock market gains faded away.

A series of reforms of the reform followed. But not enough. Many workers can't afford to pay the 10% minimum contribution, and others have been moved out of the system by a shift toward contract labor. The average pension for retirees is about $400 a month, Bloomberg reports, but 40% of retirees are getting less than $260.

Remarkably, some supposed experts in America still argue that the system works just fine. Wharton economist Olivia Mitchell, who served on a Chilean reform commission in 2014-15, attributed some of the problems to Chilean workers' "widespread ignorance of how the system actually works" and the citizenry's "financial illiteracy." (Of course, as we demonstrated recently, despite her lofty academic perch, Mitchell's grasp of her own country's Social Security program isn't all that impressive.)

Chilean workers undoubtedly know the most important fact about their program: It's not delivering the retirement security they were promised. The program now stands exposed as a simple-minded device to get the government out of paying for pensions by slathering risk onto the workers. "The system was imposed during the dictatorship," economist Claudia Sanhueza, an advisor to President Bachelet, observed to Bloomberg. "Given its origins and the results, the system has no legitimacy."

Chile's privatized social security system, beloved by U.S. conservatives, is falling apart


It might work if it is better designed and managed. But frankly I have little faith/trust in our gov't or in most people to invest their own money.

Translation: Socialists in Chile are big whinging crybabies just like the ones in the U.S.

And if you don't trust people to invest their own money, why do you trust different people to invest it properly?

I've never trusted anybody with my money. I think we need both, a gov't SSA and a private retirement investment program that each person can run for themselves or turn it over to an investment company if they want to. Which we've already got, right? IRAs and 401ks. But the Govt SSA program has to tell people up front on an annual basis how much they have in that gov't fund and what the most likely payout will be when they hit whatever the retirement age is going to be down the road, based on the continued input of what's going into the SSA fund up to now. And the gov't has to keep their GD sticky fingers off of that fund. People need to be told that if you invest your money then you're on your own and if you lose it all then you're going to have to keep working or rely on your friends, family, church, or whatever.