The chart showing bankruptcies changes per age group make it seem like its the same generation constantly filing for bankruptcy. Younger and middle aged bankruptcies have declined 50% while older bankruptcies have risen ~100%.
Exactly, if the younger generations have decreased, while older has increased, its the same generation constantly inflating bankruptcies as they get older
Someone filing in the 35 to 44 category in 1991 would be in the 60-69 age range by 2016- basically it's the same age cohort declaring bankruptcy at a high rate as they age through the categories.
possible explanation: the younger generations aren't that sick yet, so they don't face massive medical bills for the most part. likewise, the younger generations don't have enough money to even approach certain sources of debt like a mortgage. (is mortgage considered a debt?)
It seems like it is technically a debt, but financially I wouldn't consider it debt until you have either failed to pay it back in the agreed upon time or are missing payments.
The graphs are related to number of bankruptcy filings. I don;t think younger people are any less sick now than they used to unless preventive care has gotten significantly better, could be interesting to explore
You can't go bankrupt on student loans, so there's your young people with crushing debt that they can't discharge, much less take on other debts that could be discharged in a bankruptcy.
How could mortgage not be considered debt? You're taking someone else's money, spending it for your own benefit, and contracting to pay it back on a certain schedule + a hefty profit for the lender. Sure seems like classic debt to me. Just because there's a lot of structure around it and it's very common doesn't reduce the fact it is actual debt.
And it wasn't until 2005 that student loans were made permanently non-dischargeable, rather than the previous first five years. Of course bankruptcies went down, what's the point?
Or you just overestimate how many kids who were dumb enough to get an ARM wanted to settle down and buy a house. More likely, the numbers are misleading in some way.
>The questionnaire asked filers what led them to seek bankruptcy protection... About three in five said unmanageable medical expenses played a role. A little more than two-thirds cited a drop in income.
there you have it: the US healthcare system is driving responsible people into poverty, especially when paired with stagnant or falling income.
the solution is socialized universal healthcare. we will also need to re-create the social safety net somehow in a new and vastly expanded role. to be clear, silicon valley doesn't have a role to play here, aside from paying their taxes.
I think the parent might be arguing that this should all be government-run/funded, like in European social democracies. Tech has been increasingly moving into middleman spaces like health insurance, which only exacerbates the problem.
privatization won't fix the problems that privatization caused.
likewise, our society can't use software alone to solve our socioeconomic problems.
note: this is not because software is incapable of being part of the solution. far from it. but software is not about to rectify these issues without a political will to do so, which is separate.
> to be clear, silicon valley doesn't have a role to play here, aside from paying their taxes.
1) SV companies are some of the biggest tax dodgers
2) SV companies are also some of the biggest drivers of economic inequity and tearing down these social safety nets that generations before us fought tooth-and-nail for
3) SV companies, like Facebook, are also the biggest drivers of our cultural decay, which feeds and accelerates these disturbing macro societal trends
I'm for universal healthcare, but the article specifically says that these are people who are in precarious financial situations already - any sudden expense could be enough to throw them into insolvency. Unsurprisingly, many of them are developing health problems at that age, which is the sudden expense that was too much.
I originally came across this article via[0], which contextualizes it within the broader US economy. It would seem that the word "older" in the headline is a bit misleading.
"Individuals are likely to get divorced in the years before bankruptcy and then remarry. Income falls before bankruptcy and then rises after bankruptcy."
In the midst of an otherwise depressing read, this is actually good news. It indicates that people stuck in a downward spiral of stress and bad financial decisions, are able to break out of that spiral by declaring bankruptcy. That is exactly what it is designed for.
How can a 72-year-old retire just get his health insurance revoked? What's even the point of health insurance when it only covers the young and healthy apparently.
Making profit is fine, doing everything possible to maximize profit by defeating the purpose of its very existence is where things get in the wrong zone.
What's the purpose of an old person if they can't contribute to economic activity?
Their domain expertise is out of date. Their body prevents them from doing strenuous activity. Their health prevents them from working long hours. They need medical checkups more often, and need more time off of work. More of their peers die, thus needing more time off work for funerals.
Clearly, old people just suck off the resources of the young, and are worthless from every economic standpoint. Gotta love capitalism!
I attended Gencon this last weekend. I had a great time. But one story is the following:
We were staying with some friends 2mi away from Lucas Oil station. As much as I don't like Uber (1), I installed it and used it to get a ride in the morning so my wife and I could run games. We called a taxi - they were a noshow. So Uber it was.
We get a gentleman who was in his upper 60's. He retired a few years ago, but medical bills meant he couldn't relax any. He instead had to go to "work". But who would hire someone at that age? Walmart greeter? There are no walmarts nearby in the 'hood. So, he did Uber.
This wasn't some upbeat 20 something doing 'awesome rides in their spare time'. This was someone doing the dregs of employment without any protections thereof. Injured on the job? LOL you're not on a job. Work or die. Unemployment protections are nice.... If you were "unemployed".
In the end, "gig economy" job-non-jobs only serve to make everyone poorer, except for a few in Silicon Valley. And when their stunt is up, the SV con-artists will move on to their next game of arbitrage. Who that next group who's made poorer is, is anyone's guess.
It's not an "Uber job". It's an "Uber shitty one-at-a-time contract that looks like a job but really isnt".
If you study your history, Uber is playing out exactly like how unregulated taxis played out in the 1910's and '20s. Scammers, lack of insurance, injuries, kidnappers, rapists, fare games were what the scene looked like then. The public demanded regulation, and thats what we got. In some locations, regulation went way too far (NY medallion garbage).
Long story short, Uber is an old scam. And in those kinds of scams, everyone except the company owner lose. The customer loses because of lack of insurance and higher risk. The "employee" loses because the money they get doesn't cover wear and tear of vehicle, gas, and minimum wage.
The age to which you can still work has probably increased about ten years to 75-80 since social security began 85 years ago. However there is still a period near the end of your life where you are unable to work.
That does not make sense. Even if he lost his union provided healthcare insurance, the magic age for retirement in the US is 65 because after that age you are covered by Medicare.
Medicare, if you were not aware, is available to everyone who is a US citizen over the age of 65.
Why doesn't he get automatically signed up for Medicare and Medigap at 65? It's a simple matter of the IRS notifying the people who administrate Medicare and Medigap as soon as they process his tax return and see that he turned 65 within the last 12 months. Excuse me for not knowing what department that is, not American. Why would he need to sign up?
No worries :) Medicare is divided into Part A and Part B. Part A is free, it covers hospital visits. Part B is like $114 a month and covers doctor visits. You need to meet some minimum requirements for work history, and sign up at medicare.gov.
Medigap is sold by private companies and can cost up to $250 a month roughly for full coverage, all the way down to like $60 for coverage after the first $2000 in expenses.
In our country everything is mostly done self service, social security is too. Oh well! I wish it was automatic, but the insurance lobbyists dont want that I think.
One anecdotal example: My dad is over 65 and is staying on his employer's health insurance because he's on an experimental drug which is not covered by Medicare.
Medicare only pays 80% of health care costs. The remaining 20% can be devasting to your finances. Thats why people buy, or some pension plans provide, supplemental health insurance at about $300 a month. (On top of $160 for medicare + drug plan)
Some out of pocket costs include a $1300 deductible for entering the hospital. The drug part only pays 90% of drug cost. The senior drugs advertised on television generally start at $20 a daily dose. Some cancer drugs top $100,000.
Medicare covers US residents who have paid ten years of FICA taxes. You dont have to be a citizen, but have to receive care in the US to be covered. I believe those who didnt pay enough FICA tax can still buy in at full price which is about eight times higher than the average recipient pays.
Anyone at any time can get sick, get hit by a car, etc. That's why everyone needs it.
Technically, the utility of health insurance is greatest when you are youngest and least when you are oldest. Saving an 8-year-olds life could mean allowing them to live to 80. A 72-year-old that can't get medical care will have at least lived to 72.
The U.S. health care system has it backwards. We should at least be giving heath insurance to the young. You could argue that it is moral to provide for health insurance for retirees, even if they spend way more on health insurance than everyone else and won't get much additional utility from it, but the idea that you would only give guaranteed health insurance to the oldest (and wealthiest age bracket) makes no sense.
This is slightly off topic but I really rile up some of my more passionately Democrat friends when I point out that one senator from CT is responsible for not having a public option in Obamacare. Why? Because the senator was beholden to the donations of the insurance companies.
Insurance is big business in CT. It's his job to represent his constituents interests and a booming insurance business is certainly in their (they = the people in CT who control who gets elected) interest even if it screws the rest of us. It's a classic case of doing what the people who decide whether or not you get to keep your job want you to do even when it's not ideal for the big picture.
Edit:
Down-voted because this isn't how things work or just because it's uncomfortably true?
If you think CA representatives won't side with the tech industry over the good of the nation then you're probably going to be proven wrong in the next few years.
It’s also his job to do what’s best for the people of this country. We have a lot of people in Washington who aren’t doing their jobs who continue to get elected because their constituents are either satisfied or apathetic.
Where did I imply that I liked it or thought it was good and/or moral? I'm just saying that the incentives are not to vote for what's good for the nation when the alternative will make a lot of money for a lot of people in your state, some of whom will bankroll your election campaign.
That's just not true in many cases; such as in hit-and-runs, or if the motorist that strikes you has no insurance. Or perhaps you're involved in a car accident from inside the car, such as a simple loss of control, and your parents have no insurance.
You are assuming the other person has insurance. The only accidents I have been in I had to use my uninsured motorist policy to cover an accident that was someone elses fault!
In theory yes. But the minimum required coverage is around 25000 USD, and whoever carries just that is very likely uncollectible anyway. Besides, in states like Florida and Mississippi 25 % are uninsured. It's quite third-world-like, in fact.
> Everyone regardless of age should get medical care. It's as simple as that.
This is debatable. Most of one’s healthcare expenses will be incurred in the final months of life. The population to whom this statistic doesn’t apply is doctors—they know when the marginal benefit of treatment isn’t worth it.
If I had a choice between burning my kids’ estate to sneak out a year in agony or die with dignity, I know which I’d choose. The compassionate response isn’t always the right one.
Because fires pose an undue risk to entire regions, not individuals.
Because the pricing mechanism is excessively unfair to individuals.
Because no one's life should be at risk because they don't have access to financial resources.
Individuals should be (and are, generally) free to start for-profit fire fighting businesses, but these should not seek to displace existing infrastructure.
> Why do you believe non-profit means it has to be provided by government?
That wasn't said or implied in the parent post, but the government _is_ our collective resource. By the people, for the people. It is we, the people, whose lives and property are put in danger by fires. The most effective way of grouping people's interest collectively in history has been through governance. Non-profit fire fighting may be viable, but it's better that we collectively work to keep our collection safe.
> Why do you believe profit is bad?
It depends entirely on the context. When people's lives are at stake profits incentivize cruel and unusual behavior from those incentivized to reap the reward.
Quite some red-herrings in this line of questioning. He never made reference to "profit is bad."
Saying that medical care for our fellow humans should not be for-profit implies that the individual values human life over our current constructed system of exchange. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. who would be bankrupted instantly if they were to suffer a significant accident that required prolonged medical attention. People that would otherwise continue to live productive and meaningful lives who would be regulated to abject poverty, destroying their potential.
The argument for socialized healthcare is simple; we have the resources to do it successfully and it costs less[1][2] and is more efficient than our current model. The only thing propping up our system is the millions of dollars of lobbying money from the insurance firms.
> Only in the absolutely insane US system one needs to burn through savings to get paleative care
End-of-life care is intensive, chronic, risky and generally involves cutting-edge techniques (since yesterday's death sentence is today's extendable life). This is fundamental to the cost of care. As a result, end-of-life costs are similar across the board [1].
If there is a unique American angle to this, it's doctors afraid of being sued spending too much on dying Americans.
> Health, just like fire fighting, should not be a for-profit business.
US has a reasonable share of non-profit hospitals and other medical institutions, but the prices are not drastically different.
Random googling suggests that average doctor salary in Los Angeles is in the range $195,335–$254,517. Across the pond average doctor salary in Ireland is quoted at €48,020. For context, a registered nurse in California is making on average $94,120.
European or Asian medical professionals go to medical or nursing school with the goals of joining the middle class. In the US "graduated med school" is synonymous with raking in cash.
"US has a reasonable share of non-profit hospitals and other medical institutions, but the prices are not drastically different"
Your mistake is to think that nonprofit means that they don't make profit. They still pay a ton of money to their administrators and doctors. And the rest of the profit goes into fancy buildings.
> If I had a choice between burning my kids’ estate to sneak out a year in agony or die with dignity, I know which I’d choose.
It's a false choice. The U.S. is the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and other, poorer countries provide universal health care. The choice isn't between providing health care to old or to young people, but between providing health care to everyone or (putting more money in some people's pockets? probably not even that when the cost of uninsured, unhealthy people is factored in).
It holds in survey results but has not been conclusively demonstrated in treatment data. It does not hold in Medicare data, but those could be limited for this population.
"In a Stanford study, 88 percent of responding physicians said they would avoid invasive procedures and life-prolonging machines. But a newly released comparative study of Medicare recipients, as well as a longitudinal study and separate analysis of Medicare data published in January, suggest that the actual differences between end-of-life treatments that doctors and nondoctors receive are slight."
The other data point is the story of "La Crosse, Wisconsin," which "spends less on health care for patients at the end of life than any other place in the country, according to the Dartmouth Health Atlas" [2]. The cause? "Some 96 percent of people who die in La Crosse have an advance directive or similar documentation" while "nationally, only about 30 percent of adults have a document like that."
That was a great idea when healthcare was relatively cheap. But now we live in a world where keeping people alive can easily cost 1,000,000+ per year. We are hitting the point that universal healthcare (everyone gets everything) may no longer be possible. If we are to ration, measurements like "years saved" rather than "lives saved" may be necessary.
Personally, i am against most organ transplants. The massive cost to save one life there could save thousands if spent on vaccinations overseas. Even at home, people die for lack of basic treatments every day.
Re: Organ transplants, national healthcare plans are funded by taxpayer revenue for the benefit of people living in-country. National healthcare systems will never be expanded to cover non-tax-paying patients the world over, for obvious reasons. So within the set of people that a national healthcare system can cover, it may well make sense to cover an expensive organ transplant for a relatively young person if it extends life by decades.
Even under nationalized systems such as Britain's NHS, they have to make utility decisions about how to allocate spend: a life is not of infinite value, and the NHS has to estimate the value of various types of care, because it simply isn't feasible to say "we'll spend and spend and spend, no matter what, for someone to stay alive."
For example, saving a person's left eye is less valuable if they still have their right, because they can still see, versus someone who was already blind in their right eye that would leave them completely blind. So they're willing to spend more to save that person's left eye if they would otherwise be completely blind.
Similarly, saving the life of someone young is of higher utility than someone old, because their life expectancy is longer.
These sorts of calculations bother some people, but it is a practical reality that these decisions have to be made. I actually think NHS works pretty well and it's better to be open and transparent about these sorts of decisions, versus the American system.
Then make the calculations based on cost like the NHS does and not by age. I totally agree that we should be wary of paying 100s of thousands for some cancer cures.
But we shouldn't tell old people "you are useless therefore go somewhere and die". It's hard to imagine but most of the young people here will also get old one day. And they won't be wealthy enough to pay health costs out of pocket.
Yes, but age is part of the utility. If we can save someone that would be expected to live another 50 years, it's more valuable than saving someone who will live another six months.
That doesn't mean they won't get any care, but it would mean that the maximum that would be spent to save them would be less than someone who was expected to live much longer because of the care.
The NHS bases their cost-effectiveness calculations on the increase in quality-adjusted life years that the treatment is expected to add. That measure will absolutely prioritize treatment of younger patients over treatment of older patients because there is more time over which the benefits of the treatment can be realized.
Paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a ten-year-old from cancer will be accepted because it could add decades to their life. Paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a ninety-year-old from cancer will not because it is unlikely to increase their lifespan very much.
> But we shouldn't tell old people "you are useless therefore go somewhere and die".
No one is saying that or advocating for that. I think you're unfairly assuming malice or ambivalence on the part of commenters who are trying to clarify the practical reality of the situation.
Consider for a moment, regardless of how unrealistic you feel it may be, the utility of funding the care of a 20 year old with cancer versus a 90 year old with cancer. All things being equal, a system with finite resources should prioritize the 20 year old, because the younger person will likely be less expensive to save long term and can generate more productivity for society afterwards. We'll call this our Socratic baseline.
Now obviously in the real world two patients' ailments are never equal. But if you can agree to this baseline, we can proceed to haggle as conditions more closely approximate reality and things stop being so equal.
We should not leave the elderly out to die or abandon them. But we have to be honest and balance that moral imperative with the unfortunate, practical reality that we only have finite resources. That doesn't mean we kill anyone off. It means we make nuanced decisions about how much to invest in their care - and how to do so - given their prognosis. Age is a fundamental measure of prognosis.
All fine and good. What I hear a lot is that young people shouldn't pay for old people. That's extremely short sighted.
I am on board with taking age into account for coat of treatments. But you also need to accept that older people need more care and that that's ok. It's a difficult balance.
Including "and can generate more productivity for society afterwards" as your Socratic baseline shows a gambler's fallacy.
The 90 year old has already contributed what he could to society. We know what he was worth and what he is worth, quantitatively speaking. Also, that 90 year old represents a much higher degree of cumulative investment by society, so now we are almost facing an argument of sunk cost fallacy vs gambler's fallacy... However, I would say you are discounting what he or she still has to offer, qualitatively, via knowledge and wisdom.
I would deny the gambler's fallacy by saying that somebody who gets cancer at 20 years is not just as likely to be as productive as someone who didn't get cancer until they were 90. They are actually more likely to be less productive and are already proving to be more expensive to keep alive, with much longer to go...
To say that the baseline should be how "productive" a 20 year old can be compared to a 90 year old, who's productive years are behind them, is imo to miss the point of life completely, and to relegate the purpose of man to that of farm equipment.
So, to follow your decision making basis all the way, they both would need to be let go. One is a lemon and the other is past its extended warranty.
You have finite resources. You have requests for resources which exceed your capabilities to service. You need to determine an order.
In an ideal utopian world, no one would ever need these services. In a less ideal world, everyone who needs these services would be serviced quickly and effectively with only positive outcomes.
In the real world, you have to make choices. These are very hard choices, and they have longer term impacts. It is literally "the good of the many vs the good of the few."
Well, literally triage is "decide the order of treatment of (patients or casualties)" without much of the finance input.
The NHS stuff is done by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence based on quality-adjusted life years and they have a guideline of £20,000 per year. So if a cancer treatment lets you live ten more years in ok condition it's worth spending £200k to do it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_for_Health_...
In the US everybody would scream "death panels" if they had something like NICE who tries to get some reality into the discussion. Instead the work of NICE is done by insurances. There is no open and rational discussion in the US about these things.
Considering that medical businesses are free to set their own prices, and occupational licensing prevents doctors from cheaper English-speaking countries (India, UK) from moving in and setting up a practice, how far are you willing to take that maxim?
* Everyone should get medical care when a routine physical costs $100?
* Everyone should get medical care when a routine physical costs $1,000?
* Everyone should get medical care when a routine physical costs $10,000?
"everyone should get medical care" suggests a system where one party (the taxpayers) are automatically covering a bill for medical service, while the other party (healthcare system) has every incentive to milk the system via over-testing, over-prescribing, over-scheduling routine visits and just plain old raising prices.
The soldier analogy doesn't quite apply, as it doesn't require complex skills and providers of the service are not in short supply. A potential candidate can surely hold out for a starting salary that's 10x the average, but others eyeing his position will likely be content with the average.
An anesthesiologist, on the other hand, or an MRI lab, might be the only game in town, and if they say the prices are going up by 10% next year, the prices are going up. One is welcome to drive to the next town over, but with taxpayers covering the expense, why bother?
What cost constraints exist in "everyone should get medical care" system to prevent healthcare providers from consuming 100% of GDP?
"Health spending is projected to grow 1.0 percentage point faster than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year over the 2017-26 period; as a result, the health share of GDP is expected to rise from 17.9 percent in 2016 to 19.7 percent by 2026."
> Driving the surge, the study suggests, is a three-decade shift of financial risk from government and employers to individuals, who are bearing an ever-greater responsibility for their own financial well-being as the social safety net shrinks.
This is going to be an increasingly serious problem over the next few decades. Expect bankruptcy filings to increase across the board, across all generations going forward.
This is my main critique of the "sharing" economy and tech darlings like Uber and Lyft, who have accelerated this anti-labor trend. What I find especially ironic here is that these services are currently only economically viable because of VCs subsidizing the costs, who themselves source a large percentage of their funding from traditional employee pension pools, etc. But of course it's all worth it because these "sharing" companies are just sooooo convenient.
With pensions and stuff there was a well defined path for people to get old and survive. What's the plan for an Uber driver when they get old? In general, society really needs to think what should happen with older people who aren't wealthy.
It's a meaningless question. "Uber drivers" isn't well defined. How much do most Uber drivers earn? What are their living situations? Do they have multiple jobs? How many hours do Uber drivers work?
A better question would be: "do you think an Uber driver who (a) lives alone (b) in a two bedroom apartment (c) in the heart of San Francisco and (d) works 20 hours per week will be able to save $5500/year?" The answer is no. But there is a lot more to the problem than just "Uber driver".
But from what I've read, for any reasonable definition, the percentage able to save that much is arguably small. Indeed, it's arguable that most of them are losing money.
What you've read (and I've also seen though not studied in any depth) is that a statistical category of person called "Uber driver" may lose money. But the statistical category of "Uber driver" is not the same as a "person who drivers for Uber".
Consider the argument: "can an Uber driver save for retirement?" If we define Uber driver as: "works for uber exclusively for 40 hours per week". Our answer to the question might be yes or it might be no. Ultimately what matters is the number of people who fall into that category every day for the rest of their lives.
If we find no people fit that category or that the people who do fit that category don't fit it for very long then we can safely say the answer to the question is irrelevant.
After all, "can unpaid interns save for retirement?" is a meaningless question. It doesn't matter. Statistical categories don't retire. And people who work as unpaid interns do not remain so for very long.
A person who drivers for Uber may just need quick, supplemental cash. Cash that may be exclusively funneled into a person's retirement account.
If we compel Uber to provide a "living wage" or a retirement package, we may find that those who need quick cash go without it. And people who would have saved for retirement are now not able to.
That is indeed the vision being sold for the gig economy. And I'm sure that it can work that way for some. But for the vast majority, even short term, it's looking like a con. It's like the 10s version of multilevel marketing.
What's the plan for an Uber driver when they get old?
In the UK they will be covered by the NHS despite their employer practicing industrial-scale evasion of Employer’s NI. That’s a loophole that must be urgently closed tho’ the Government and the Inland Revenue are inexplicably dragging their heels about doing it (indeed the entire “gig economy”)
One worrisome trend is the fact that more homeowners are retiring with large mortgages. The days of the mortgage burning party are over. Banks seem happy to do cash out refis on homeowners soon to retire.
Taking things out of the economy for themselves is the decades-long operating mode of the generation this article discusses. They went to free colleges and gave their kids ludicrously expensive colleges. They bought houses at fair prices, down-zoned their towns, and forced their children to move far away. They ran government deficits instead of paying taxes. They converted regular schools to adult schools, regular libraries to senior centers, etc. The fact that they would cash out their assets and leave nothing to their kids is 100% consistent.
This is a grossly unfair reading of what has happened in the economy over the last 40 years, and how it got that way. Unfair enough to be simply a lie. Please stop with the inter-generational warfare rhetoric - we have enough things dividing us as a people, by folks who want us divided.
[edit: spelling]
Why is it up to the younger generation to call off the inter-generational war? Facts are facts. 65 and older are now the least likely age group to live in poverty. Net wealth of people 65 and up has increased 50% since 1989 and fallen for all others by 25%. These outcomes are no accident. They are the direct result of an overt policy agenda, from Prop 13 to Reagan to Trump.
> Why is it up to the younger generation to call off the inter-generational war?
It's up to those throwing rocks to put the rocks down.
> Facts are facts
Aside from ascribing some kind of universal evil intent to people simply based on when they were born, which is idiotic, those are cherry-picked facts that do not accurately sum up the economic reality of how the US got to where it is now.
For instance, why not include the fact that the older generation was responsible for the most prodigious productivity growth the world has ever seen? Or that they've overseen massive increases in longevity, decreases in morbidity and childhood mortality, huge increases in number of people achieving higher education, etc?
They overcame the enormously damaging economic situation of the 1970's, which the younger people have absolutely not a clue about, and many have suffered decades of decreasing employment and wealth as a result of economic shifts in manufacturing and resource production.
There are economic challenges in every generation. The ones facing young people today are not the same as the ones that faced their parents and grandparents. It does no one any good to try to stir up hatred at a sub-group to gain political power, which is what the generational warfare is about. Leave that for the Fascists.
> have suffered decades of decreasing employment and wealth as a result of economic shifts in manufacturing and resource production.
It's the counterfactual basis of your argument that makes it absurd. It is undoubtedly true that this describes some people in that age cohort, but it doesn't describe it generally. They are much wealthier than both their ancestors and their descendants. While every generation faces its particular challenges, only one living generation faced those challenges by intentionally impoverishing the future.
As for the remainder of your points -- morbidity, mortality, educational attainment, and whatnot -- it is the case that the USA has underperformed all other advanced nations in these measures. You'll excuse me if I don't credit Boomers for falling behind countries like Cuba, Portugal and UAE.
At age 62 you can receive 45% the equity of your house as a lump sum or annuity and not have to pay it back while you own the house. This is called a reverse mortgage. The lender recovers costs fromthe sale of your house after you sell the house.
Reverse mortgages are fine, but I think a lot of people are cashing out their equity earlier with no means to make their mortgage payments once their income is reduced.
The smallest unit of a society is the family. It is natural that the family's collective wealth stay in the family.
Each generation tries to add to the family's wealth.
Clearly that's no longer the view among many... but it was the assumption behind inheritance.
I mean, parents have typically already spent hugely on support and education. Indeed, grown children were traditionally expected to support and care for their parents. Arguably, reverse mortgages wouldn't be so popular if they still did that. And yes, I get that the economic system is fucked up. But that's not parents' fault, for the most part.
This seems to be more about the choices than about the trends. Don't older couples usually down-size and move some place cheap like Florida or Arizona?
This can be a well-reasoned strategy for some. Arbitrage between the (assumed fixed) mortgage rate and the return on investment elsewhere can lead to an advantage if you simply leverage your equity in the house rather than locking it away.
This has been a workable strategy for a number of decades, although it isn't historically so.
What else you can do ? Either play the game or die. Thats the only choice you have rly.
You know what i hate more ? The fact that our governers make sure you wont even live long enough to make use of "any" of those retirement entitlements.
Best for them would be all of us dying right after "work age".
That's why I also hate the typical CEO/entrepreneur mindset; a lot of them think that they're helping to grow the pie and taking a small slice for themselves as a reward - In reality, the pie doesn't actually grow and each time that they take out a slice, there is less pie remaining for everyone else.
Corporate stocks are not actually growing in value, it's just the entire money supply which is being diluted for the benefit of corporations at the expense of everything else.
How does one measure that? With fiat currency? By the total number of goods produced? How does the quality of output fit into this model?
If you get more of something but quality is lower then it's not necessarily progress. You might need more of that thing to get the same value out of it.
What ever you save with your blood sweat and tears will be burned on medical expenses. Your best bet (after being diagnosed with something severe) is to convert all your last savings to cash, give it to a loved one, explain to the government you are broke, and die on the street. [1][2]
Nursing homes and hospices are designed to suck out your funds until you are dry, then dump you on state aid.
"The average annual cost to seniors nationally is $80,300 for a semi-private and $91,250 for a private room in 2015"
2. I originally had "in a state funded hospice", but opo pointed out that medicare will strip you of your benefits due to their claw back system. You may want to look into committing a felony, for state funded care.
My plan is to intentionally OD on opiod patches if it gets to the point where I'm too sick to live independently and am burning through savings to suffer like that.
The gift route gets clawed back; the system is designed to take all your money first before subsidizing care.
As a person who had grand parents with Alzheimer’s, it's starting to sound like this is my better option. I can go through pain, suffering, and what not completely with it or I can slowly go out without knowing or understand anything that is going on. I think I will take the latter.
Nah, I get that part. The part I don't get is where did we, as a society, fail so badly for people to even consider the things that I read around this thread.
I've had a similar experience with most of my grandparents, they suffered unnecessarily while we were unable to do anything. One grandmother died peacefully only because she had Alzheimer and she was out of touch, but the early period of Alzheimer was unbelievably degrading to her and to our memory of her. Why would anyone want to go through that?
In my country(India), if you go to government hospitals(which is the only place the poor can go), its not uncommon to see doctors advise euthanasia to seriously ill patients(burn victims, cancer, organ failures) who are poor. Its just that there are no real treatment option at their income level.
And death is easy to bear and forget than living through the pain of seeing your family go through helpless moments, and the humiliation of poverty till the eventual arrival of death.
Human life takes a lot of make up and dressing to make it look good.
This is not good advice. Enough people have given away all their assets to qualify for Medicaid, that there are rules to prevent this:
>...To prevent candidates from simply giving away their money or resources to qualify for Medicaid, the federal government implemented the “look-back period”. This is a set period of time prior to the individual’s application during which the Medicaid administering agency reviews all the financial transactions that the senior has made. If a transaction is found in violation of the look back period’s rules, the applicant will be assessed a penalty. Penalties come in the form of a period of time that the applicant is made ineligible for Medicaid.
Also since nursing homes lose money on medicaid patients they tend to have limits on how many medicaid patients they will accept. If you are on medicaid, you might not be able to to find a reasonable nursing home that will accept you.
A better answer us to buy long-term care insurance. If you go into a nursing home and you eventually have to go on medicaid, it is illegal for them to kick you out.
This can actually be done, but only over the course of a few years, or the government will insist on their cut (or deny you benefits). I honestly don’t know why there aren’t riots over the state of healthcare (and elder care is the worst part) in the US. It’s not like this isn’t going to happen to all of us who aren’t lucky enough to die quickly.
The cynic in me believes that as much as those family members may hate the state or elder care, they much prefer it to the alternative, ie having their relatives move in with them and taking care of them themselves.
Before following this advice you should really consider checking out a state funded hospice. I'm willing to bet you'll be looking for the exits within 10 minutes.
There's loopholes. If you are married, your best bet is to convert all your cash into an irrevocable single premium immediate annuity in your spouse's name. Your spouse's income doesn't get taken by Medicaid to pay for your expenses, it's not a gift since you're purchasing something of equal value, and it's not an asset because you can't cash it out immediately.
Basically, the strategy turns $100k into something like $6k/yr for the rest of your spouse's life (depending on age and gender), and makes you eligible for Medicaid. That said, you probably want to buy a slot in a nursing home that accepts Medicaid first, then "run out of money" and apply for Medicaid once you're in the nursing home. It's illegal to kick you out if they accept Medicaid and you're transitioning from private payment to Medicaid.
That said, nursing homes are hellholes, and I'd rather die with relatively minimal palliative care, in my own home, with friends and family visiting. That doesn't require BS like this. There's some circumstances where the Medicaid route may be better, so it's nice to know of this option.
This. Len Tillem, a lawyer who used to host a show on the old KGO 810 in the bay area, was telling this strategy for years. In fact, many go to his law offices for such trust setups for medical, etc.
I find it baffling how people think about this. In this case, money really, really, really does represent work.
You might be complaining the state doesn't pay for the elderly to retire easily ? Ok, let's do some basic calculations to sketch that out.
Right now there's a little over 12% elderly in the US (and really more like 10% once you take out the ones still working). That number is just about to rise rapidly to 15% by 2021 or so, then a little slower to ~25% by 2050. The under 18's will likely stay constant at ~25%. That means that the government, just for elderly care and schools (NOT including health care, the military, roads and harbors and other infrastructure ...) needs half your pay. 50%. Currently it needs ~25-30% for that. This is totally independent of the actual spending, it's amount of headcount that needs to go to elderly care.
So in order to simply provide current level care, and without considering health care for elderly, or increased longevity, your take home pay, just considering elderly taxes, needs to reduce from ~75% to under 50%. Or, how this will appear from the perspective of someone who works, your taxes need to rise by half. Every tax. For California, income tax needs to rise from 40% to 60% (and it's a progressive tax, and this means the income from that tax needs to rise, so it's not just higher rates for the rich. It's mostly higher rates for the poor, not because of corruption, but because that's where the money is), average. Sales tax from 10% to 15%. And so on. A little under half that tax raise will need to happen in the next president's term (or, God forbid, Trump's second). Just so we're clear, that's a few years away.
If, as many suggest here, care needs to be increased and more broadly available ... well that costs more, of course. That means a little under half the total economic activity in the US needs to be focused exclusively on taking care of others (again, not including health care, that needs to be added on top after that).
We all know that current workers are not prepared to pay this. So why are we wining that "government will not take my elders off of me" ? It cannot do so ...
And the truly scary part is ... compared to Europe, the US is not doing too bad. Europe is a disaster waiting to happen, and will fail sooner than the US. Compared to Japan, Europe looks fine. And compared to China, Japan barely has a problem.
It's weird to realize this, but longer term things are pretty obvious: the US will open up it's borders like never before (because in the US case, that might, just might, actually fix things). The EU will ... uh ... I'd say "die", but politicians never let something die : they go to war. Against whom ? It won't be very hard at all to start a war with China in a decade, potentially sooner. It's weird but WW3 between "the EU" (Germany) and China, in 10-15 years would make sense.
The political climate would need to change a lot for politicians to allow more military spending and budget cuts elsewhere. The current discussion about refugees and the unstable situation regarding Trump and the NATO might change this.
I still agree on Europe having lots of trouble in 10-15 years.
I gave a talk about generational differences in the workplace this year, so had a fair amount of research about how different generations manage finance.
The charts do a good job of telling the story, but it basically goes like this: Children of the great Depression were terribly frugal, working hard to avoid a future financial hardship.
Then the next generation (the one described in the article) decided they were not going to be miserly penny-pinchers like their parents. They bought everything with the belief they'd pay it off later.
Now the next generations see the folloy in their parents behavior, so now we have the FIRE generation, once again pinching pennies.
And so the pendulum swings back and forth. And the beat goes on.
This is a good point, in fact recently there have been a spate of articles claiming that millennials are saving too much (in cash at least) and not putting enough in the stock market:
180 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] threadhttps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3226574
https://www.lendingtree.com/glossary/secured-debt/
Young people can't default on a mortgage if they can't afford to save enough for a deposit on a house in the first place.
there you have it: the US healthcare system is driving responsible people into poverty, especially when paired with stagnant or falling income.
the solution is socialized universal healthcare. we will also need to re-create the social safety net somehow in a new and vastly expanded role. to be clear, silicon valley doesn't have a role to play here, aside from paying their taxes.
I was with you up until there....what's the thinking behind that part?
likewise, our society can't use software alone to solve our socioeconomic problems.
note: this is not because software is incapable of being part of the solution. far from it. but software is not about to rectify these issues without a political will to do so, which is separate.
1) SV companies are some of the biggest tax dodgers
2) SV companies are also some of the biggest drivers of economic inequity and tearing down these social safety nets that generations before us fought tooth-and-nail for
3) SV companies, like Facebook, are also the biggest drivers of our cultural decay, which feeds and accelerates these disturbing macro societal trends
having that money in the bank might help prevent future bankruptcies.
[0] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/08/just-stop-it-...
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2017/CES-WP-17-54.pdf
The point of insurance is to make a profit for the insurance company.
Making profit is fine, doing everything possible to maximize profit by defeating the purpose of its very existence is where things get in the wrong zone.
Their domain expertise is out of date. Their body prevents them from doing strenuous activity. Their health prevents them from working long hours. They need medical checkups more often, and need more time off of work. More of their peers die, thus needing more time off work for funerals.
Clearly, old people just suck off the resources of the young, and are worthless from every economic standpoint. Gotta love capitalism!
/sarcasm
I attended Gencon this last weekend. I had a great time. But one story is the following:
We were staying with some friends 2mi away from Lucas Oil station. As much as I don't like Uber (1), I installed it and used it to get a ride in the morning so my wife and I could run games. We called a taxi - they were a noshow. So Uber it was.
We get a gentleman who was in his upper 60's. He retired a few years ago, but medical bills meant he couldn't relax any. He instead had to go to "work". But who would hire someone at that age? Walmart greeter? There are no walmarts nearby in the 'hood. So, he did Uber.
This wasn't some upbeat 20 something doing 'awesome rides in their spare time'. This was someone doing the dregs of employment without any protections thereof. Injured on the job? LOL you're not on a job. Work or die. Unemployment protections are nice.... If you were "unemployed".
In the end, "gig economy" job-non-jobs only serve to make everyone poorer, except for a few in Silicon Valley. And when their stunt is up, the SV con-artists will move on to their next game of arbitrage. Who that next group who's made poorer is, is anyone's guess.
(1) After giving him 5 stars, I uninstalled uber.
If you study your history, Uber is playing out exactly like how unregulated taxis played out in the 1910's and '20s. Scammers, lack of insurance, injuries, kidnappers, rapists, fare games were what the scene looked like then. The public demanded regulation, and thats what we got. In some locations, regulation went way too far (NY medallion garbage).
Long story short, Uber is an old scam. And in those kinds of scams, everyone except the company owner lose. The customer loses because of lack of insurance and higher risk. The "employee" loses because the money they get doesn't cover wear and tear of vehicle, gas, and minimum wage.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6335a8.htm
Medicare, if you were not aware, is available to everyone who is a US citizen over the age of 65.
Most employers often encourage seniors to go take Medicare asap. Someone failed this man, this is basic information.
Medigap is sold by private companies and can cost up to $250 a month roughly for full coverage, all the way down to like $60 for coverage after the first $2000 in expenses.
In our country everything is mostly done self service, social security is too. Oh well! I wish it was automatic, but the insurance lobbyists dont want that I think.
People screw up. People forget. Errors occur, constantly.
It should be an auto-sign up with an opt-out form.
Some out of pocket costs include a $1300 deductible for entering the hospital. The drug part only pays 90% of drug cost. The senior drugs advertised on television generally start at $20 a daily dose. Some cancer drugs top $100,000.
Anyone at any time can get sick, get hit by a car, etc. That's why everyone needs it.
Technically, the utility of health insurance is greatest when you are youngest and least when you are oldest. Saving an 8-year-olds life could mean allowing them to live to 80. A 72-year-old that can't get medical care will have at least lived to 72.
The U.S. health care system has it backwards. We should at least be giving heath insurance to the young. You could argue that it is moral to provide for health insurance for retirees, even if they spend way more on health insurance than everyone else and won't get much additional utility from it, but the idea that you would only give guaranteed health insurance to the oldest (and wealthiest age bracket) makes no sense.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescription...
Edit:
Down-voted because this isn't how things work or just because it's uncomfortably true?
If you think CA representatives won't side with the tech industry over the good of the nation then you're probably going to be proven wrong in the next few years.
This is debatable. Most of one’s healthcare expenses will be incurred in the final months of life. The population to whom this statistic doesn’t apply is doctors—they know when the marginal benefit of treatment isn’t worth it.
If I had a choice between burning my kids’ estate to sneak out a year in agony or die with dignity, I know which I’d choose. The compassionate response isn’t always the right one.
Health, just like fire fighting, should not be a for-profit business.
Why do you believe non-profit means it has to be provided by government?
Why do you believe profit is bad?
Because fires pose an undue risk to entire regions, not individuals.
Because the pricing mechanism is excessively unfair to individuals.
Because no one's life should be at risk because they don't have access to financial resources.
Individuals should be (and are, generally) free to start for-profit fire fighting businesses, but these should not seek to displace existing infrastructure.
> Why do you believe non-profit means it has to be provided by government?
That wasn't said or implied in the parent post, but the government _is_ our collective resource. By the people, for the people. It is we, the people, whose lives and property are put in danger by fires. The most effective way of grouping people's interest collectively in history has been through governance. Non-profit fire fighting may be viable, but it's better that we collectively work to keep our collection safe.
> Why do you believe profit is bad?
It depends entirely on the context. When people's lives are at stake profits incentivize cruel and unusual behavior from those incentivized to reap the reward.
Saying that medical care for our fellow humans should not be for-profit implies that the individual values human life over our current constructed system of exchange. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. who would be bankrupted instantly if they were to suffer a significant accident that required prolonged medical attention. People that would otherwise continue to live productive and meaningful lives who would be regulated to abject poverty, destroying their potential.
The argument for socialized healthcare is simple; we have the resources to do it successfully and it costs less[1][2] and is more efficient than our current model. The only thing propping up our system is the millions of dollars of lobbying money from the insurance firms.
--
[1] http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/november/implementing-a-univer... [2]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-30/study-med...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
End-of-life care is intensive, chronic, risky and generally involves cutting-edge techniques (since yesterday's death sentence is today's extendable life). This is fundamental to the cost of care. As a result, end-of-life costs are similar across the board [1].
If there is a unique American angle to this, it's doctors afraid of being sued spending too much on dying Americans.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/cjarlotta/2016/01/19/end-of-lif...
Fire fighting still cost money. non profit medical still costs money. And yes, there is only so much medical care to go around.
US has a reasonable share of non-profit hospitals and other medical institutions, but the prices are not drastically different.
Random googling suggests that average doctor salary in Los Angeles is in the range $195,335–$254,517. Across the pond average doctor salary in Ireland is quoted at €48,020. For context, a registered nurse in California is making on average $94,120.
European or Asian medical professionals go to medical or nursing school with the goals of joining the middle class. In the US "graduated med school" is synonymous with raking in cash.
Your mistake is to think that nonprofit means that they don't make profit. They still pay a ton of money to their administrators and doctors. And the rest of the profit goes into fancy buildings.
It's a false choice. The U.S. is the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and other, poorer countries provide universal health care. The choice isn't between providing health care to old or to young people, but between providing health care to everyone or (putting more money in some people's pockets? probably not even that when the cost of uninsured, unhealthy people is factored in).
I would really like to have a source for this. Cynical me thinks this makes too much sense to be true...
"In a Stanford study, 88 percent of responding physicians said they would avoid invasive procedures and life-prolonging machines. But a newly released comparative study of Medicare recipients, as well as a longitudinal study and separate analysis of Medicare data published in January, suggest that the actual differences between end-of-life treatments that doctors and nondoctors receive are slight."
The other data point is the story of "La Crosse, Wisconsin," which "spends less on health care for patients at the end of life than any other place in the country, according to the Dartmouth Health Atlas" [2]. The cause? "Some 96 percent of people who die in La Crosse have an advance directive or similar documentation" while "nationally, only about 30 percent of adults have a document like that."
[1] https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/at-the-end-of-life...
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/03/05/286126451/livi...
Personally, i am against most organ transplants. The massive cost to save one life there could save thousands if spent on vaccinations overseas. Even at home, people die for lack of basic treatments every day.
For example, saving a person's left eye is less valuable if they still have their right, because they can still see, versus someone who was already blind in their right eye that would leave them completely blind. So they're willing to spend more to save that person's left eye if they would otherwise be completely blind.
Similarly, saving the life of someone young is of higher utility than someone old, because their life expectancy is longer.
These sorts of calculations bother some people, but it is a practical reality that these decisions have to be made. I actually think NHS works pretty well and it's better to be open and transparent about these sorts of decisions, versus the American system.
But we shouldn't tell old people "you are useless therefore go somewhere and die". It's hard to imagine but most of the young people here will also get old one day. And they won't be wealthy enough to pay health costs out of pocket.
That doesn't mean they won't get any care, but it would mean that the maximum that would be spent to save them would be less than someone who was expected to live much longer because of the care.
Paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a ten-year-old from cancer will be accepted because it could add decades to their life. Paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a ninety-year-old from cancer will not because it is unlikely to increase their lifespan very much.
No one is saying that or advocating for that. I think you're unfairly assuming malice or ambivalence on the part of commenters who are trying to clarify the practical reality of the situation.
Consider for a moment, regardless of how unrealistic you feel it may be, the utility of funding the care of a 20 year old with cancer versus a 90 year old with cancer. All things being equal, a system with finite resources should prioritize the 20 year old, because the younger person will likely be less expensive to save long term and can generate more productivity for society afterwards. We'll call this our Socratic baseline.
Now obviously in the real world two patients' ailments are never equal. But if you can agree to this baseline, we can proceed to haggle as conditions more closely approximate reality and things stop being so equal.
We should not leave the elderly out to die or abandon them. But we have to be honest and balance that moral imperative with the unfortunate, practical reality that we only have finite resources. That doesn't mean we kill anyone off. It means we make nuanced decisions about how much to invest in their care - and how to do so - given their prognosis. Age is a fundamental measure of prognosis.
I am on board with taking age into account for coat of treatments. But you also need to accept that older people need more care and that that's ok. It's a difficult balance.
The 90 year old has already contributed what he could to society. We know what he was worth and what he is worth, quantitatively speaking. Also, that 90 year old represents a much higher degree of cumulative investment by society, so now we are almost facing an argument of sunk cost fallacy vs gambler's fallacy... However, I would say you are discounting what he or she still has to offer, qualitatively, via knowledge and wisdom.
I would deny the gambler's fallacy by saying that somebody who gets cancer at 20 years is not just as likely to be as productive as someone who didn't get cancer until they were 90. They are actually more likely to be less productive and are already proving to be more expensive to keep alive, with much longer to go...
To say that the baseline should be how "productive" a 20 year old can be compared to a 90 year old, who's productive years are behind them, is imo to miss the point of life completely, and to relegate the purpose of man to that of farm equipment.
So, to follow your decision making basis all the way, they both would need to be let go. One is a lemon and the other is past its extended warranty.
You have finite resources. You have requests for resources which exceed your capabilities to service. You need to determine an order.
In an ideal utopian world, no one would ever need these services. In a less ideal world, everyone who needs these services would be serviced quickly and effectively with only positive outcomes.
In the real world, you have to make choices. These are very hard choices, and they have longer term impacts. It is literally "the good of the many vs the good of the few."
The NHS stuff is done by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence based on quality-adjusted life years and they have a guideline of £20,000 per year. So if a cancer treatment lets you live ten more years in ok condition it's worth spending £200k to do it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_for_Health_...
* Everyone should get medical care when a routine physical costs $100?
* Everyone should get medical care when a routine physical costs $1,000?
* Everyone should get medical care when a routine physical costs $10,000?
The question makes as much sense as asking "Should we have a military if soldiers have a salary of 250 billion dollars each?"
The soldier analogy doesn't quite apply, as it doesn't require complex skills and providers of the service are not in short supply. A potential candidate can surely hold out for a starting salary that's 10x the average, but others eyeing his position will likely be content with the average.
An anesthesiologist, on the other hand, or an MRI lab, might be the only game in town, and if they say the prices are going up by 10% next year, the prices are going up. One is welcome to drive to the next town over, but with taxpayers covering the expense, why bother?
What cost constraints exist in "everyone should get medical care" system to prevent healthcare providers from consuming 100% of GDP?
Meanwhile, https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...
"Health spending is projected to grow 1.0 percentage point faster than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year over the 2017-26 period; as a result, the health share of GDP is expected to rise from 17.9 percent in 2016 to 19.7 percent by 2026."
It's the whole point of insurance that most people who don't need payouts cover ruinious expenses for those who need it.
The proper way of handling the cost of health care is at a nation or world level of single payer.
Fight a war on disease, not drugs.
This is going to be an increasingly serious problem over the next few decades. Expect bankruptcy filings to increase across the board, across all generations going forward.
This is my main critique of the "sharing" economy and tech darlings like Uber and Lyft, who have accelerated this anti-labor trend. What I find especially ironic here is that these services are currently only economically viable because of VCs subsidizing the costs, who themselves source a large percentage of their funding from traditional employee pension pools, etc. But of course it's all worth it because these "sharing" companies are just sooooo convenient.
Soylent Green
Save a minimum of $5500/year or 10% of your annual salary. Whichever is greater (up to your cap).
A better question would be: "do you think an Uber driver who (a) lives alone (b) in a two bedroom apartment (c) in the heart of San Francisco and (d) works 20 hours per week will be able to save $5500/year?" The answer is no. But there is a lot more to the problem than just "Uber driver".
But from what I've read, for any reasonable definition, the percentage able to save that much is arguably small. Indeed, it's arguable that most of them are losing money.
Consider the argument: "can an Uber driver save for retirement?" If we define Uber driver as: "works for uber exclusively for 40 hours per week". Our answer to the question might be yes or it might be no. Ultimately what matters is the number of people who fall into that category every day for the rest of their lives.
If we find no people fit that category or that the people who do fit that category don't fit it for very long then we can safely say the answer to the question is irrelevant.
After all, "can unpaid interns save for retirement?" is a meaningless question. It doesn't matter. Statistical categories don't retire. And people who work as unpaid interns do not remain so for very long.
A person who drivers for Uber may just need quick, supplemental cash. Cash that may be exclusively funneled into a person's retirement account.
If we compel Uber to provide a "living wage" or a retirement package, we may find that those who need quick cash go without it. And people who would have saved for retirement are now not able to.
In the UK they will be covered by the NHS despite their employer practicing industrial-scale evasion of Employer’s NI. That’s a loophole that must be urgently closed tho’ the Government and the Inland Revenue are inexplicably dragging their heels about doing it (indeed the entire “gig economy”)
And some of us went further. We didn't have kids.
It's up to those throwing rocks to put the rocks down.
> Facts are facts
Aside from ascribing some kind of universal evil intent to people simply based on when they were born, which is idiotic, those are cherry-picked facts that do not accurately sum up the economic reality of how the US got to where it is now.
For instance, why not include the fact that the older generation was responsible for the most prodigious productivity growth the world has ever seen? Or that they've overseen massive increases in longevity, decreases in morbidity and childhood mortality, huge increases in number of people achieving higher education, etc?
They overcame the enormously damaging economic situation of the 1970's, which the younger people have absolutely not a clue about, and many have suffered decades of decreasing employment and wealth as a result of economic shifts in manufacturing and resource production.
There are economic challenges in every generation. The ones facing young people today are not the same as the ones that faced their parents and grandparents. It does no one any good to try to stir up hatred at a sub-group to gain political power, which is what the generational warfare is about. Leave that for the Fascists.
It's the counterfactual basis of your argument that makes it absurd. It is undoubtedly true that this describes some people in that age cohort, but it doesn't describe it generally. They are much wealthier than both their ancestors and their descendants. While every generation faces its particular challenges, only one living generation faced those challenges by intentionally impoverishing the future.
As for the remainder of your points -- morbidity, mortality, educational attainment, and whatnot -- it is the case that the USA has underperformed all other advanced nations in these measures. You'll excuse me if I don't credit Boomers for falling behind countries like Cuba, Portugal and UAE.
Why is there an expectation for kids to inherit?
I mean, parents have typically already spent hugely on support and education. Indeed, grown children were traditionally expected to support and care for their parents. Arguably, reverse mortgages wouldn't be so popular if they still did that. And yes, I get that the economic system is fucked up. But that's not parents' fault, for the most part.
“Cheryl Mcleod of Las Vegas filed for bankruptcy in January after struggling to keep up with her mortgage payments and other expenses. “I am 70,”
Why the heck do you have a mortgage at 70?!
This has been a workable strategy for a number of decades, although it isn't historically so.
You know what i hate more ? The fact that our governers make sure you wont even live long enough to make use of "any" of those retirement entitlements.
Best for them would be all of us dying right after "work age".
Corporate stocks are not actually growing in value, it's just the entire money supply which is being diluted for the benefit of corporations at the expense of everything else.
If the pie doesn't really grow, why has the world economic output increased so much in the last 200 years?
If you get more of something but quality is lower then it's not necessarily progress. You might need more of that thing to get the same value out of it.
Nursing homes and hospices are designed to suck out your funds until you are dry, then dump you on state aid.
1. https://www.senioradvisor.com/san-jose-ca/how-much-do-san-jo...
"The average annual cost to seniors nationally is $80,300 for a semi-private and $91,250 for a private room in 2015"
2. I originally had "in a state funded hospice", but opo pointed out that medicare will strip you of your benefits due to their claw back system. You may want to look into committing a felony, for state funded care.
The gift route gets clawed back; the system is designed to take all your money first before subsidizing care.
Friends and family aren't exactly hitmen.
And death is easy to bear and forget than living through the pain of seeing your family go through helpless moments, and the humiliation of poverty till the eventual arrival of death.
Human life takes a lot of make up and dressing to make it look good.
>...To prevent candidates from simply giving away their money or resources to qualify for Medicaid, the federal government implemented the “look-back period”. This is a set period of time prior to the individual’s application during which the Medicaid administering agency reviews all the financial transactions that the senior has made. If a transaction is found in violation of the look back period’s rules, the applicant will be assessed a penalty. Penalties come in the form of a period of time that the applicant is made ineligible for Medicaid.
https://www.payingforseniorcare.com/medicaid/look-back-perio...
The "lookback period" is usually 5 years.
Also since nursing homes lose money on medicaid patients they tend to have limits on how many medicaid patients they will accept. If you are on medicaid, you might not be able to to find a reasonable nursing home that will accept you.
A better answer us to buy long-term care insurance. If you go into a nursing home and you eventually have to go on medicaid, it is illegal for them to kick you out.
Long term care insurance should be purchased after age 60 to offset those care costs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_care_insurance
Basically, the strategy turns $100k into something like $6k/yr for the rest of your spouse's life (depending on age and gender), and makes you eligible for Medicaid. That said, you probably want to buy a slot in a nursing home that accepts Medicaid first, then "run out of money" and apply for Medicaid once you're in the nursing home. It's illegal to kick you out if they accept Medicaid and you're transitioning from private payment to Medicaid.
That said, nursing homes are hellholes, and I'd rather die with relatively minimal palliative care, in my own home, with friends and family visiting. That doesn't require BS like this. There's some circumstances where the Medicaid route may be better, so it's nice to know of this option.
You might be complaining the state doesn't pay for the elderly to retire easily ? Ok, let's do some basic calculations to sketch that out.
Right now there's a little over 12% elderly in the US (and really more like 10% once you take out the ones still working). That number is just about to rise rapidly to 15% by 2021 or so, then a little slower to ~25% by 2050. The under 18's will likely stay constant at ~25%. That means that the government, just for elderly care and schools (NOT including health care, the military, roads and harbors and other infrastructure ...) needs half your pay. 50%. Currently it needs ~25-30% for that. This is totally independent of the actual spending, it's amount of headcount that needs to go to elderly care.
So in order to simply provide current level care, and without considering health care for elderly, or increased longevity, your take home pay, just considering elderly taxes, needs to reduce from ~75% to under 50%. Or, how this will appear from the perspective of someone who works, your taxes need to rise by half. Every tax. For California, income tax needs to rise from 40% to 60% (and it's a progressive tax, and this means the income from that tax needs to rise, so it's not just higher rates for the rich. It's mostly higher rates for the poor, not because of corruption, but because that's where the money is), average. Sales tax from 10% to 15%. And so on. A little under half that tax raise will need to happen in the next president's term (or, God forbid, Trump's second). Just so we're clear, that's a few years away.
If, as many suggest here, care needs to be increased and more broadly available ... well that costs more, of course. That means a little under half the total economic activity in the US needs to be focused exclusively on taking care of others (again, not including health care, that needs to be added on top after that).
We all know that current workers are not prepared to pay this. So why are we wining that "government will not take my elders off of me" ? It cannot do so ...
And the truly scary part is ... compared to Europe, the US is not doing too bad. Europe is a disaster waiting to happen, and will fail sooner than the US. Compared to Japan, Europe looks fine. And compared to China, Japan barely has a problem.
It's weird to realize this, but longer term things are pretty obvious: the US will open up it's borders like never before (because in the US case, that might, just might, actually fix things). The EU will ... uh ... I'd say "die", but politicians never let something die : they go to war. Against whom ? It won't be very hard at all to start a war with China in a decade, potentially sooner. It's weird but WW3 between "the EU" (Germany) and China, in 10-15 years would make sense.
https://www.dw.com/en/1-in-10-german-military-pilots-lost-he...
The political climate would need to change a lot for politicians to allow more military spending and budget cuts elsewhere. The current discussion about refugees and the unstable situation regarding Trump and the NATO might change this.
I still agree on Europe having lots of trouble in 10-15 years.
The charts do a good job of telling the story, but it basically goes like this: Children of the great Depression were terribly frugal, working hard to avoid a future financial hardship. Then the next generation (the one described in the article) decided they were not going to be miserly penny-pinchers like their parents. They bought everything with the belief they'd pay it off later. Now the next generations see the folloy in their parents behavior, so now we have the FIRE generation, once again pinching pennies.
And so the pendulum swings back and forth. And the beat goes on.
"42% of Millennials are investing conservatively, compared with 38% of Generation X investors and 23% of baby boomers, according to the Fidelity survey." source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreacoombes/2018/03/13/millen...
But having lived through 2007-2009, it's no surprise they have a preference for cash in the bank.