Social security by the numbers

[Pucky Freak]

2. Financial independence/financial health is not the responsibility of anyone but the individual person. It's not the government's role, the employer's role, etc. Individuals who don't have enough discipline, hustle, work ethic, etc. will continually have their income ceiling defined for them. Those with a little hustle can define their own income ceiling.

Each individual person is responsible. When 70-75% of the adult population fails in that responsibility, however, it ends up costing everyone in society. That is the reality on the ground in the US today. If we make it really easy for everyone to mess up financially, it ends up being my own personal loss, even if I am not the one making foolish decisions.

The way we have decided to manage our capitalist economy since 1980 has been to facilitate the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the huge corporations. Credit cards, ARM’s, HELOC, 0% down payments, unsecured loans, subsidized student loans, Citizens United, 401(k), Roth, subprime lending, and a dozen other financial traps have crippled middle America, while the number of individuals with 100M to 10Bn net worth has exploded, largely through the those same mechanisms.

Like most other financially successful adults, I have leveraged debt and harnessed compounding interest to put myself in a great position. Calculated risks, and hard work are two other handy mechanisms employed by many more. No one deserves anything except to reap what they have sown. Everyone should follow this formula, but I am short-sighted if I leave it at just that.

I have become a big proponent of things like wealth tax, a functional estate tax, dumping TBTF, universal healthcare, antitrust, subsidized healthcare, collective bargaining, overhauling the carceral State, affordable housing, socialized long-term care, and other solidly left ideas not because they are right thing to do, or because anyone deserves them, but because I am sick of personally paying the price for our society’s numerous systemic economic failures. There is nearly always a way to pay for such things through erasure of the financial loss already incurred by their current absence, like our 182Bn carceral State, and our Health care that costs twice as much as it does everywhere else in the world.

 

[D_Walt]

Each individual person is responsible. When 70-75% of the adult population fails in that responsibility, however, it ends up costing everyone in society. That is the reality on the ground in the US today. If we make it really easy for everyone to mess up financially, it ends up being my own personal loss, even if I am not the one making foolish decisions.

The way we have decided to manage our capitalist economy since 1980 has been to facilitate the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the huge corporations. Credit cards, ARM’s, HELOC, 0% down payments, unsecured loans, subsidized student loans, Citizens United, 401(k), Roth, subprime lending, and a dozen other financial traps have crippled middle America, while the number of individuals with 100M to 10Bn net worth has exploded, largely through the those same mechanisms.

Like most other financially successful adults, I have leveraged debt and harnessed compounding interest to put myself in a great position. Calculated risks, and hard work are two other handy mechanisms employed by many more. No one deserves anything except to reap what they have sown. Everyone should follow this formula, but I am short-sighted if I leave it at just that.

I have become a big proponent of things like wealth tax, a functional estate tax, dumping TBTF, universal healthcare, antitrust, subsidized healthcare, collective bargaining, overhauling the carceral State, affordable housing, socialized long-term care, and other solidly left ideas not because they are right thing to do, or because anyone deserves them, but because I am sick of personally paying the price for our society’s numerous systemic economic failures. There is nearly always a way to pay for such things through erasure of the financial loss already incurred by their current absence, like our 182Bn carceral State, and our Health care that costs twice as much as

I guess your motto is “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. That idea has served the world well.

 

[Pucky Freak]

I guess your motto is “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. That idea has served the world well.

Yeah, that has killed more people than anything else over the last 150 years. A FAR worse failed experiment.

The collective net worth of the US is 124 trillion, or about $365k per each citizen. So if you divided everything out evenly we are in a communist utopia for about 3 seconds before mass chaos ensues and our society dissolves.

Capitalism naturally migrates nearly all (90-95% or more) the wealth to the top over time, and then resets after famines, war, pandemics, natural disasters, and economic collapses. That is how it functioned in societies since it’s emergence around the time of the French Revolution through the early 1930’s. Government is tiny and functions as a bare-bones monetary policy framework.

I have no problem with pure capitalism, but rules are rules: No bailouts, no stimulus, no deficit spending, no entitlements. Zero, zip, nada.

In the early years of the Great Depression we decided to throw the government in the mix to stimulate the economy. 1933-1980 we let quasi-capitalism continue, but taxed the crap out of top earners to slow down how quickly wealth migrated upward which allowed a thriving middle class to emerge. Like it, love it, or hate it, that was what molded the first real opportunity for anyone, anyone at all to make something of themselves and rise up the economic ladder.

No major shocks to the economy until we decide to remove the guard rails off the financial industry in the Reagan era and spawn the S&L crisis. But now we really change the rules about capitalism and don’t allow an epic failure to unfold. Instead, bail out the big players. Then again in 2008, and again in 2020.

Corporate America lives off middle America welfare like a bunch of entitled deadbeat kids. Zero consequences for taking impossibly stupid risks with OUR money. It is a completely crap deal for 95% of Americans. Those in the 96-99% range it is somewhat of a break-even. Those in the 30M net worth and higher range get to make their own rules - only half of the taxes they legally owe are even paid.

50% of the US stock market is now owned by the top 1% net worth individuals. The rest of us live like ants in the shadow of a fortress. The 1% is not where they are today on account of capitalism. They are there because they hijacked the whole system and took away all the reset buttons.

So if we are going to play the game that way, then coddle everyone the same way we coddle Goldman Sachs. I have to choke back the vomit in saying that, but fair is fair. I much prefer no coddling at all, but in reality we’re not taking a time machine back to 1925, and we’re all stuck trying to manage an enormous and abominable federal government.