Posted on 06/24/2006 11:14:12 AM PDT by Incorrigible
do I feel for the younger people?....yes I do....I don't belong to AARP because I hate the elderly lobby and the selfish demands they make...
but not being a govt worker or a worker in a huge company, I will need my SS....I won't be destitute without it, but it will make it easier....
I think that it will not be very pretty in the short term.
In the long term, it may be that the world's productivity will soar to the point that nobody goes unfed, unclothed, or uncared-for medically.
This unintelligent 50-year-old you are describing is going to have a standard of living which is lower than a more intelligent and productive Indian or Chinese, assuming that India and China continue on the road of capitalism and freedom.
If the Chinese Communist Party attempts to maintain their power, this will act as an impediment to eventual Chinese productivity. Chinese standards of living will rise but will stop rising at somewhere less than the US has now. But the difference will not permit the US to subsidize their less productive people. They will be stuck with working very hard to make very little.
These are predictions I am making. It is not that I want this to happen. It is just the inevitable outcome of economic freedom on a global scale. Americans have had the luxury of subsidizing unproductive people for generations now. It will be sobering for them to realize that they no longer have the wealth to do so.
Tell me what YOU think is going to happen to such people as you have described. Such people expect to live better than Chinese or Indian people who are more productive. How can it be accomplished? I don't know of a way.
I suspect that those of us who do get some SS money like is owed to us will also be helping our kids and grandkids quite a bit....I'm counting on it and don't feel ashamed one bit that I want to leave my kids something when we are both gone....
I think that's what families do....one generation helps the other....
I can't understand it either.....almsot like a disdain for their children....
I look at the Asian-Americans and I see all I need to know.....brothers and sisters almost being REQUIRED to help with college expenses for each other and supporting mom and dad....and mom and dad thinking not of themselves but of what they can leave behind so their kids and grandkids will have a little bit easier....
wanting to spend "every cent" reminds me of the AARP attitude...."we're the most important people in the world"......again, some old people think they can't go to Hell.....
"I'm ***planning*** on never collecting a nickel. Talk of any kind of payout is just silly. The realization that SS is a vast con game is not a recent one--I didn't plan on having a nickel left in place to collect back in the early 1970s. Anyone who planned otherwise was delusional then."
I agree with everything you've posted. Politically, however, any end to Social Security has to start with either a commitment by government to purchase annuities guaranteeing payments at current levels plus a regular COLA increase, OR a payment of what was paid in plus interest. If we want to end the program prior to any crash, from a pragmatic perspective, we have to have seniors going along with it, and they'll only go along with it if they "get theirs." You and other Freepers may well be altruistic or intelligent enough to have no expectations from SS, but most Boomers will be different, and current retirees will ABSOLUTELY be different.
"to be fair, shouldn't those collecting today be given cuts?"
BWA HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Look at you, smoking crack and posting to FR at the same time! I'm going to tell the mods on you! 8^)
why does "SS reform" always mean that I will work longer and I will get less....
how about those already collecting taking part in the "reform" part.....
I know you meant it, but it'll NEVER happen. NEVER.
Speaking as the official representative of those derided as crackpots because we're libertarians and Consitutionalists, there is simply NO WAY seniors will take a cut in their Social Security, and they vote far too consistently for any Congressional representative to fear threats from Boomers and Gen X about the issue, especially when neither group has a great track record of pressure group voting on this issue.
Reform of SS will be lucky to get SS ended. It'll never get a cut for those currently collecting. And I LIKE imagining government within its Constitutional mandates. I just don't believe that we can ever wean seniors from the teat, they're already too addicted to the pork, er, milk. The only way we can get them off the dole is to pay their way off with cash in the bank or the same sort of clear payment schedule. And even then we'll still be stuck paying for Medicare and their drugs until we get those nightmares abolished.
>Tell me what YOU think is going to happen to such people as you have described. Such people expect to live better than Chinese or Indian people who are more productive. How can it be accomplished? I don't know of a way.<
We're about to acquire a permanent peasant underclass that will only swell as more illegals swell the numbers of people who cannot do more than semi-skilled jobs increase.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that we'll all be part of that underclass when we have no manufacturing left in this country of any description.
I agree. I am babysitting for 2 days at the home of one of my 4 children as I type this. I fill in whenever there is a work schedule conflict. With 5 grandchildren between 3 out of my four children, that makes grandparenting a full time job. :)
These are predictions I am making. It is not that I want this to happen. It is just the inevitable outcome of economic freedom on a global scale. Americans have had the luxury of subsidizing unproductive people for generations now. It will be sobering for them to realize that they no longer have the wealth to do so.
Very well put. Those with the most marketable skills will do the best in what will be a bad situation for all; Those who don't push themselves out of their comfort zone and acquire those skills will have an exceedingly tough time.
None of use wish this to happen - it is just the economic version of a physicist watching a carload of people barreling toward a brick wall. The physcist knows that the result won't be pretty and those not wearing seat belts will have it worse...
Carolyn
The "good news" is that there is no reason to believe that we will fare less well than India or China. We will always be able to have standards of living at least as good as either of them.
What we will not be able to do is subsidize those at the bottom of the economic scale at a level any greater than India or China. Our wealthiest people will be every bit as wealthy as the wealthy Chinese or Indians.
Our middle class will be as well off as their middle class. And, unfortunately, the least affluent Americans will be no better off than the least affluent in the rest of the world.
The standard of living of engineering professionals in India is already on the rise. Opportunities for them have grown such that employers are forced to recruit candidates which are other than the top tier of graduates from their engineeering schools. The pressure to move jobs overseas will lessen as the standards of living in those locales increases. When you hear that technical professionals in India or China are building McMansions and driving fancy foreign cars, then you will know that we are approaching an equilibrium where jobs will stop migrating out of the US.
Years ago, while working as a software engineer, I was compelled to consider the possibility that my job would migrate to these foreign countries. I realized that my best interests lay, not in guaranteeing a minimum standard of living for unskilled, uneducated, untrainable Americans, but in hoping that my competitors in foreign lands would prosper to such an extent that it would no longer be attractive to export my job. It is the properity of people like myself in foreign countries which is most closely linked to my own prosperity.
>The "good news" is that there is no reason to believe that we will fare less well than India or China. We will always be able to have standards of living at least as good as either of them. <
You are assuming that anyone here has a service or skill anyone will pay anything for. Even health care skills will be next to worthless if no one can pay for them, or they want to barter 10 years of corn for setting a broken finger.
Several years ago my wife and I visited Shanghai. We were amazed by the fact that every store had a group of clerks waiting at the door as customers would enter. Every customer got their own clerk.
Such clerks were paid very little, no doubt, and their standards of living are low. Typically they are able to rent just a single room and share a toilet with others on their floor. There are no showers in the building, but shower rooms can be rented for the equivalent of a few cents.
These single rooms have no kitchen facilities. Instead, other people with low standards of living fix food for them. Every meal time, vendors appear in virtually every side street and prepare simple food at amazingly low prices.
If a tourist such as ourselves goes into a fancy restaurant, we have to pay very nearly the same price as here in the west. That is, ten bucks a head for a fancy meal.
Fortunately, we were travelling with a Chinese couple. We joined the mass of the population in enjoying simple food at "affordable" prices. One serving of meat with rice was sufficient to feed three of us for one meal. The cost was less than fifty cents. The expensive restaurants were for the tourists. There was plenty of food at affordable prices available along every side street in Shanghai.
We didn't see any "homeless" people holding signs saying "Will work for food". Everybody was already working for food and making their way as best they could in the world.
There will never be a lack of jobs preparing food for others. Or cleaning washrooms for others. Or doing laundry for others. What I am describing is a lower standard of living than most of us are used to seeing. But that is the economic reality for much of the world. The advantages that freedom and capitalism have given us in the US is becoming available to the rest of the world. Their standard of living will rise. Ours will probably fall.
Those who lack the fortitude to get themselves a pot and some rice and to prepare food for others, or who lack the fortitude to make themselves available to clean shower rooms, will suffer. Perhaps they will be taken care of by family members. Perhaps they will be seen as deserving by some philanthropist such as Bill Gates.
What cannot happen, is that incomes and taxes will remain as they are and that the US government will become the caretaker for people who cannot or will not help themselves. There just will not be resources for it.
What I have described in terms of incomes and taxes is what must happen to preserve any jobs at all in the US. If we deny this reality, then there may well be NO jobs in the US and a starving population. Once we have adopted a standard of living on par with the developing world, then there will be manufacturing jobs here, since there will be no economic justification to move them away.
"One thing that is rarely mentioned in these stories is the transfer of wealth that will happen when the parents of these baby boomers die and leave their estates to the baby boomers."
It may not be a consideration, since these boomers are probably balanced by those whose parents don't have any "estates" to leave. My parents and many relatives were in the ministry, making meager livings, as were the farmers and blue collar workers in the congregations. You, your parents and inlaws are lucky to be in a better position.
One thing that is rarely mentioned in these stories is the transfer of wealth that will happen when the parents of these baby boomers die and leave their estates to the baby boomers.
I suspect this will be a smaller factor than many expect. The long term care needs of older adults can easily and rapidly consume a lifetime of concientious saving.
>There will never be a lack of jobs preparing food for others. Or cleaning washrooms for others. Or doing laundry for others. What I am describing is a lower standard of living than most of us are used to seeing. But that is the economic reality for much of the world. The advantages that freedom and capitalism have given us in the US is becoming available to the rest of the world. Their standard of living will rise. Ours will probably fall.<
The fallacy of your thinking is to believe that some kinds of work will always be there.
How many engineering jobs will there be when there are no plants to build or operate?
How many accounting jobs will exist if there is next to nothing to account for?
How many teaching jobs past basic elementary subjects when there are no jobs left requiring any extensive training?
How many openings for dentists when no one can pay for dental work?
How many MBAs will find jobs?
What are the lawyers going to be litigating?
What the tender-handed, desk bound fail to understand is that by torpedoing the lesser-skilled, they sink the whole. Economically, this country took off only after ordinary people could afford the purchase of a basic car, a radio, indoor plumbing.
Take a good look at the Depression in this country. Most people cooked at home. They did their own laundry. They did not make ends meet as you describe in China. The Depression ended only because of the demands of WW2 and the postwar demand for goods that the US was able to fill because of intact industry.
We've been kidding ourselves for a long time that we'll be the center for innovation while others build what we design. Why should anyone go into technical fields today at present pay rates? Teachers somehow think that everyone else is making 6 figures and driving a Lexus, but you can shut them up in a hurry if you tell them what engineers are making.
The "productivity" of China is based on manufacturing in conditions, both in the workplace and regulatory, that would never be allowed here. A piece of electronics will be cheaper if you lock the workers in and charge them for their food--but to say that is a more competitive form of capitalism is a stretch. I would call it industrialized feudalism.
This isn't about some of us having the "fortitude" to keep dodging the economic bullet, but about a system that is sick, that will ultimately drag us all down, especially if we flood the country with people offering few skills.
What you are paid is not dependent upon the pay in other countries. It depends upon what your skills are worth here. Just because an electrical engineer in Singapore or Japan or Malaysia makes the equivalent of $65k there does not mean they will make that here if there are no openings for them. What was an electrical engineer worth in Shanghai in 1952? In Japan in 1946?
It's like growing vegetables. Throw seeds onto decent soil with light and rain, and they grow. Throw them onto concrete without rain, and nothing happens. The first set of seeds in turn leads to...more seeds, and more growth. The second is a dead end, which is where we are headed faster than I care to think about too long.
What possible motivation would the remaining companies have for moving engineering jobs to Singapore or Japan if the cost here is the same as there?
Jobs are leaving because there is economic advantage to moving them. When that advantage disappears then the jobs will stop moving.
You make it sound like Americans are so stupid that we are all going to stand around whining while our families starve to death. Tell me something. How much less than you are spending now could your family live on? I'm talking just the basics. Food, shelter, simple clothing, medical attention only for serious matters, etc.
Those with the biggest problem will be those with huge debts. Such debts will be very painful for those who overestimate their future prospects. The "things" that some people have accumulated will become much less valuable if there is a serious downturn.
The changes I am describing are going to take place over a couple of generations, not overnight. There will be some fluctuations that will give warning to those paying attention.
Consider what is happening to GM. They are downsizing what, about 25% due to loss of market share? Does that mean that people aren't buying cars anymore? No. It means that they are buying cars from other companies. Just as soon as GM begins making the same car at the same price as those companies, they can expect to have their business stop shrinking.
I have no idea just how small GM, or any other auto maker will have to become before the employees DEMAND that their wages be reduced. But there will be millions of workers who take jobs at wages that are low enough to justify their employment. Let's just pray that the government doesn't try to help with a minimum wage law. Or limits on maximum hours like in France.
I'll ask you again. What do you think will be happening over the next two generations? What do you think will happen to the standard of living? What will happen to government spending? What will happen to the Social Insecurity system?
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