Opinion: Half of Americans over 55 may retire poor

Note. Your opinions always take thread off topic. So I play along.

 

Longer than you apparently

Yes they have.

 

That would explain it all right.

Oh, really? When? How?

Stop makin' $#!+ up.

 

It wasn't OT. It addressed your false claim directly.
Dems. Tax and spend.
Repubs. Borrow and spend.


It's easily verified.

 

I agree this phenomenon is very common, and is often seen here on PF. People on the right who have suffered institutionalized injustice and struggled to overcome it, and then to place themselves in a position to profit from it, believe that others should be forced to suffer the same injustice. The three fallacious and dishonest components of this attitude seem to be
1) If I did it, anyone can; so if they don't, they have chosen not to.
2) I have earned the right to profit from the injustice I previously suffered, even if that means others must also suffer it.
3) The injustice I suffered is legal, so it can't be unjust and must be rightful.

Never underestimate people's aversion to clear and honest thought.

 

I am not the one making anything up. We are a democracy. We chose to our own fate. Unlike your country, America is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

I realize that you hate justice, but your hatred cannot make it not exist, sorry.

We must certainly carry the young. The old and disabled, not so much: that is a choice, and many societies have chosen not to.

Societies seem to survive despite not requiring rich, greedy, privileged parasites to work.

That's clearly false because human society is essentially different from wolf society: wolves can only extract a certain amount of food from their environment before the resource collapses, while human societies can increase the amount of food their environment provides, effectively without limit, by investing in tools.

Justice is also different in human societies and wolf societies, for the same reason: in wolf societies, genetic survival is based on individual competition for dominance and resources within the pack, whereas in human societies it is based on societal competition for dominance and resources (i.e., war) and production within the society, for which justice ensures accurate incentives.

Ahem. I am the one here who opposes the dependence of rich, greedy, privileged parasites at the expense of society, while you rationalize, justify and excuse it by blaming the victims, and I will thank you to remember it.

Ahem. Enabling people to access opportunity that would otherwise be accessible without having to pay rich, greedy, privileged parasites full market value just for permission to do so is not harmful to them. I will thank you to remember that, too.

No. You might be discussing the realities of non-human mammalian communities, but I am only discussing human ones. Their realities are quite different, as proved above.

I'm not a capitalist, and I have resources. You seem to find a lot of ways to be wrong.

I don't know if I would call those who concoct fallacious, absurd and disingenuous rationalizations for greed, privilege and injustice "demons," but they definitely exist.

Massive, systematic, institutionalized injustice is not a phantom. It is the reality of capitalism almost as much as it is of socialism, and it impoverishes and enslaves billions, and kills millions every year.

 

Oh, you definitely are.

The resemblance of American electoral politics to democracy is actually rather slight.

Garbage. Institutions designed and established centuries ago by white male landowners to secure their own profit, power and privilege cannot honestly be described as a choice by the modern victims. Only dishonestly.

Which nevertheless incarcerates a far larger fraction of its population than any actual democracy, using it as a source of slave labor, and bravely bombs the $#!+ out of poor countries from the safety of drone control rooms....

 

Still not as bad as China, North Korea, or the Soviet Union...

 

The Soviet Union has been gone for 30 years. If you are going to favorably compare the current USA with past societies that falsely purported to be democracies, there is a pretty long list to choose from.

 

My obvious point was that if you were going to compare the US, by the metric you are using, to any major Communist country, the US would still come out favorably.
Which is probably something you need to consider when you are trying to make the US "change". Because I doubt the change you are going to be trying to create will be focused solely and specifically on prison reform.
I hope that's not too off-topic. But a discussion about prisons did come up in a thread about poverty, so I am going to assume they are connected.

 

Trump calls them losers and suckers

 

I thought the metric was "land of the free," not "freer than socialist dictatorships, anyway,"

It definitely won't. The appalling atrocity that is the American law enforcement system does not even make the top three of the reforms the country needs to become less of a danger to humanity.

They are definitely connected. Highly.

 

1) No, we must carry those who genuinely cannot carry themselves. That's how the pack survives. All those who CAN work, MUST work, so that the much smaller number can be carried. It's on us to carry our weakest.

2) Bulls!t. Earth's resources are absolutely finite. There are seven billion of us. If we don't start thinking like wolves and feed/house each other equally, all that will happen is the First World will continue getting fatter, and the Third World will keep starving. The endless resources, safety, and freedoms you demand for First Worlders is grotesque, and comes at great cost to the majority.

3) The realities are exactly the same. The reason we're in the mess we're in is because we've forgotten how to think like the Wolf Pack.

4) Oh you are definitely a capitalist. An ardent one, most like.

5) So stop living unjustly and start changing the world. Be the change. That's the only way your words will ever be taken seriously, and the only way you can actually make a difference. Share your resources (you claim to have resources, after all) with those less able. Start walking the talk.

 

And then there are people who know very well that all of it is a matter of choice, and that it's completely unrealistic and unjust to make exceptions for an endless list of 'reasons' (almost all of which are first world problems).

It's not a matter of sympathy, empathy, or anything other emotive criticism. It's the sheer practicality of absolutely finite resources, and seven billion mouths to feed. The only justice in such a scenario is to provide for the greatest need. First World problems are NEVER going to be anywhere near the top of that list.

We must never allow the first worlder to sink ever further into the delusion that they're entitled to have every idiosyncrasy and preference catered to, in a state of perfect safety and security. The Welfare State has a done a masterful job at creating that obscene entitlement, and the world weeps (and starves) at the cost of it.

 

Nope. That is objectively false. We need only carry those who will be needed to carry on, who will contribute in the future when it is their turn. That would not include the permanently disabled, decrepit elderly, etc. If we choose to carry them, it will be for other reasons than the survival of the community.

Again, your claims are just objectively false. The pack survives by not wasting resources trying to prolong the dependence and burden of those who are not going to contribute to the pack's future survival.

Again, your claims are just objectively false. There are other necessary contributions than work, and there is no a priori reason to carry any but those who will contribute in the future.

No it's not. It's only on us not to break faith with our ancestors by dying without posterity.

Fact.

Natural resources are not merely finite, they are FIXED. But the limit pf what can be done with them is not fixed, and is not known, even approximately.

And your intellectual progenitor Thomas Malthus stated categorically that such populations could not possibly be supported. But in fact, there is now far more food available per person than there was in Malthus's day. Because I am objectively right, and you are objectively wrong. O B J E C T I V E L Y. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that fact to you.

You evidently know nothing about wolves, either.

No, I already disproved that Malthusian nonsense. Extreme poverty in the Third World has declined precipitously over the last 30 years, even as First World affluence has increased.

GARBAGE. No given person's rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor, which is all I "demand," can ever, by definition, come at the expense of anyone else's. It is only the rich, greedy, privileged parasites of both the First and Third Worlds -- who seek to abrogate others' rights without making just compensation by forcibly depriving them of what they would otherwise have -- who impose those exorbitant costs on the majority. Not honest, productive "First Worlders."

No, I already proved you objectively wrong on that point. Objectively. The wolf pack is limited by the bioproductivity of its environment, and its members would thus gain no genetic benefit from having rights -- indeed, their descendants would be weakened by their having rights. Human society can increase both the bioproductivity of its environment and its competitiveness with rival societies through investment, and its members thus benefit genetically by having rights.

More garbage from you. People have never known how to think like the Wolf Pack, and never will, because we aren't wolves. What we have forgotten is how to secure our equal individual rights, and stop rich, greedy, privileged parasites from gorging on the flesh of the human sacrifices they demand we deliver, bind, and then eviscerate on the altar of their Great God Property.

Oh, no, I am definitely not, as you are perfectly aware I have already proved to you multiple times. Here's the proof again: Capitalism by definition requires private ownership of the means of production: land and producer goods. I oppose private ownership of land. Therefore, I am not a capitalist. If you ever again claim that I am, you will therefore be lying.

Oh, learn to use a dictionary. Seriously. It's time.

I have not been given a choice of whether to be a victim of privilege or not. Only of whether to be a perpetrator, too. I choose not to be only a victim, as there is no future in that for me or any of the other victims.

Real change must start with education -- the education that I am at this very moment engaged in, and which you are trying to prevent.

That is metaphysical gibberish, nothing but an uninformative metaphor. How could an individual person ever "be" reform of laws and institutions? You're just spewing nonsense to distract readers' attention from the actual issue: your maniacal hatred of liberty, justice and truth.

No, it is merely your disingenuous attempt to distract me and your readers from my demonstrations to them that my words are their only serious chance at liberty, justice and prosperity -- which you seek to stop them from enjoying merely on the grounds that they are "First Worlders."

GARBAGE. If that were true, we would still be living in caves. Newton didn't create the science of mechanics, and thus the Industrial Revolution, and thus all of modern civilization, by going out and working in a foundry. Thomas Paine did not inspire the American Revolution by paying other people's taxes for them. Darwin did not stick a knife in the vitals of primitive, superstitious faith in the infallibility of Holy Scripture by breeding a better sheep. They did it with IDEAS, and that is how I am trying to do it; and whether I succeed or not is not up to you. So you can take your exhortations that I should just shut up and get back on the treadmill and shove them up your absurd supererogation. Clear?

What good will that do, if they and I continue to be legally robbed and enslaved by rich, greedy, privileged parasites?

Stop typing and start thinking.

 

1) And you call me 'evil'. I'm sorry, but I don't subscribe to your mercenary model, in any way. All of us, after a lifetime of work and contribution, earn the right to a few final years of feeding and housing via the hard work of those around us.

2) If EVERY able bodied pack member contributes from earliest adulthood til great age, there is always sufficient surplus for the old and the sick. It's only problematic when some of the able bodied refuse to contribute.

3) Our elders contribute a great deal, even if only in simple companionship. Assuming they've lived decent and hard working lives (if they haven't done so, they clearly didn't want or expect anyone to care for them), older people are of enormous value to the collective, in a myriad of ways. To dismiss them as useless is a sad indictment on your own personal unwillingness to support them. I'm sorry for you, and for the members of your family who will apparently be abandoned if they have the temerity to fall ill or become old.

 

Then take it up with Trump.

 

good one

 

Trump created a bogus bubble with Federal budget deficit and debt rising at > 2 x GDP growth.

Under Trump every $1 of debt was producing only $0.50 return. Under anybody's calculation that is a portent of bankruptcy.

Even the trade deficit was increasing.

The Trump economic bubble was an illusion funded by debt and lies.

 

Sorry, but what does Trump, or whoever is President, have to do with this?

 

we all know that, But Trump and his supporters seem not to understand that if the economy was really 'great' under Trump, the interest rate would not of been near zero and the fed would not of been dumping billions into the economy to keep it afloat... and that was pre-covid

a recession\depression is coming, I do not think it can be stopped now, no matter who wins

 

Since half that debt was debt service, he got a dollar return for a dollar of new spending. Servicing past debt does not have an economic multiplier effect. Perhaps Nancy should have managed her purse strings better, instead of stumbling all over the hair salon without a mask hoping to rush home to her freezers full of gourmet ice cream.

 

Government debt is interest only with principal repaid or refinanced at end of term. So the "debt service" did not give a return.

 

No, I state that some of the views you espouse are evil, and I am careful to define exactly what I mean by that.

Very few people have ever come to terms with Darwin. You are merely not one of them.

What about after a lifetime of privileged greed and parasitism, vulgar self-indulgence, or crime?

No. Society may decide it's best to make such provisions for the elderly, but not everyone has earned them.

That's just false of wolves and other social mammals, which mercilessly eject pack members who will not be able to pull their weight, and will thus be a liability to the pack. Unlike you, they know instinctively that winter is coming, and there will NOT always be sufficient surplus for the old and sick. For human beings in a modern democracy, technology, investment, and institutional arrangements have secured a level of labor productivity so extravagant that everyone can easily be provided for (except the most costly medical care) by the labor of a minority of the population.

No. It is far more problematic when the greedy contrive to take, in return for no contribution, orders of magnitude more than what would sustain an honest person.

Some do. I invite you to contemplate the inmates of a facility for Alzheimer's patients and identify their contributions.

Don't bet on it. Those who contribute the least typically feel entitled to take the most. See the greedy, privileged, parasitic super-duper uber-rich.

Some are. Again, visit a facility for Alzheimer's patients.

I have come to terms with the facts, including Darwin. You have not. Simple.

There is an old Chinese tale that is considered to illustrate proper filial devotion. The young mother of a newborn is caring for her elderly mother-in-law when famine strikes. There is no food, and the young mother, fulfilling her duty to her husband's mother, sustains her with the milk from her breasts, with the result that her own baby starves to death.

What do you think of that story? IMO the old hag should have cut her own throat rather than deprive her grandchild of food. As it is, she gets a Darwin Award by proxy.