>Exactly, there is an ideology of pushing this kind of issue completely into "personal responsibility" territory which, for me, is frankly a total lack of empathy.

It's not a lack of empathy, it's an understanding of the pernicious incentives you are creating with such a system.

I'm being forced to pay over half of my income into a ponzi scheme that i am and will never get anything worthwhile out of. This isn't good for anyone, and it certainly isn't good for the people who are working and providing value and having that value thrown into a raging fire.

This is nothing more than theft from the responsible to the irresponsible, with the associated long term issues.

When you have support these policies you need to understand that they will not and cannot help the people you seek to help.

All that happens is remove the need for people to be responsible and make good financial decisions, for the fact that "the state will save me".

But of course, the state can't, because social security in most countries is no more than very large ponzi schemes, supported by ever growing tax revenues and increasingly high retirement ages. But even that is not enough, in Portugal retirement benefits are expected to fall by half in the next 20 years.

And don't think these pernicious incentives don't exist and that peoples reliance on social security doesn't happen. That quote of "The state will save me" is almost word for word out of the mouth of friends and colleagues, with children and families, who despite being very well paid refuse to save and invest for their retirement, choosing instead to spend what they have today and only rely on social security for their retirement.

These are terrible incentives, and they will and have had predictable results.

> And don't think these pernicious incentives don't exist and that peoples reliance on social security doesn't happen. That quote of "The state will save me" is almost word for word out of the mouth of friends and colleagues, with children and families, who despite being very well paid refuse to save and invest for their retirement, choosing instead to spend what they have today and only rely on social security for their retirement.

Tbh, in the current system (which is bad!), they are the "smart ones".

You have Alice, Bob and Charlie. They all earn the same amount of money.

Alice decides to take a loan and buy a 200k house. Bob stays at home and invests in stocks. Charlie stays at home, and puts the money in a savings account.

10 years go by, alice paid off 100k of the 200k loan, house is still worth 200k, bob has 100k of stocks and Charlie has 100k in the savings account (let's forget about the interest for this example).

They are technically all worth the same, just that their money is in a different form. And then one day, they all lose their jobs.

Alice gets social benefits, one time extra monetary help, loan refinancing and/or even a loan freeze in some cases, Bob gets nothing and is told to sell the stock (even if it's a bad moment to sell), and Charlie gets laughed at the social benefits office, because he has 100k in his account.

This might be our (slovenian) speciality, but the system is made to fuck with people who live responsibly and to always 'save' the people who spend all their money. Also houses are almost literally untouchable, even if you're a single person in a ~1mio city center apartment, and could move to a smaller one a bit further from the center for 150k.

>they are the "smart ones"

In the U.S. this is often referred to as the "moral hazard". True they may be the 'smart' ones, but I can't help but think there's got to be a system that prioritizes the area of the Venn diagram where "smart" and "moral" overlap.

I find the concept of "moral hazard" foul when applied to things like retirement provision, social healthcare and social security. It is used a justification to let others rot and starve.

I know that's a common feeling, but I tend to view it as an acknowledgement that we need to understand the behavior being incentivized rather than an actual statement about morals which can be endlessly debated.

There's some irony in the phrasing used to decry the term "moral hazard" though in that it seems to hint of morals itself.

I think perhaps that's part of my issue with it - "moral hazard" appears to be backwards, it is often used to justify what appear to be very immoral policies and outcomes.

Alice was about to be made homeless, the others have liquid assets, and clearly have made other arrangements for housing.

I think your example is not really a full picture, and I don't necessarily agree that the state encouraging home-ownership, and helping out home-owners who might be about to lose their home, is wrong.

To my eyes, Alice was living responsibly.

Yup, both Bob and Charlie "stay at home." Who's home? How is it paid for?

Bob and Charlie are living rent-free in their parents' basements. Alice could have done the same—and will, if she has to sell the house to avoid bankruptcy—but she wanted to appear more independent. Alternatively, she could sell the house, pay off the remaining mortgage, and use the other $100k for rent until conditions improve.

No one in this scenario likely to end up homeless in the near term, as they all have roughly equivalent net worths over $100k. The system just favors those with their assets tied up in housing rather than more diversified investments or liquid savings.

Again, not seeing why it shouldn’t.

By subsidizing home ownership the government is encouraging people to go into debt and funnel whatever savings they manage to scrape together after paying interest into a single depreciating asset rather than a safer, more diversified portfolio. The policy is beneficial to moneylenders and people selling houses, but these things hardly need to be subsidized.

Bob and Charlie are the responsible ones.

Alice can sell her house for 200k and have 100k to pay for rent and live off.

The fact that you need to make up such a farcical example to prove your point should tell you something. The fact that you need to hand-wave a decade of wildly different asset classes' appreciation (or depreciation) in order to prove your point should tell you something.

1. Houses aren't particularly liquid, and in a debate about what is "smart" vs. "moral," and the fact that they don't always overlap, you're going to have a hard time arguing for forced eviction from one's primary (only) residence.

2. The 200k house ten years ago is going to be worth a lot more than 200k today. On average you're looking at 290k in a decade.

3. Bob's 100k in stocks would be 217k if he bought it one lump sum and got average returns, so let's say he purchased over time and is sitting around 175k.

4. Charlie's lost money because his 100k is somewhere between 105k and 110k now but he's lost 2-3 times that in purchasing power.

So they are emphatically not worth the same.

Alice owns an illiquid 290k asset for which she's only liable another 100k, so she's +190. She can refinance and lower her payment. She can get loan forbearance because we as a society have decided that it's immoral to immediately kick people out of their homes because they can't pay.

Bob is +75k and there are plenty of ways to make money off of a stock portfolio without liquidating it. You can even get a traditional loan using the portfolio as collateral but you're unlikely to get more than 40-50% of the value given the potential for volatility.

Charlie's lost money and yes, he's going to get laughed out of any assistance office because he's using a savings account - a vehicle designed mainly for emergency funds and short-term savings - for his life savings.

To your last point about the city center apartment, there is a huge difference between a reasonably intelligent person who just lost their job selling their apartment and moving somewhere cheaper, and a bank or government forcing them to do so.

> Also houses are almost literally untouchable,

Often, (in the US) retirement accounts are also sacrosanct, depending on the claim.

The issue of houses reminds me of how much of the US tax system is regressive. Electric car subsidies, special treatment for capital gains, mortgage deductions.

The US tax system is designed by people who in theory represent the will of the people, but in reality that are advocating for special interests.

You have things like SALT tax deduction and mortgage interest tax deduction which are directly designed to benefit rich liberals in blue states by subsidizing their oversized government. Take these away and people get mad or move to TX/FL/NV because they actually have to pay their full taxes.

Also having a high state sales tax is much more logical if you don’t want to pay tax just don’t spend money.

It would make much more sense to just do a federal sales tax, totally eliminate the corporate tax as people are paying taxes anyway and it is just a disadvantage to us-domiciled corporations competitiveness, and also totally eliminate fed and state income taxes. Like purge them with fire, there’s way too much complexity and corruption built up over the last hundred years.

Then if you still care about people at the end just institute UBI and Medicare for all to eliminate the billing complexity and potential for discrimination. This policy would also be compatible with open borders and free movement of labor if we as a society decided we want that.

Private retirement accounts are far from untouchable in the EU, though: e.g. Hungary straight-up nationalized private pension funds in 2010 [1].

[1] https://www.ipe.com/nightmare-in-hungary-as-government-natio...

The US tax system isn't regressive; I'm against legislating behavior through tax breaks, but calling them subsidies isn't really fair either.

The comment was only about parts of the us tax system. Regressive is a technical term and means that the effective rate decreases as one’s means increase. A simple example is a flat poll tax: richer people feel a much lower burden than poorer people. Mortgage contribution deductions are regressive because poorer people don’t have mortgages on average.

It's also worth noting that the mortgage contribution benefit is capped at a few thousand bucks. It primarily benefits the middle class but is an after thought to millionaires and above. It really doesn't move the needle for them.

> > And don't think these pernicious incentives don't exist and that peoples reliance on social security doesn't happen. That quote of "The state will save me" is almost word for word out of the mouth of friends and colleagues, with children and families, who despite being very well paid refuse to save and invest for their retirement, choosing instead to spend what they have today and only rely on social security for their retirement.

> Tbh, in the current system (which is bad!), they are the "smart ones".

I've had people tell me I'm a fool for saving for retirement, because when the time comes, the people who haven't saved will massively outnumber the people who have, and they will simply vote to fix it. Spend it now on BMWs and fancy vacations because "Our future government will not let 90% of their population starve on the street because they didn't save."

> 10 years go by, alice paid off 100k of the 200k loan, house is still worth 200k, bob has 100k of stocks and Charlie has 100k

If we're talking dollars, then it would be incredibly unwise to save them. The very fact that the fed targets some level of inflation at all makes this incredibly unwise.

Housing would never be worth just 200k 10 years later as long as population is increasing and the dollar inflating.

Stonks are stonks. They're fine, but they don't provide the (at least) two fold benefit of buying a house in American society.

1). You pay a high cost for housing either way--might as well have _some_ of it go toward principal.

2). A mortgage allows you to highly leverage an appreciating asset against a depreciating dollar.

The reliance on the state's pension scheme is also terrifying as the schemes tend to increase (if at all) under the inflation of true cost of living.

All that said, I have a mortgage and stonks and crypto (metals soon), but I'll never hold more dollars than I need for a month (I have credit cards if it really came to it.)

Edit: Why downvote? If you disagree, please say why.

The general point about cash losing money to inflation is spot on, but:

> Why downvote? If you disagree, please say why.

Sure, so

> Stonks are stonks. They're fine, but they don't provide the (at least) two fold benefit of buying a house in American society.

If you look at averages (across multiple areas, over many decades), you get:

* stonks yield somewhere around 6% above inflation (so 9-10% before inflation).

* houses yield somewhere around 1% above inflation, after including all the other random incentives plus taxes and upkeep costs, (not including multi family rental properties, which is a different matter)

There are localities in which houses do much better (say the bay area), and there are localities in which houses do much worse (Detroit).

But on average, it's a massive opportunity cost vs investing in equities. Which is fine, because there's other benefits to owning a house, like not having to move if someone jacks up your rent.

While we're at it, other reasons for downvotes may include:

> metals soon

These yield also ~1% above inflation

> I'll never hold more dollars than I need for a month (I have credit cards if it really came to it.)

In 2008, the banks slashed my credit to <10% of what it was in 2007. Don't rely on credit cards for emergencies.

Please hold more than 1 month in savings.

> * houses yield somewhere around 1% above inflation

But buying a house is the only way I can leverage such a massive amount and I have to have housing anyway. It also fixes my housing costs in contrast to renting.

Further, I can sell my house and take gains without paying taxes on the gains. I can't do that with stocks.

> Don't rely on credit cards for emergencies.

I'll also be able to sell metals/stonks/cryptos if need be, but overall I'm just not risk adverse. If I end up selling to get by and lose some, I see that as just making up for what I would have already lost by holding too much cash.

I should note that the 90% credit drop also coincided at a time when my investments crashed by 50%+, which would have been an extremely suboptimal time to pull out money. That would have wiped out like 10 years of growth.

I strongly, strongly encourage you to put aside at least 3 to 6 months' worth of expenses outside of risky investments.

To add on to your point, the core issue is that you need to take into account correlated risk when deciding on your investment strategy/risk tolerance.

If you're at the point where you need to dip into an emergency fund, it's possible (maybe even likely) that the entire financial market is burning. You will need access to capital when nobody has access to capital, which will make borrowing very expensive or impossible.

The US has unusually high incentives & subsidies for home ownership, so it is a pretty strong contender. More generally though, home ownership vs. renting is not always a clear win. Agree savings accounts are useless these days.

Because an example was given to illustrate a point and you are picking on it in a direction that has nothing to do with the discussion and the example. You took the spirit out of the example and made an analysis of the letters, colors and font - borderline trolling.

Sure, I was just saying to work the system as best you can and describing what I do in the US.

This is correct. Ever since the US allowed consumer banks and commercial banks to merge, savings rate is usually less than a point, if that.

Putting money in a savings account is actually losing value at the rate of inflation - interest. Inflation is usually around 2-3%, interest is a point or less. (last time I checked).

I think the downvote was the comment wasn't entirely relevant to what the OP was trying to demonstrate and might have gotten into the weeds a bit, but I don't know why people downvote. Who knows, it could have been a mis-click. Just say what you want to say, downvotes be damned.

And a typical 30yr mortgage rate is ~3% right now.

https://www.zillow.com/refinance/

> gotten into the weeds a bit

Fair

> downvotes be damned.

Good advice.

Are we not all generating income using the work products of our elders?

None of this happens in a vacuum. Their contributions multiply our income.

If we work with someone on a project, we don't expect them to work for free do we?

Well, look around. The machinery of society was not, and is not free. "Your income" is the product of many people over a sustained amount of time.

Doing it all on your own looks very different.

That said, the only reason pensions are under discussion is the very wealthy take too much value and are not required to help fund the system.

In the US, the cap is something over 100k. Raise that and the funding problem goes away. That cap should be raised because everyone benefits from the labor products and fertile society we live in today.

Those of us who end up with huge benefit and who do not contribute in like kind are literally diluting the future for those to come for arguably self serving in the now. I have no problem with self serving choices either. Work hard, play hard, change the world.

All good.

This is about net good, and talk of ending retirement is talk that completely ignores why we have Social Security and work until we drop is as negative as child labor is.

Some of us may choose to do that. I might!

But to make excuses for what is basically unbridled greed and largess impacting so many other people unnecessarily?

Not all good.

Don't get distracted by money. Money isn't real. Money does't feed you, or wash your back in hospital. Saving "money" doesn't make anything happen in the future. It only lets you bid on future (then current) labour/production.

The deep problem is we developed expectations and made promises when there were 6 people of working age for every retiree, and the ratio is going to fall to 2-to-1 or worse. Money can't bridge that unless we invent magic ai robots in a hurry.

Put another way: we've built all this nice stuff, and we enjoy society and all the things that go with it.

Either we are willing to accept the full cost of that, which means taking care of our own, or we're going to pay hard because of what happens when we don't take care of our own.

So which is it?

What will happen is that inflation will cause these promises to be meaningless and throw many elderly into poverty or menial jobs in their old age, hello Walmart greeters...

Getting 1x social security is not going to work when you get rent that is going up 2x as fast. But somehow the market basket of goods will still stay at 2%yoy…

Or we could just start having large families again like some groups (Hasidic Jews, Amish, some Evangelicals) do but I don’t think there’s much political will for that.

Robots are nowhere close to being any practical replacement for the many basic labors we all depend on.

Just caring for one another is one of those labors and it is significant. Enabling our elders to have income lifted a heavy burden off the middle class. Having enough buying power to support the whole family, whether cohabiting or not was and remains a big deal.

We did that for our parents and their Social Security made a huge difference in how our kids grew up and our overall quality of life.

On a side note, universal health care would have a similar, positive impact on all but very large business.

We are going to need to value things differently.

We can pay people more, have them work fewer hours, allow flex in work time, place, manner.

It simply is not necessary to force everyone to work until they drop.

Again, taking the value out of everything has skewed things toward an artificial scarcity of time. Does not have to be that way.

I do not believe it should be that way.

If we somehow insist, fail to value things in ways that help us live better, the ripple impacts will just cost more.

A whole lot boils down to what we value and why.

Right now, for example, we do not value taking care of our own, instead focusing on money. We do not value basic labors well either.

These two have a serious, negative impact on things like social security, our general ability to compete with other nations and more.

Those basic labors save us doing not so basic labor a ton of time, for example, yet we pay a pittance, shame those performing them, and somehow expect the some 40 some Trillion those people did not take home to pass unnoticed?

We can run the nation leaner than we do, and we should. And those lower numbers mean those doing the labor should live well, seeing as how there is plenty to do.

If we do that, their buying power will grow our economy nicely. Liquid dollars and high demand are good things.

If we raise and or had raised our contribution caps, the program would be running just fine.

If we need to run a deficit on that for a time, so what?

Maybe we can cut back on endless war.

There are enough people, is enough technology to do just fine.

All of this is a priority problem and our priority at present is not well aligned with our people's needs and that can amd should change.

Say we do need more labor.

Fine, make being an American easy again. Plenty of people will step right up and do it.

Bring us your tired, your poor...

>Robots are nowhere close to being any practical replacement for the many basic labors we all depend on.

That's why I won't be retiring.

Yeah, I may not either. But, whether we have that tech or not is simply not germane.

This is all a priority discussion.

It is not for some real constraint or other.

And simply making that choice for everyone is not necessary, and is poor policy that will cost us a whole lot more than getting our priorities right would.

Where do you think you got your income from? By standing on the shoulders of everyone before you.

> I'm being forced to pay over half of my income into a ponzi scheme

You are making shit up - where in the world does 50% go towards retirement funds?

Unless you are talking about real estate, which is a Ponzi scheme where children pay some of their ancestors for the privilege to own their own land and a home.

> where children pay some of their ancestors

I mean other people’s ancestors (not their own where the wealth is often passed from ancestor to child).

For example, in my country, Argentina, the public pension fund is used to give loans to the Treasury at ridiculous lower interest rates. The government then expends that funds in a lot of short-term public policies.

> The way it works here in Sweden seems pretty decent to me so far: you get a public pension that you and your employer have paid into the system (of course, it pays the current pensioners) and another part of my pension is put into a pension investment account, that I can operate/manage however I want. > So you get both, a minimum pension sustained by the system paid by current working people and an investment account that I can manage and grow as a portfolio to use during my retirement.

I think the word 'minimum' is going to have totally different implications for those of us working and saving now, compared to the previous generation, that are living on pretty generous pension plans that were wholly publicly-funded, and which our current payments are maintaining.

Also the privatized pension plans in Sweden have been prey both to fraud and high fees. So even though they may give the illusion of future prosperity to those who are trying to save now, that's in no way a guarantee.

Yup. On a new defunct blog someone laid out in the comments that here in The Netherlands, if €300 of your wage went to pensions, sometjing like €200 would go to fund current pensioners and of that €200, €60 went to a very select group that got two very beneficial pension arrangements stacked.

Technically all €300 of your contribution goes to fund current pensioners, regardless of how the pension is structured. The idea that you are setting aside money to pay for your own retirement is an illusion. Money is just a proxy for labor, and you cannot transport your own labor into the future to take care of yourself when you are too old to work. In reality, young people must always take care of the elderly, and population decline will be a problem regardless of how much the pension funds have saved up. The question of savings is actually a question of monetary policy: if the flow into the pension fund is greater than the flow out, this creates deflationary pressure (except in whatever assets the fund invests in) and vice versa.

> In reality, young people must always take care of the elderly.

this in and of itself is not a problem in my opinion. The problem is the financial and economic allocation is not going to those in need in society, but those who have amassed massive amount of wealth and use it to create massive hoards of wealth, with a govermental system that makes them to big to fail.

Having massive wealth changes the rules of the game completely. You can legaly dodge taxes if you are wealthy, which creates even more wealth.

People seem to think the labour market and capitalism is like chess, in which makes the right choices can lead to a wealthy life, but for the vast majority this is not the case. Most people are stuck playing poker with very bad bets instead.

The problem (atleast in slovenia) is, that you don't get back the amount that you paid in. Eg. you work 40 years, and expect 20 years on pensions (made up numbers, just an example).

If you get an average paycheck, pay 25% of it into the pension for 40 years, you expect to get approximately 50% of the average paycheck at the time of retirement. Well.. you don't (atleast not here). This also presumes, that there are 2x as many workers that pay into the fund, as there are retirees taking out of the fund... which sadly is not the case anymore, and the situation will get worse and worse.

Also, due to many laws and changes, every few years, you get average-paid people retired in eg. 1991 that receive more than the average paycheck in retirement, and newly retired people getting 400eur of retirement (=not enough to survive).

> The problem (atleast in slovenia) is, that you don't get back the amount that you paid in. Eg. you work 40 years, and expect 20 years on pensions (made up numbers, just an example).

I don't know you but I never, ever, had the impression I'd get what I paid into any social security system. Neither here in Sweden or even less in Brazil. My salary is just too high compared to the median so I never had the thought that everything I paid into I'd get back as benefits.

And to me, that's ok. I earn quite above the average, I don't mind that I can help fund some part of society with my work if this society is functional and well managed, so in Sweden I'm perfectly fine with this arrangement. In Brazil it was the complete opposite, even though I don't care about paying taxes, I do care about taxes always being stolen by a multitude of corrupt actors in Brazil.

You're talking about a different issue (or indeed a non-issue). It's not that high income Slovenians get a lot less out of Slovenian state pensions than they pay in. It's that _everybody_, including low income Slovenians gets a lot less out of it than they contributed. In fact, if Slovenia is anything like Romania, the percentages often work out a lot better for high income contributors.

^yes, this.

I chose the average on purpuse, to do just that. Poor people pay less, and are "subsidized" by the rich, who pay more, but an average person should get as much as they paid in.

Considering that some people die young (before they retire), an average person should get even more than they paid into the system, because the heirs of the dead usually don't get the dead persons pension (with some exceptions, eg. underage kids)

I guess there's another issue with this equation: avgOUT = avgIN + L

The L(osses) ... the pension/social/levy system - no matter which country we're looking at - appears to have been hijacked by an ever growing parasitic group of financial institutions that milk whatever they can into their private pockets (and their shareholders').

Every penny in fees they receive for "working out" specialized retirement plans is in a way a L(oss) for society. Why? Because no matter what ingenious system a state devises, it all comes back to the fact that the current working/healthy part of the population has to provide for tho elderly and the sick and whoever can't provide for themselves. Every kind of juggling around with the money adding unnecessary steps in between is just milking the system for private gains.

I know nothing about Slovenia, but my hypothesis is that this is (kind of) by design. Those with good incomes subsidize those with low incomes, and everyone subsidizes those with no income.

The only way to 'earn more' is through a positive return on investment, but pension schemes necessarily must err on the 'safe side'. And currently 'safe' interest rates are negative.

I consider the subsidization of poor and no-income as the cheapest alternative. Pay them enough to live and the external cost won't be more. Theft, property damage, judicial system and incarceration get lot more expensive than just paying them something. And all the money going to them is anyway spend so on large scale it might not even be net negative.

> Those with good incomes subsidize those with low incomes,

This keeps the average values the same (that's why I used the average example)

> and everyone subsidizes those with no income.

This seems to be an ongoing problem, where we on one side need workers, and on the other side pay unemployment benefits to people who don't want to work. This is then translated to pensions, where people who work only eg. 10 years (instead of 40) get a small pension, but still more than the share they paid into the fund.

In Poland, by design, now people are paid on average >60% of paycheck while retiring at age 60-65, not taking into account some specific priviledges like for miners.

Meanwhile, people in 20s-30s are projected to get 25% while retiring at close to 70. The system does not make any sense to me.

It's the system that favors the voting majority.

A sate pension that pays 50% lol that's a big ask. I assume you have your employers pensions as well.

We don't have separate pensions. You pay into the state (~25% of gross income, part is taken from your gross, part is paid by the employer, to get a 'gross-gross' value), and that's your pension.

We have separate saving schemes for pension, where your income tax is deferred until you take the money out (due to progressive tax brackets, your tax percentage will be lower when you're retired, than it is now), but usually employers have nothing to do with that, and with interest lower than inflation, it's just not worth it.

> you get a public pension that you and your employer have paid into the system (of course, it pays the current pensioners)

In the US we call that Social Security.

> The average well educated American understands that the European and Scandanavian models work better than the American system for all Americans.

There is no way the average well educated American understands what the European or Scandanavian model is. These systems are complicated moving targets and documented in a foreign language.

Americans are arguing over what they imagine the model to be, and have probably gotten it wrong.

the question really is what "the average well educated American" means, it sounds like it might mean the average American, who just happens to be well educated, but I think it probably means the average among the group defined as well-educated Americans.

And then what does well-educated mean?

the "average well educated american" is the subset of americans that agrees with my political conclusions. if they disagree with me, they obviously weren't educated very well.

>There is no way the average well educated American understands what the European or Scandinavian model is.

I would agree. It's similar to the lack of deep knowledge of public health systems in other countries, which are typically understood as slogans.

There's also the unwritten parts of a 'Scandinavian Model' (or whoever). These are monocultures with their own logic and behavior.

> These are monocultures with their own logic and behavior.

America is a monoculture too, to non-racialists. The differences between Americans can be attributed to sub-region and class/income - not race

What exactly do you think 'culture' means?

There's nothing about culture that ties it permanently to race, if that's what you're insinuating. Racial diversity does not imply cultural diversity - which is an incorrect shortcut that I've seen most people who deploy the "but the nordics are not as diverse" argument - especially American whose media consumption tends to be more insular.

I think there's a fallacy at play - not sure which one it is, whereby a person sees a lot of nuance, variation and detail in the minutiae of what they are familiar with, but the unfamiliar is painted in very broad strokes, lacking nuance, and based on surface-level understanding.

> > The average well educated American understands that the European and Scandanavian models work better than the American system for all Americans.

> There is no way the average well educated American understands what the European or Scandanavian model is.

Understanding its relative performance is orthogonal to understanding how it generates that performance, so that’s not really even the outline of a rebuttal.

> These systems are complicated moving targets and documented in a foreign language.

There's plenty of documentation of pretty much every significant world politico-economic system in English.

> There's plenty of documentation of pretty much every significant world politico-economic system in English.

Coincidentally, I haven't ever managed to find anything on how the Chinese actually operate. I'd be very interested to know what they've done - for all that I don't like their approach to freedom they did engineer one of the (if not simply 'the') greatest economic miracles of history.

Love or hate them, there is something to learn from in China. They seem to be fairly tight-lipped on the details of what. Nobody in the western media seems to care.

> There's plenty of documentation of pretty much every significant world politico-economic system in English.

Seeing reporting from Nordic political issues in US-based media; they often get it wrong. Sometimes a little bit wrong. Often a very skewed incomplete image.

> Seeing reporting from Nordic political issues in US-based media; they often get it wrong. Sometimes a little bit wrong. Often a very skewed incomplete image.

That’s true of US political issues, too. A “well educated American” is both aware of this and is educated on issues beyond transitory immediate events by sources beyond just the news media.

"A well educated voter" is like a perfectly inelastic collision on a frictionless surface - the cobclusions provided are difficult apply in reality

Ok, not sure why you brought up black people here. I'm black btw, but my grandparents were able to save for retirement quite well, despite whatever racism they faced. Same with my parents. Wisdom > racism.

He's saying that a significant part of Americans wants to make that more difficult for you, not easier.

Same with gun violence, which affects mostly black americans. And healthcare. Etc.

Either all of this is an extraordinary coincidence, or there in fact is a significant fraction of americans that are motivated by an antipathy for black people. An interesting start is to see who's funding all of that privatized politics (such as NRA) and what motivates them. If you've never looked into this, hold on to your hat.

> significant fraction of americans that are motivated by an antipathy for black people

And that fraction is probably bigger than you expect. Everyone thinks their side is not racist. Gun control advocates never talk about banning .22 and .25 pistols, even though that is what really kills a lot of people. But most of those people are black. Instead, gun control advocates want to go after AR-15s. It's like they don't want to win.

I agree that the focus on "assault rifles" is weird and misguided, but I don't think this is an entirely fair characterization of gun control. in most states, even those with onerous laws for long guns, it is substantially harder to get any pistol than it is to get a semi-automatic rifle. you might need to get a rifle with a weird combination of features (california) or avoid specific models (maryland), but you don't have to jump through the same amount of legal hoops as you do when buying a handgun.

> substantially harder to get any pistol

That makes sense, though? It is far easier to conceal a handgun than any kind of rifle, and [to a close approximation] all guns are semi-automatic at most. A rifle may pack more punch, but I'd be more afraid of someone packing a Glock 17 (especially if they brought along a Glock 18 magazine).

In any case, the point I was trying to make is one of intent. We have stats which tell us where the low-hanging fruit is on the issue, but nobody seems interested in that.

right, that's my point. many more people are killed with handguns. the public discussion has a weird fixation on certain rifle features, but most of the actual laws are concerned with handguns, as they should be. if you want a semi-automatic rifle chambered for an intermediate cartridge, you can usually get that without too much hassle.

>He's saying that a significant part of Americans wants to make that more difficult for you, not easier.

I'd say that a significant part of Americans are simply indifferent. That can be easily confused for ill will.

> Wisdom > racism.

America is no longer a de jure segregated society. America is generally meritocratic, and with the right combination of intelligence, hard work, and luck, people of all types, races and creeds can succeed and do well. I believe that that is orthogonal to my comment above.

> Ok, not sure why you brought up black people here.

Because while historically racism has taken many forms in this country, against and by many groups, over many shifting definitions of race, and with many political implications, historically, many of the most politically influential racist policies were motivated by racism along the black/white divide. But you are right, it is not, and has never been, just limited to these two "races". Again, please reference the Lee Atwater quote below.

Of course it’s possible, but I think the parent is right in that you have to go further/do more to get to the same point.

Usually in different-pay-same-outcome systems (eg. taxes), people above median pay want to be out of the system (because they tend to pay more and get lesscomparatively ), and people below the median want to stay in the system (because they get more and pay less comparatively). I'm talking about "normal" people, not a few at the top, who game the system in their favour.

I have no idea why you had to mix race into this, but there are many working-class white americans fscked by american retirement policies. Also many well-off black people. I see a lot of american and canadian race-related stuff in the media (mostly social, eg. reddit), and the current movements remind me of the former racist movements, but with races reversed... so still racist. [0-3].

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vermont-to-give-m... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... [2] https://scholar.harvard.edu/bgsa/black-commencement [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/usda-issued-billions-sub...

Understood, but two problems here. 1 - We are talking about the American retirement system, which is not different-pay-same-outcome. It is different-pay-different-outcome. and 2 - median pay isn't the right metric here, but you are right that above a certain income level, the benefit provided by these programs are seen as less personally beneficial than the taxes to support them are seen as detrimental. But I don't think that plays a significant factor in this discussion (besides acknowledging that opponents of these programs are therefore more likely to be well funded), because the bar for which that occurs for American retirement plans is significantly higher than the income of the majority of the population. This is reflected in things such as 94% of the American public believing the social security should stay the same or be increased, while <6% believe it should be cut in any way.

FWIW: I completely agree with you that racism as a political force is counter-productive and harms all races significantly. I don't believe that changes my point.

I mixed race into it, because this is the historical reason why America has many social policies that appear to be lackluster compared to similar European plans.

I'm having a hard time find the quote in google (is it just me, or has google gotten significantly worse the last few years?). But there is a quote I'm going to paraphrase, from what I believe was a chief legislative strategist of Nixon's whitehouse, but I could be wrong on the exact identity of the individual. It goes, roughly, like this:

"So it starts out in the 50s by saying you're going to put the niggers in their place. You can get elected on that platform. But that starts being unacceptable in the 1960s, so you have to change your messaging. So instead of talking about race, you start talking about the inner city and forced busing. By the 70s even that is becoming unacceptable, so you start talking about crime in the inner city, and cutting welfare. Fast forward to today, and what you are having is a completely economic political discussion. There is no discussion of race whatsoever. Its amazing how far removed our discussion has gotten. But make no mistake, the heart of the contention is the discussion of race, and preferential treatment of the races. And everyone involved in the discussion is completely aware of that fact."

That would be Lee Atwater talking about the Southern Strategy: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

The quote you're referring to is, I believe, by Lee Atwater:

> It has become, for liberals and leftists enraged by the way Republicans never suffer the consequences for turning electoral politics into a cesspool, a kind of smoking gun. The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:

> You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

For the purposes of this OC topic, it's sufficient to say:

People are generally happy to tax themselves for the benefit of the in-group, and continue to oppose helping the out-group.

Optimistic me continues to believe that society's notions of in-group continues to expand. By fits and starts, including the cycles of backlash.

FWIW, I highly recommend Robert Wright's book Nonzero. Helped transmute me into an optimist, despite everything.

> The misunderstanding is the idea that the average American WANTS a better life for ALL Americans. They do not.

Citation fucking needed.

Here's a 143 minute citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g

Or a 6 minute one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTDGdKaMDhQ

TL; DW: the flip side of the American/Protestant work ethic which says "Work hard and you'll surely succeed" is that then you'd have to logically view that the people who are failing/have failed in life are lazy. The reality is it's mostly luck, good or bad, that make you a billionaire or living in a van at 80. At least this logic is common among people who say "We don't want a welfare state, that's basically state-approved theft of my money by welfare queens.".

On the topic of status, I can see why racists are threatened by a more equal society: it would mean the black family would be just well-off as them, and it would suck to not feel superior to "those lazy people".

I guess this isn't much of a citation...

No, I'm asking for a citation that the average american doesn't want a better life for all. Which was the claim I'm objecting to.

Such a citation could be a link to a poll or something.

You made countless other claims I disagree with such as "But a significant minority of the population wants a WORSE life for the black population." (where I doubt the "signifant" part) but it's considered poor form to put a citation needed after every sentence so I'm going after what I think is the most objectionable claim that maligns 160+ million people. Even if I do think your black and white (do east asian americans not exist?), oppressor and oppressed viewpoint is demonstrably false (though with more effort than you or I can spare now).

I think the point may be that average (and averagely educated) people tend to be easily sold on the idea that many things are a zero-sum game. That they will have a worse life if someone else has a better one. Many political campaigns rely on this idea. They always need to create an "enemy", a reason why you're not doing well, and that reason is usually pinned on the least likely to be able to fight it, the poor, the disenfranchised.

So the idealistic approach is that "sure, everyone should have a better life". The practical approach is that "I have to pay from my own pocket for some lazies have a better life". And when you put it that way it suddenly looks a lot like "the average person doesn't want a better life for all".

> No, I'm asking for a citation that the average American doesn't want a better life for all. Which was the claim I'm objecting to.

Frankly, it's unlikely there is such a citation, but that doesn't mean OP is wrong - just consider whether there's some class of people you feel negatively about (billionaires? homeless? immigrants? republicans? democrats? criminals? violent criminals? etc) and then ask yourself the question "do I want THEIR lives to be better?"

And if your answer is yes, then ask yourself "am I willing to sacrifice any of my own wealth or comfort to make that happen?"

And if your answer is yes again, then ask yourself "do I think the average American would say yes to the first two questions?"

For example, I can say with all honesty that I don't feel the lives of American billionaires need to be "better" in the abstract - they're doing fine, and they'll continue to be fine regardless of what I think or do. In fact, I want their lives to be worse - insofar as I believe they should contribute more of their wealth to the common cause, and I agree with the argument that less wealth is "worse" than more wealth in most ways.

So, while if there was a poll that had asked a representative slice of the American populace "do you want a better life for all?" sure, most people might say yes. But with a more specific question, for example "do you support the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?" fifty-five percent say "yes, the death penalty is acceptable" - which is apparently the LOWEST level in fifty years! So clearly there is at least one class of people (murderers) for whom it is the majority viewpoint that their lives should not only be worse, but ended entirely. No doubt others could be found.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/312929/record-low-say-death-pen...