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Comment on Are they crazy? We don't have money for anything...

Taxes don’t go to boomers retirement.

Either they get social security that they paid into. Or they have retirement pensions or 401ks. IRAs. That they paid into.

Some of our taxes do go to Medicare/Medicaid, but I don’t have a problem with that.

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hardcoreufo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Boomers got pensions, then killed them off and barely paid anything into social security while sucking it dry. They get to double/triple dip into retirement with pensions, SS and 401k as a cherry on top. Younger gens basically fund that while the SS collection age keeps getting higher. So we are saddled with 401ks because that means our future is tied to the market creating a financial incentive not to push back to hard on the system.

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- daannii@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  How did boomers stop pensions? Wasn’t it company owners who decided not to provide them anymore ?
  
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  - hardcoreufo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah corpos that were run by boomers who killed pensions to increase profits.
    
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    daannii@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    So that’s like 1 percent of the boomers.
    
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wizzor@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Depends a lot on where you are. My grandmother gets 2€ for every euro they put into their pension payment. I get 0.85 for every euro, and I get that in 40 years. I am talking here about the national pension system, if I could avoid paying into it I would, as the only worse investment I can think of is buying a car. Or perhaps NFTs

I am fortunate, as I have had a decent career. Still I must assume that the only way I can retire is have some savings and live outside the city. And even that’s assuming the whole system doesn’t collapse before I retire.

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boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Does social security really only come from their own payments? The US must be one of the few countries that does it like that then. Usually, current workers finance current retirees, rather than current workers financing future retirees (themselves). There’s an element of “has paid into it”, yes, but it’s quite obviously not the same money sitting in a bank account somewhere. It comes from a future national budget.

Doesn’t matter either way. Much like I don’t expect to retire because there won’t be enough taxpayers 40 years from now in my country, I doubt the US dollar will be worth enough for current young workers to retire on social security without major interest being earned on it. There won’t be enough actual productivity in the economy to support its value.

401k and other similar funds that invest in the stock market are also how old people profit off young people’s work. You know all those comments you see blaming BlackRock or Vanguard for everything wrong with the US economy? Well BlackRock and Vanguard manage all these funds, but they don’t actually own it all, mostly retail investors and different retirement accounts do. You could behead all the billionaires and it’ll improve things, but that’s mostly just idle wealth on paper since there’s like a thousand of them, versus millions of retirees constantly consuming things using money that earned interest by being invested in the economy (i.e profiting off younger people, as that’s just how capitalism works)

Capitalism or communism doesn’t matter in the medium term either, the only way a person can retire is to start living off the backs of others. It’s not an issue when a society is growing, but once it plateaus and eventually starts shrinking, it’s a problem. This could be changed once human labor is no longer necessary to provide everyone’s needs, assuming capitalists don’t get to keep ownership of everything.

Look at the US population pyramid in 1970

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vs 1990

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vs 2025

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Ain’t no gen z going to be retiring at this rate. Or they’ll be the last generation to be able to do so without a major rework of society.

So yes, people are rightfully jealous that they have to pay upkeep on retirees when they themselves will likely never get to retire.

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- daannii@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yes social security in the U.S is a specific tax that only goes to social security. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work but lately there has been talk of using it for the war. Which shouldn’t be allowed.
  
  I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone that billionaires hoarding wealth and capitalism greed has gotten us where we are.
  
  It’s silly to blame older generations that had it better for the decline.
  
  They have as much control over all of this as I do right now. Which is very little.
  
  Profit and production per person has been increasing for as long as it’s been recorded. Yet wages have not came close to matching inflation.
  
  Why is that? Did boomers as a group some how orchestrate a decline in wages?
  
  No.
  
  That’s thanks to corporations paying off politicians and making sure no laws would pass to force them to pay people a living wage. No laws would pass to restrict increases in college education. No laws would pass to keep rent affordable.
  
  Didn’t matter who you voted for. There have been plenty of Dems and Republicans in control at various times in the last 50 years. And yet. No laws were passed to help the people. Only create tax loop holes for the rich.
  
  Because the rich pay off the politicians.
  
  These problems are not from boomers existing at a time before it got bad.
  
  It’s true many billionaires are boomers but there are many that aren’t that are the richest. Bezos isn’t. Musk isn’t.
  
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  - boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Yes social security in the U.S is a specific tax that only goes to social security.
    
    Well, it seems that the US has one of the best systems for retirement in the world then.
    
    It’s silly to blame older generations that had it better for the decline.
    
    The total net worth of all billionaires in the US is actually a bit less than the total value of all 401ks alone, ignoring other forms of retirement and savings funds. When things are done “for the shareholders”, what makes you think that it’s only the billionaires? Retirement by definition benefits from the next generations being held down by low wages to benefit the corporations you’re invested in. Boomers, or at least the selfish ones, have a tendency to vote republican because their interests align with billionaires’ interests.
    
    But both the net worth of billionaires and total value of 401ks pale in comparison to the total net worth of baby boomers in total.
    
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    In a few decades it’ll be Gen X and then millennials. As a millennial I hope my generation doesn’t take the same hard right turn once we’re in charge of the economy, but that’s like 30-40 years from now and who knows how jaded millennials will have become by then. Luckily we won’t get as many decades in charge as the boomers have had.
    
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    2pNza@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    They will be gen X and millennials if bommers will transfer the wealth to them. But there is possibility that they will just sell everything and big corporation will buy it. Like with agricultural land in US. Some land is not longer in hands of private people but in corporation owners hands. (Like in feudalism, by the way there is even term tech feudalism: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technofeudalism) Bill Gates is doung it already (…yahoo.com/…/bill-gates-finally-explains-why-1949…)
    
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    daannii@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    This is not evidence that boomers stole your money.
    
    It’s just evidence that companies have been exploiting people to greater levels over time.
    
    Boomers had as much power to shape the economy as you and I have right now.
    
    Do you really think that the people paying off politicians to pass laws or hinder laws to increase their profits is blameless ?
    
    Blaming boomers is akin to blaming immigrants. Or women. Or disabled people for the reason that companies won’t pay their employees what they should.
    
    It’s scapegoating propaganda.
    
    Billionaires don’t want you looking their direction so they constantly are trying to find a new group to point the finger at.
    
    They own all the mainstream media which is also pushing this narrative.
    
    It’s not the exploitive hoarding billionaire controlling your politicians making your life harder. No. Couldn’t be.
    
    It’s the older generation who have a little bit more than you have. Yeah. Fuck old people. How dare they not due already ?
    
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  - 2pNza@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I hope that maybe collecting signatures could make politicians in position that they can not simply refuse changing the law, like with affordable rent initiative right-to-housing.eu I mean if they would collect the 1 mln of signatures, it would be hard to just ignore it
    
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    daannii@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    They ignore such things all the time.
    
    There have been many instances here of people voting to pass a bill and then the governor just vetoes it.
    
    I think we need to change things so that votes outrank what any politicians want.
    
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