The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on March 17, 2025, 10:44:14 pm ---Overall for the health of the planet and so on, it's probably a good thing. But for the economies of those countries it's disastrous because they'll have an insufficient workforce supporting an aging population. Ironically, underdeveloped countries still have healthy birthrates, so as one thing I read pointed out, the formerly colonized will to some extent be economically healthier than their former colonizers.
--- End quote ---
This is what we hear with regard to Social Security.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on March 18, 2025, 10:54:21 am ---This is what we hear with regard to Social Security.
--- End quote ---
Exactly. Except that in that case, up until now, I've thought of its possible consequence of losing Social Security as a distant problem that might eventually affect me near the end of my life. Now I think of it as something that could happen next week.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on March 18, 2025, 04:23:39 pm ---Exactly. Except that in that case, up until now, I've thought of its possible consequence of losing Social Security as a distant problem that might eventually affect me near the end of my life. Now I think of it as something that could happen next week.
--- End quote ---
Right.
And if it doesn't affect us, it could very well affect your sons.
I just saw a headline that the Social Security Administration is going to begin requiring in-person interviews to very the identity of new and current recipients.
Front-Ranger:
The article is called "The End of Children" and is in the March 3 issue, the one with the firing of Hamilton, Franklin, and Jefferson on the cover.
There's hardly a better way to get people riled up than to suggest you're going to "take away" their Social Security, even for people who haven't started collecting it yet. It has been called a "Ponzi scheme" and that has some truth in it, even though it wasn't designed to be as such. SS was originally a way to create a fund that would serve as peoples' retirement monies, with their contributions augmented by matching funds from their employers. But Congress couldn't keep its hands off this fund; they ended up using it to fund many other things. And now, the money that workers and employers have paid in are gone, and instead the feds depend on current, young workers to fund SS. But there are fewer of them and more retirees so the funds decrease exponentially.
What is needed is to have these funds that young workers pay in invested in economic development, innovation, building new businesses, scientific research, emerging technologies, etc. The money needs to be wisely invested, not just dispersed to a growing pool of oldsters. So, where will we get the funds to make up for what was lost when the SS money was siphoned off? That's easy...just tax the rich at the same rate as we tax the poor. I'm not saying that the rich should be penalized the way they do in Europe...just tax them at the same rate as everybody else. That will bring in all the funds needed to level the playing field, and more.
Jeff Wrangler:
I slugged my way through the entire demographics article because I wanted to see if the author even mentioned something that occurred to me early on with that emphasis on South Korea. He didn't.
It occurred to me that if North Korea wants to conquer the South, all it has to do is bide its time, since South Korea can't even replace its population.
Of course we don't know what's going on in North Korea, but I bet the government there is urging people to have more children (even if the government can't always feed its own population).
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