Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

http://graphics.latimes.com/retirement-nomads/

by uptown • 10 years ago

111 186 10 years ago

graphics.latimes.com

xutopia• 10 years ago

I feel so sad when I read stories like these ones... a 300$ ticket is the difference between being broke and having food on the table for her.

To me it says a lot about our society if we can't take care of our elderly.

dreamdu5t• 10 years ago

While I agree with your sentiment, I do not agree that it is my responsibility to take care of your parents. I want to take care of mine, and socializing these costs just means I'm forced to pay for your parents at the expense of mine. There is no replacement for the family unit. Obviously I feel differently about people who have no family, but that is the exception not the norm.

marshray• 10 years ago

Not every elderly is a parent.

exhilaration• 10 years ago

You're pretty confident that you and/or your savings will live to take care of your parents. What if you get hit by a bus? Or lose your ability to work? Isn't that what a social safety net is for?

quadrangle• 10 years ago

Not socializing these costs means externalizing them. Should we all chip in to take care of this very social issue or should we just accept the costs in the form of living in a dysfunctional society with all the ramifications of huge numbers of poor elderly folks? We bear the costs as a society one way or the other.

It seems what you're saying is: you just wish every elderly person just had a wealthy enough family that could comfortably take care of them. But that's completely useless fantasy talk.

tamana4• 10 years ago

Since everyone has 2 parents, essentially, it is absolutely trivial to work out a fair welfare scheme. This is much easier than most welfare systems.

MrZongle24• 10 years ago

"a 300$ ticket is the difference between being broke and having food on the table for her."

And the same could be said for a 18-year-old, living out on his or her own.

But in both cases, it is the result of a poor choice (inattentive driving) rather than a major flaw of society, and has nothing to do with being "too poor to retire and too young to die", as was the supposed focus of the article.

RussianCow• 10 years ago

Replace the speeding ticket with medical treatment, and that no longer holds true. Either way, you're missing the point, which is that no one (elderly or otherwise) should have to live a life in which a necessary expense of a couple hundred dollars can cause you to go hungry.

Sir_Cmpwn2• 10 years ago

The punishment for this speeding infraction is $300. Think about what kind of effect a $300 fine has on your life, and compare it to the impact on this woman's life. The punishment is to pay a fine, not to starve. We should not punish people with starvation, it's cruel and unusual. The punishment is different for you than for her, and that's not just.

maerF0x02• 10 years ago

Its tricky to feel sympathy w/ the lady in this article. She's part of the most benefitted generation, the "hardships" shown are induced by her own choices (expensive dinner, speeding ticket) and by world standards she's won the lottery to even be alive and living comfortably at her age.

Alas, thats the trick with other people's stories-- difficult to project how it would feel if I were in their shoes.

x5n12• 10 years ago

It's not tricky at all. The government eats that $300 dollars for nothing, you could easily index those fines depending on how much money people actually have. But then you can't overtax the underclass with policing. I live in Canada, you know how much the police harasses me? Not at all. The expensive dinner is three meals, which comes out to around $7/meal; not really that expensive. America has a huge underclass made by shitty government policies that favor corporate interest and complexes like the military industrial complex or the prison industrial complex at the price of its people. It's as simple as that.

And they individualize all of those bad policies and make individuals pay for it, as if it's their fault. It's not.

rdlecler12• 10 years ago

It sounds like you have never been poor. Poverty and misfortune wears you down. A moment of weakness is inevitable. Moreover financial stress has shown to significantly reduce effective IQ.

MrZongle24• 10 years ago

Exceeding the speed limit isn't exclusive to the poor and downtrodden. Should fines for breaking the law be different for different incomes?

Edit: for those of you saying 'yes': who decides what is "fair"?

kafkaesq8• 10 years ago

$300 is beyond exorbitant for a speeding ticket. It's vindictive and exploitive.

JoeAltmaier• 10 years ago

...and totally, completely avoidable.

nikdaheratik3• 10 years ago

IIRC, she was able to talk them down to $65 anyways, but she lost a days work so it was still a big loss.

skolos• 10 years ago

It's even trickier if you consider that she lost her house in 2008. How?! She is in her seventies, the house should have been long paid out. So this means she borrowed heavily against the house equity and spent all that money. I do feel sorry for her problems right now, but I sympathize more with people who were prudent not to risk their house to pay for expensive toys (Smart car).

sliverstorm3• 10 years ago

If you read the article, it sounds like rent hikes in the mobile home park she lived in made her unit unsellable.

gist2• 10 years ago

Its tricky to feel sympathy w/ the lady in this article. ... and by world standards she's won the lottery to even be alive and living comfortably at her age"

Why does that need to be trotted out whenever a story about someone's misfortune or bad circumstances is written about? It would be nice if people could just be happy with what they have because they aren't living somewhere else, under worse conditions, but unfortunately that is not the way the majority of people think and in fact it wouldn't necessarily be healthy if they did. [1]

I don't wake up in the morning (and don't know anyone who does) and think "wow I am so lucky to have a job and to earn a decent income that slow driver in front of me shouldn't annoy me so much!". If I get a meal that was expensive but was "bad" in a restaurant I don't think "thats fine at least I am alive and can afford to eat here how lucky am I".

You compare yourself to your peers and what your expectations are growing up and what you experience.

Of course life for anyone alive today is better than almost anytime in human history but people's baseline is today and where they are not another time period or where someone is living in a third world country.

[1] Because for only one reason it would also prevent people from striving and trying to make their life better in some way.

refurb7• 10 years ago

You compare yourself to your peers and what your expectations are growing up and what you experience.

Life is much easier if you don't have that mindset.

I, in fact, do wake up every morning thankful for what I have, even if it's not as much as my neighbor.

sliverstorm3• 10 years ago

There's also a theme:

Should she go to the dentist, or take a guided tour of buildings designed by her favorite architect, Frank Lloyd Wright? Each cost $100. She picked Frank Lloyd Wright. Her teeth could wait... The biggest blow came in 2013 when she faced $8,000 in charges for emergency dental work and rig repairs.

tosseraccount5• 10 years ago

"most benefitted generation"?

Is there a website that does the accounting for this? Do you have a link?

[ Serious question, has anyone done an analysis. I keep hearing "boomer ripoffs" but I'd like an impartial analysis. Also, I don't think the 80 year old in the article is a "boomer"; more likely she's a "boomer's" mother. ]

harrumph2• 10 years ago

The cost of going 8MPH over the speed limit being pegged at a week's income is not anything any person chooses. It is imposed, as well as being brutal.

These backdoor taxes on the poor exist for only one reason: concentrations of wealth work very successfully at avoiding most taxation.

maerF0x02• 10 years ago

The choice to drive, the choice to speed are what I was talking about.

Eridrus• 10 years ago

I have mixed feelings too; She clearly had some significant misfortune with the housing bubble, and the US' incentives for people to buy homes is partly responsible, but financially she received a 20k windfall, gets social security, earns enough to not get food stamps, buys organic because she has some beliefs about non-organic food and the reason she is 50k in the hole is because she decided to buy a motor home.

So it sounds like she would be fine if she decided to spend her life/money differently, but she's set on spending money on things she can't really afford, so we get this article...

I'm all for basic income, redistribution of wealth, etc, but I don't think we have enough resources to finance everyone's aspirations via taxation.

gwern• 10 years ago

are induced by her own choices (expensive dinner, speeding ticket)

The point of the quoting of the speeds ("43 mph in a 35-mph") was to point out that the ticket she got was part of the trend of local American governments of turning traffic enforcement into unchecked taxation and exploitation of poor people by abusing traffic rules to the hilt to hand out as many bogus tickets as possible in order to turn a profit. This has come up many times on HN.

In this case, it sounds like it was part of a speed trap where a sign is put up to lower the speed on a very short stretch of road by 10mph or so and then a cop can sit there and harvest the traffic; there's one of these where I live, and it makes me furious because aside from being transparently bogus a highly regressive tax/revenue trick, it actually makes everyone less safe because the flow of traffic along that road is always faster than the dip section and if everyone complied with it and braked, that would endanger people and encourage rear-endings. Similar to the abuse of red-light cameras.

vinceguidry• 10 years ago

Every time I read stories like this, I think of dozens of things, little things, that people can do to improve their situation, one thing at a time.

First off, the speeding ticket. You're in an RV, how do you go 15 over the limit? Doesn't make sense to me. You're wasting gas and painting a big red target on your back for the cops. If I were in her situation, I'd have already trained myself to keep to the speed limit no matter what. It's possible, don't tell me it isn't. Even more possible in an RV with limited acceleration. I found it harder to speed in my 20 year old truck than I did to not speed.

Second, the busted water pump. With all the time she had on her hands, surely she could have done some research in the library on how to repair these things and done it herself as opposed to spending hundreds / thousands on paying someone to do it for her. There was no rush, she was able to take her time finding someone, why not take that same time to save even more money?

I say these things because I used to be really hard up for money and resources, and I was able to get resourceful in return. The human brain is amazing, it finds a way. You just have to listen to it and be willing to try stuff out that's outside your comfort zone. For me this kind of resourcefulness is never too far from my mind, as comfortable as my dev lifestyle is right now, if economic circumstances forced me onto the street, I'd work out a way to thrive pretty quick, I simply cannot abide the slow degradation of self-worth that other people in these sorts of situations seem to experience.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize she's already being as resourceful as she can. It's a reminder that deep down, people really do differ vastly in ability, and that we need to be compassionate and generous to those caught in nasty situations with no way to pull themselves out.

But at the same time we need to encourage the kind of inventiveness and resourcefulness that made America great. Times are tough, but we can be tougher.

1024core• 10 years ago

You're in an RV, how do you go 15 over the limit?

She was doing 43 in 35, or just 8mph over the limit. That's not impossible.

nadezhda183• 10 years ago

I agree with you. I was surprised to read she could afford to pay $25 for a meal! In her broke situation, she should be mastering the art of cooking! Then these $25 would last her for a week or longer, not for 3 meals. Maybe I do sound judgmental, but I grew up in USSR right before it got collapsed, and I remember how our family tried to survive :-|

x5n12• 10 years ago

Just shows that the US government can't afford to launch any wars or flex its muscles, when it does so it does it at the cost of all these people who have paid a life's worth of taxes, and have nothing show for it. The corporate interests and the government has eaten all that work and not given them enough to live off in their old age.

refurb7• 10 years ago

all these people who have paid a life's worth of taxes

The social security benefits she receives are based off her lifetime earnings and thus the taxes she paid.

tamana4• 10 years ago

That's not true. SS taxes are an entry ticket, but the benefits are paid without regard to any sort of national investment of those twx payments.

nadezhda183• 10 years ago

she needs a financial class to learn how to save money - much more than money itself

rdlecler12• 10 years ago

Poverty begets poverty. I think this is going to become increasingly common. Her generation had all the benefits of a 66 year economic boom, and still there are many who will live out a good portion of their lives in poverty. What about subsequent generations that have been saddled with their debts, who can't afford housing, and who must pay their entitlements?

kafkaesq8• 10 years ago

Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next.

This is just shameful.

You can debate all you want about implementing basic income for the general population. But there should be no hesitation at all about applying it to seniors. As in, right now.

And the trickle-down effects of the basic message: "If you can take care of your self until age 65, you've got it made" -- will be enormous.

Lawtonfogle7• 10 years ago

But there should be no hesitation at all about applying it to seniors. As in, right now.

So something like social security. Which she is already receiving.

alkonaut• 10 years ago

Feels like a poor kind of "social security" to have to work if you are elderly. Either something is missing in the story, like an expensive addiction, or the minimum benefits (minimum pensions or social security) are simply too low to actually allow someone to retire on.

kafkaesq8• 10 years ago

Social security !== basic income. See my clarification above about this.

knicholes• 10 years ago

I find it unfair that I'm expected to make sacrifices while I'm young to ensure a comfortable retirement and also have to pay for other's retirements because they failed to do so.

bamboo_7• 10 years ago

If you're making these sacrifices now, your retirement will be an entirely different experience from someone on Social Security. Also, retirement planning is a luxury. Not all have the means to set anything aside.

MrMullen3• 10 years ago

You do not want to live in a country where old poor people eat out of trash cans.

toomuchtodo9• 10 years ago

Life is unfair. Plan accordingly.

lukev• 10 years ago

Why? Why is that?

Say you encountered a local situation where you meet someone in real danger, and for some contrived reason only you are able to help them (say, they knock at the door of your remote house during a blizzard or something, if it helps to make it concrete.)

The majority of society would say it is your ethical duty to help a person in such a circumstance, even at moderate inconvenience to yourself. You wouldn't necessarily be expected to sacrifice your own safety, or even your own fortune; but in general, most people would frown on your choice of a fancier car or a European vacation over someone else's life, in this kind of local, specific scenario.

So what makes that ethical obligation go away, just because it can't be pinned on any specific individual? Why does this ethical logic apply in a 1:1 scenario, but not in the many:many situation we find in society?

It does. And that is the basic ethical argument behind government welfare.

There may be room for discussion over how dire someone's straits must be before it's ethically mandatory to step in and help; fair enough. Maybe a "working senior" qualifies, maybe they don't.

But that doesn't change the underlying point. Your life is _not_ just your own. You live in a society, and that comes along with ethical obligations, both in direct circumstances of your life and indirect social issues.

We as a society shouldn't abandon a physically or mentally handicapped person to the streets anymore than we should walk whistling past someone lying on the road, injured by a hit-and-run.

Existence as human beings, and humans in society in particular, does impose moral obligations.

Lawtonfogle7• 10 years ago

I'm okay with sharing my profits with those who have fallen on bad times through no fault of their own. Yes, I worked hard for what I have, but there are those who also worked hard for what they had, but forces beyond their control conspired against them.

But how should one feel when they are being asked to share with someone who spent everything on the present. They benefited then while you benefit now. It might be fair for me to share with them now if they could share with me their own benefits, but alas they cannot. It would be nice of me to do so anyways, but if I am forced to sacrifice reaping the benefits of saving... then why should I have ever saved to begin with?

What lesson do we want to pass on to our children? That if you plan for the future, you will be able to benefit from your savings and we will help you if you suffer bad luck, or that you should live in the now and you will be taken care of in the future even if you don't plan for it?

(And to complicate the matter, most cases are a combination of some bad choices and some bad luck.)

Daishiman2• 10 years ago

Society is about letting go of some things to get other benefits amortized over a long term. Do you want a safe country? Pay up for a police force and a judiciary. You want to reach old age and live a somewhat satisfactory life in a way that you're also shielded from random catastrophes in life? Well you better expect to put your part in, unless you absolutely believe there is no way you could possibly ever waste your savings or have some sort of problem where you'll end up dependent on others.

kasey_junk2• 10 years ago

You are being down-voted because the US has near universal basic income for older folks & the subject of the story collects it.

It's one of the real questions I have about basic income schemes generally. The examples we have are not powerful arguments in favor of them.

s_q_b7• 10 years ago

Social Security worked well, before cost of living overtook the benefits provided.

kafkaesq8• 10 years ago

The US has near universal basic income for older folks.

No, we don't -- because the amount you get depends on how much you've earned before you're eligible. And because it isn't nearly enough to actually live on (and has stayed flat while living costs have skyrocketed).

The whole point of basic income is that it's (1) unconditional and (2) pegged to actual, real basic living expenses.

vlunkr• 10 years ago

Exactly. She's already getting her social security and other income. Is she not to blame for 50,000 in credit card debt? Or buying a mobile home, which is never a good investment. It sucks that people are in poverty, but just bailing everyone out after making poor financial decisions is a bad solution.

dragonwriter4• 10 years ago

You are being down-voted because the US has near universal basic income for older folks

No, it doesn't. The US has a broadly-applicable mostly-mandatory contribution-weighted public pension program, which is almost entirely unlike a basic income.

big_youth• 10 years ago

Well she gets $1200 a month from social security, which is already essentially a basic income for old folks.

kafkaesq8• 10 years ago

Rent for a studio. Who needs food, toiletries, or prescription medicines?

sliverstorm3• 10 years ago

She is mostly living her own dream though:

After her retirement in 2007, she had planned on selling the double-wide to finance a lifelong dream: touring the nation from behind the wheel of Big Foot.

Yes, she is working while she does it, but it sounds like she's migratory by choice.

gozur88• 10 years ago

Yeah, it's hard for me to have too much sympathy for people like this. Living in an RV is expensive once you include depreciation on the vehicle. If she'd kept the trailer she would have been comfortable enough on Social Security.

Quinner• 10 years ago

That exists, it's called Social Security.

6stringmerc12• 10 years ago

You do know you're talking about a generation that essentially had every opportunity to provide for themsleves, but squandered decades of prosperity out of their own selfishness, most easily seen in the recent $4 TRILLION spent on war as the domestic infrastructure crumbles, medical care costs skyrocketing, and the largest ideological gap in politics according to some scholars?

kafkaesq8• 10 years ago

And how do you think your own generation will be judged, in decades hence?

Spooky23• 10 years ago

It's really a indictment of basic income as a concept.

She's 79, gets social security, medicare, and a small pension. She has $50,000 in credit card debt, and drives around the country in an RV. Why do you feel sorry for her?

How much more are you supposed to give her? When she can't travel anymore, she has no assets and will be able to get a subsidized senior apartment. When she can't care for herself, it will be tough without family, but she'll get a nursing care of some sort through Medicaid.

kafkaesq8• 10 years ago

Why do you feel sorry for her?

Because she's a human being.

...she'll get a nursing care of some sort through Medicaid.

Having seen what "nursing care of some sort" look like close hand, for friends and extended family members -- it's not something I'd wish on anyone, even my worse enemies.

Shivetya• 10 years ago

Did you read all these stories? Yes we have people in financial trouble but damn if they don't all keep digging the hole deeper and deeper. RVs, or any large vehicle purchase, are not wise uses of limited incomes. RVs are money pits even for those well off enough to keep them going all year.

Each story was the same, things go wrong and then they double down on making bad choices. Basic income isn't going to save these people, it might just make some less mobile, so they will be out of sight and people won't feel guilty any more.

We already transfer a fortune from the young to old in this country, doubled down on it with the prescription acts during the Bush presidency and then doubled down again with the ACA during Obama's presidency. We cannot save everyone, especially when they keep repeating the same mistakes.

Want to help those with limited money, the solution is not to give them more money. The solution is to get the government off their backs. When their income gets below a certain threshold we need to back off the taxes, fees, and similar, they pay or go to jail for or lose property for. I have no problem fixing their medical needs but the last thing that will help is to promote their continued wandering which forever prevents them from establishing themselves.

s_q_b7• 10 years ago

Before Social Security, over 70% of seniors died in poverty. Today, that number is less than 10%.

The amount of transfer payments to the elderly is so much larger than to any other age group, but unless you're willing to let those below the median income die in abject poverty, it's necessary.

hitekker• 10 years ago

I agree with you, but do you have more sources that convey the full impact of Social Security?

s_q_b7• 10 years ago

Basic stats: http://www.cbpp.org/archives/4-8-99socsec.htm

You can go a lot deeper on this. Even today, about 50% of seniors would be below the poverty level without Social Security.

That's mostly okay, because the majority of seniors have the major expenses covered by guaranteed benefit pensions, Medicare and private savings, usually in the form of a house.

But things would get pretty grim without the government programs.

toomuchtodo9• 10 years ago

http://www.epi.org/blog/social-security-effective-anti-pover...

http://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy-basics-t...

6stringmerc12• 10 years ago

I'm not an advocate of "debtors prisons" as a traditional concept, but I'm also very reluctant to sympathize with those living on a fixed income who refuse to pick up and move to an area where the cost of living adequately aligns with their financial means. As in, if a person is old and broke, they should be grateful to have the freedom to move to a cheap place to live, not bemoan that they can no longer afford their house near the beach or whatever.

I'm hoping there is some kind of reckoning whereby these poverty-destined seniors can be inevitably moved to dense housing and care facilities for cost-effectiveness...well, not counting the immense medical bills they'll probably try to rack up on their way out the door. Want that new hip at 74? Sure, just pay for it all out of your pocket.

Might sound cruel, but strangling the youth to feed the elderly, as would be the alternative, doesn't work in the US economic model.

DanBC• 10 years ago

Is this parody? Or are you being serious?

EDIT: Really, I can't tell.

bad_user• 10 years ago

The youth are going to get old as well. And if you're young and you're not rich already, I bet you don't like birthdays that much.

k-mcgrady2• 10 years ago

> "Might sound cruel, but strangling the youth to feed the elderly, as would be the alternative, doesn't work in the US economic model."

It sounds very cruel. There's most certainly a balance we can strike but when politics, particularly in the US, is so two sided balance is hard to find. Picking up the elderly and forcing them to move is pretty drastic. Imagine being 10-20 years from death and having to leave your home, family, friends and community. When your partner dies you're going to be pretty damn lonely and I doubt you'll survive long - or want to survive long.

> "not counting the immense medical bills they'll probably try to rack up on their way out the door. Want that new hip at 74? Sure, just pay for it all out of your pocket."

There's absolutely no reason we can't afford to provide free health care to everyone. Health care should not be something you get if you can afford it. I doubt you'll be espousing this same view when you can't walk due to a bad hip and can't afford a new one possibly due to factors outside of your control. If we can afford endless, unnecessary wars, and the bailing out of large financial institutions we can afford to help everyone to lead bearable lives with adequate medical care and decent financial benefits where necessary. Sure there will be people who abuse those systems but from what I've read it's negligible.

zanny5• 10 years ago

You don't have to strangle the youth to feed the elderly. IT is always a false dichotomy to think that you need the poor to provide for the poor.

Here are numbers to consider. Per capita real GDP in 2015 in the US was $51,143. Fourty years ago it was $24,693. We have more than doubled our per-person wealth, and are continuing to increase at 2%, roughly twice the rate of inflation.

We are absolutely wealthy as a country. Beyond measure. At some point, it should be reasonable to say some things about how advanced your society should be now. In the past, there have been many points where people and leaders together agreed we were advanced and prosperous enough to invest in our own country. Just in the US, some examples would be:

* Public education. Spending money to make sure no matter your means you have access to a generalized curriculum of schooling. * Transportation infrastructure. Be it rail, canals, trollies, roads - even the old dirt roads dug out for carriages, airports, subways, bike paths, or sidewalks. * Clean water. * Sewage * Electricity * Twisted pair * Coaxial * Fiber? * Welfare that tries to insure people do not starve, or sleep in the streets. * Prisons to remove from society those who cannot participate (and for some reason people who like smoking plants). * Guaranteed access to healthcare. Oh wait, only first world countries do that.

All of these are expenses, that we pay for in taxes and rationalize as being worth the cost, because our economy can bear the cost. And it has done more than weather these costs, it has exploded even with them upon it, and often because of these expenses - these investments - we are more productive as a result.

Peace of mind in retirement may not be as obviously beneficial to the econonmy as having an interstate highway system, but the benefits now should be apparent in how we can easily see that when children are not burdened to care for their ailing parents they prosper.

So the question is not if the young are suffering for the rich, because social security has existed for going on five generations since the 40s and has had provable economic benefit in the intervening years. It is important to distinguish the benefits of the expense (social security) from the means to pay for it.

This of course ties back into growing wealth inequality, but it is important to separate why it is good to do something and why you might be getting the money to do it the wrong way.

eggman• 10 years ago

hey man; what you do is ..... do you know what the definition of is, is!

zepto2• 10 years ago

Yes - they should have anticipated the dramatic changes in technology and economics and planned accordingly. Failure to do so means they deserve to die as penniless cripples.

hiram112• 10 years ago

There's a lot that can be done to lower the amount we spend on the elderly. Something like 50% of health care costs are spent on a small minority of the population in their last year or two of life.

Anecdotally, my grandmother who worked as a state nurse for about 15 years (which is less than I've worked now that I'm in my mid 30's) received a golden pension higher than the average salary in the US along with 100% free health insurance. In the last few years of her life she used probably a million dollars in health services - new hips, massive amounts of brand medication, ear specialists, eye specialists, and finally the last few weeks of life sustaining care in the hospital.

She did not die in poverty. In fact, for the last 30 years of her non-working life, she enjoyed better medical care and a standard of living far better than any of her grandkids who were paying for her.

dogma1138• 10 years ago

Given the option would you agree to get a 100% exemption from paying taxes while your grandmother was alive on the condition she would receive non of those benefits?

thinkingkong• 10 years ago

Hopefully at some point in the future we look back at situations like this with a sense of perplexion.

I worry though, that if we do roll out some form guaranteed minimum income, the moral highground of those against welfare and social assistance will be replaced by the moral highground of those who work to supplement their income.

PavlovsCat• 10 years ago

Greed and taking advantage of people will not lead to the opposite when taken to big enough extremes. It's not the suffering which causes revolts that is the problem, it's the possibility of revolt. Once that is taken care of the suffering can be ignored or even enjoyed, depending whether the person is just a coward or a sadist.

When enough people are so disenfranchised that they need "handouts" to survive, I wouldn't be surprised about the decision to simply get rid of those people, then revising history to turn that into the best possible solution for an unfortunate problem nobody was guilty of creating. It'd be just more of what we're doing already.

6stringmerc12• 10 years ago

Nearly one-third of U.S. heads of households ages 55 and older have no pension or retirement savings and a median annual income of about $19,000.

So now we finally get to the root of why Baby Boomers are so upset with the Millenial generation - there's nobody to bail them out of the mess they created.

tamana4• 10 years ago

Poor old folks aren't the exploiters you are looking for.

6stringmerc12• 10 years ago

Voting records tell a different story.

toomuchtodo9• 10 years ago

Perhaps you should ask the questions:

Why did Boomers not have enough income to put savings aside?

If savings was put aside, what rate of return did it earn? And what remains of those savings?

But heh, f___ old people for decisions that were made before you were born, amirite?

CocaKoala2• 10 years ago

Why did Boomers not have enough income to put savings aside?

To be fair, plenty of millenials don't have enough income to put savings aside either, and they're not even getting social security benefits.

6stringmerc12• 10 years ago

Perhaps I will try to answer:

1. There is no evidence Boomers did not have enough income to put savings aside; rather, their years of prosperity, bubbles, and behaviors indicate they squandered or bilked each other out of large sums of money.

2. Historical interest rates are about 7% - at least that's the peg for most public pensions rate of growth, which is not unrealistic in a healthy US economy. The Baby Boomer population which did not save enough was tempted by higher returns in the equities or housing casinos, gambled, lost a great deal of whatever wealth they had in bubbles bursting, and now what? I should feel all happy that my government is going to lift the funds out of my pocket?

duderific• 10 years ago

Why did Boomers not have enough income to put savings aside?

Many of them did have enough income to put aside, but chose not to. My father is one of them. He was making 6 figures back in the 1980's when that was a lot of dough, yet he finds himself at 74 still having to work and living essentially paycheck to paycheck. I'm pretty sure he is not the only one like this.

guelo• 10 years ago

401K is a massive Wall Street ripoff and a massive failure. The disaster is just beginning.

tosseraccount5• 10 years ago

What are their returns, compared to say, social security investments or private pensions?

refurb7• 10 years ago

I know I much prefer relying on the benevolence of a corporation to correctly run a pension program so that it doesn't go bankrupt and leave me high and dry.

Much better than controlling my own retirement.

caskance4• 10 years ago

No matter how much social security is, some people will manage to spend so extravagantly that it is not enough. An anecdote of one such person is not very convincing.

MrMullen3• 10 years ago

Why don't these people move to a place where it is much cheaper to live? Costa Rica, Panama, and Mexico all come to mind. Living in the US is expensive and you can live much cheaper in other countries and have the adventure of living in another country.

https://internationalliving.com/countries/costa-rica/cost-of...

mmagin• 10 years ago

Do the countries you mention want immigrants who are not likely to benefit their economy significantly and who probably don't have fluency in the local language?

MrMullen3• 10 years ago

Costa Rica and Panama happily take America retirees. America retirees have a guarantee income, they don't cause trouble and health care is affordable in those countries. The retirees should learn spanish but there is no reason they could not stay in their own enclaves, if they had too.

aianus• 10 years ago

Yes, there are plenty of tropical countries with visa categories specifically for retired westerners. The requirements are often super-lenient (in Thailand you need to show a bank balance of $25,000 or $2,000 a month in income and you can stay as long as you want on a retiree visa).

jkot• 10 years ago

she pulled into the Town & Country Family Restaurant to take the edge off her appetite .... After much consideration, she ordered the prime rib special and an iced tea — expensive at $21.36,

I guess that is really bad for US.

Afforess• 10 years ago

Terrible in terms of frugality. The article suggests she saved leftovers and used it for 3 meals total. However, that is still $7 a meal, very pricey. It's not terribly hard to have $1 (or less!) meals if you grocery shop and cook for yourself.

roymurdock3• 10 years ago

Here's a breakdown of the US 2015 combined (Federal, State, Local) government spend:

  Total Spend: 6.18tn
  Total Revenue: 6.08tn

  Healthcare: 1.32tn     (21.3%)
  Pension: 1.20tn        (19.7%)
  Education: 0.93tn      (14.8%)
  Defense: 0.80tn        (13.1%)
  Welfare: 0.50tn         (8.2%)
  Other*: 1.43tn         (23.1%)

  *Other = Protection, Transportation, General Government, Interest

Currently, social security is taking in ~$74bn less in payroll taxes than it pays out in benefits. The $2.83tn fund is invested in federal debt that pays 3.4% interest. So the interest payment (from the Federal government) of $96.2b is enough to cover the deficit.

By 2020, interest will no longer be enough to cover the deficit between revenue in from taxes and expenditures out to retirees. At that point, the SS fund will need to start redeeming treasuries for cash. The federal government will then need to issue new debt and/or raise taxes to cover SS treasury bond redemptions.

If the Federal Reserve follows through in its quest to raise interest rates and inflation, it will be relatively expensive to raise the $2.83tn in debt that we will need to fund SS through 2029, when it is projected to completely deplete its reserves of treasury notes. At this point, SS will only be able to pay out 75% of promised benefits given the current tax rate and demographic trends.

Healthcare expenses lean heavily towards the old but are funded by the working age population. What happens as the birth rate decreases and the average individual lives longer? Expenses increase for the working-age population.

I'm less concerned about spend on education (which is broken) than I am about how we plan to fund our health care and pension systems. The only feasible way I can see is through increased taxation. I just started working last year. Hell of a time to enter the work force! Overall it seems to me like we are paying an increasing amount of our federal budget on the older population than we anticipated we would need to and that we did not adequately provision for.

creshal• 10 years ago

Healthcare spending is at least as broken as education: The US health care system is 50-100% more expensive per capita as comparable European systems, yet less capable. There's lots of savings potential here.

unprepare• 10 years ago

I'm not saying i believe it but the counterargument i've heard to this is that the US also funds the most medical research.

I havent seen anyone clearly explain how more expensive bandaids trickle down into the pockets of researchers, but nevertheless it is a common counterargument to the US spending much more than other countries on healthcare

maxsilver• 10 years ago

Only $74bn short? That works out to $232/yr each, or an extra $20 per citizen per month.

That doesn't sound like all that much to spend to ensure Social Security stays available.

I think if you told people "we need to raise revenue through taxes 1.6% to ensure Social Security stays solvent for all working adults", most reasonable people would agree to that. At least, I would hope most people would think that's fairly reasonable.

dpritchett2• 10 years ago

They'll say "I don't trust the government to spend that money properly. Take $232/yr away from some entitlement program that services people who aren't directly related to me."

tosseraccount5• 10 years ago

Federal Debt is $59K per person. http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//most-go...

So that's about $120K per taxpayer.

It takes a long time to pay that kind of debt down on stagnant wages.

It's more than the annual GDP and one of the worst in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_de...

The right alternative to raising taxes might be to moderate spending and trying to pay down the debt. We need to not leave the kids with a bum debt.

nugget3• 10 years ago

You have a gap of .1 tn (a hundred billion dollars) of spend over revenue, implying an annual deficit of that amount.

From what I read the Federal deficit was >$400 billion in 2015 and the majority of states and municipalities seem to run either at neutral or a slight deficit.

What am I missing here or how does the math work out?

roymurdock3• 10 years ago

I sourced spending data from http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ and revenue data from http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/. Lots of good links and transparency wrt data sourcing (mostly from gov) and calculations of totals.

In 2015 Federal spend was 3.8t and revenue was 3.2t, so there was a gap of -600bn there as you mentioned. States ran a surplus of 200bn and local ran a deficit of -400bn. Intergovernmental transfers amounted to 600bn. So the total deficit was -200bn (the top level numbers are rounded to one decimal place).

zanny5• 10 years ago

Expenses increase for the working-age population.

This only happens when your tax policy is setup to fund welfare through the working poor. As an economy as a whole the US has doubled in inflation adjusted wealth in just over ten year (since 2003) and through a recession. It is obvious that the overhead of welfare has not in any way stymied US economic growth, which simply means if the tax burden of the elderly is too great upon the working poor then you are taxing the wrong source of income to fund your retirement program.

dragonwriter4• 10 years ago

If the Federal Reserve follows through in its quest to raise interest rates and inflation, it will be relatively expensive to raise the $2.83tn in debt that we will need to fund SS through 2029

The Federal Reserve is not on a "quest" to "raise interest rates and inflation", it is raising interests rates not as a goal of its own, but as a means to restrain, rather than raise, inflation. (h/t to laurencerowe for catching the dumb mistake I made earlier here by reversing the effect sought -- the correction actually makes reality farther from "raise interest rates and inflation" than my initial response.)

And even with rates much higher than any that the Fed is likely to raise them to between now and 2020, new government debt has been fairly cheap. Not as cheap as it is now, but not particularly expensive.

Further, if it is more expensive to issue new government debt, than the returns on the Trust Fund will be greater, and it will not be exhausted as soon. (In fact, the "low cost" alternative scenario -- in which Social Security is solvent as far out as projections go -- is, compared to the intermediate projection, based on higher interest rates, higher inflation, and higher employment [the latter of which is one of the factors which lead the Fed to seek higher interest rates, since balancing inflation against employment is a big part of what they do]. So the Fed being on that "quest" is, arguably, a positive sign for Social Security.)

(Anyhow, the most recent -- 2015 Trustees Report -- intermediate projection is for exhaustion of the Old Age & Survivors Trust Fund is in 2035, not 2029.)

roymurdock3• 10 years ago

to maintain, rather than raise, inflation

The Committee judges that there has been considerable improvement in labor market conditions this year, and it is reasonably confident that inflation will rise, over the medium term, to its 2 percent objective. Given the economic outlook, and recognizing the time it takes for policy actions to affect future economic outcomes, the Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 1/4 to 1/2 percent. The stance of monetary policy remains accommodative after this increase, thereby supporting further improvement in labor market conditions and a return to 2 percent inflation.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/2015...

exhaustion of the Old Age & Survivors Trust Fund is in 2035, not 2029

Social Security’s combined reserves likely will be fully depleted by 2034, according to the trustees’ intermediate forecast. The disability-insurance trust fund could run dry as soon as the end of 2016, while the old-age and survivors’ fund is expected to be depleted in 2035 – assuming it’s not tapped to backfill the disability fund. (The Congressional Budget Office, in a separate report that uses somewhat different demographic assumptions, projects that the disability fund will be exhausted in fiscal 2017 and the old-age and survivors’ fund in calendar 2031; if the funds are combined, they would be exhausted in calendar 2029.) The exact depletion dates depend, of course, on future demographic and economic trends. After the reserves are exhausted, the system still will be receiving tax revenue, but it will only be enough to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits – unless Congress changes the benefit formulas, raises the payroll tax, or makes other changes such as raising the cap on taxable wage income (currently $118,500).

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/18/5-facts-abou...

laurencerowe• 10 years ago

The Federal Reserve is not on a "quest" to "raise interest rates and inflation", it is raising interests rates as a means to avoid deflation (or, phrased differently, to maintain, rather than raise, inflation.)

Raising interest rates generally lowers inflation. The Fed recently raised interest rates because it thought the danger of deflation had receded as inflation had begun to increase (though inflation remains below the 2% target.)

nikdaheratik3• 10 years ago

The consensus is that Social Security is fixable, mostly. You wouldn't need to pay too much more into it in some manner to make it sustainable. They may need to raise the age again, but since none of the hard decisions have to be made for 10-15 years down the line, no one is making them.

Healthcare is one of the bigger problems. Maybe the ACA will "bend the curve" enough to make it more sustainable. If not, then more cost cuts or higher wage taxes are the future for that. At least the issue is looking better now than it was 5-10 years ago.

None of these are as important as making sure we don't end up in some kind of $1-2Tn war or wreck the environment enough with global warming that we have major infrastructure and agriculture issues.

Sfi81• 10 years ago

Do what other civilized nations do.. Control drug prices and rein in military spending.

pcardh02• 10 years ago

Obviously we need more immigration to solve this problem. A larger pool of unskilled labor would increase wages. As everyone knows, when you increase the supply, the price always rises.

tosseraccount5• 10 years ago

Immigration system as ponzi scheme to pay for old people?

robertcorey• 10 years ago

She made several major financial mistakes in this article. 21.36 would have gotten her a months worth of beans and rice. But we shouldn't write people off for making poor financial choices. Maybe SS payments could be offered in the form of room and board for those struggling to manage their cashflow.

nadezhda183• 10 years ago

so agree she would benefit much more from learning how to save money than from having more money

nikdaheratik3• 10 years ago

And there were parts of the article where she lived off of rice and milk. It's not the $20 meal that's costing her, but the higher cost of living from living in an RV + the unfixed employment income and the fact that she doesn't have a lifetime of savings to fall back on.

brandonmenc• 10 years ago

A cautionary tale for the child-free. multi-generational households are one way to assuage this problem.

stcredzero• 10 years ago

Bill Staines – A Cowboys Hard Times

    Well, I once was a cowboy, and I used to run wild.
    And I rodeoed, wrangled, and rambled in style.
    But I'm too old for horses, too old for the show,
    And I'm too young for Heaven; now where shall I go?

You young whipper-snappers might think that's quaint. But get ye into the position of manager, guru, or entrepreneur, or this can happen to a coder too.

pcardh02• 10 years ago

I think she should explore the lucrative career of drug mule. She already has all of the equipment for the job and she is pretty low in the profiling category. If she gets caught, the housing and food problems go away. Sounds like a Win/Win/Win situation.

Mikeb852• 10 years ago

I was going to write a post about how you can't have a great social net as well as low-tax laissez-faire economy.

But this article paints a portrait of a woman who never saved, made many bad decisions, spends too much, and, even when faced with poverty, continues to try to "have it all". Maybe it's commendable, I've always thought it would be fun to be a ski bum or something (and I have taken 6 months off at a time before to go travel, camp, ski, etc...). But if I were to make that choice, it would be just that - my choice, and I certainly wouldn't complain about the consequences.

jdhzzz• 10 years ago

I stopped reading when I read: "Eight in 10 Americans say they will work well into their 60s or skip retirement entirely." Uhm, the system is kind of designed that way. Why is alarming that most will work "well into their 60's"? How do 1 of 5 get by without working well into their 60s? Sign me up.

Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

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