Comments | kanzeon_2040: is retirement moral?

kanzeon_2040

is retirement moral?

Jun 07, 2022 20:10

Recently I joined an anarchism subreddit and I've enjoyed debating anarchist concepts with folks from a pro-anarchism perspective. Way more interesting than trying to debate Libertarians, who seem to be mostly assholes on the Internet nowadays ( Read more... )

anarchism, retirement, global green communism, more of everything, capitalism

Comments 5

matrixmann June 8 2022, 01:02:13 UTC

I think you're being too strictly limited to the ways through which you acquire the possibility to retirement in the US ( ... )

kanzeon_2040 June 8 2022, 08:39:52 UTC

I think from a socialist perspective, state-funded retirements are not as difficult to justify - although I still wonder why we would tell a substantial portion of the adults that we don't need them to work at all, regardless of their ability to work ( ... )

matrixmann June 8 2022, 09:09:06 UTC

In fact, in GDR real socialism they practiced something similar to what you describe here. BUT with a big deviation from what one would imagine: Even if you worked parttime or so in a position that could be done by an elder person, you still kept your state-guaranteed pension per month. So to say, working a bit still was an additional income on top of the pension. Because it was considered as "you legitimately earned this through your life of working hard for decades".

Abandoning pension overall, I think, is no good idea - because, in whatever society and economic system, then you'll never get the recognition you're health-wise not fit anymore to contribute ( ... )

anais_pf June 8 2022, 17:01:43 UTC

I think you are not taking into consideration the fact that many older people CANNOT work anymore. Anyone who does physical labor is going to wear out sometime around age 50 or so, and many people lose their grasp on some of their mental capacity as they age. And even if one is able, it becomes harder and harder to make yourself get up and go to work every day.

kanzeon_2040 June 8 2022, 17:12:02 UTC

That's a good argument for having a built-in retirement system that is funded by taxation and for which everybody is eligible. But it doesn't sway me regarding the "individuals saving for their own retirement" question.

Also, I'm not sure whether people realize that the Social Security system that we do have does not automatically cover everybody, and if you are eligible the size of your pension depends entirely on how many years you worked and how much money you earned. In other words, it is not equal for all, it is actually regressive not progressive in that poor people get smaller pensions.

We do have a Social Security disability program for people who can no longer work - I don't know much about how this system works or how much it pays out. I feel that we often conflate "retirement age" with "disability" - surely the ability of a person to do work as they age is an individual matter not something tied directly to age, depending on what kind of work they've been trained to do or what kind of work they could be trained to do, ( ... )