View Poll Results: A 10% income increase in exchange for forfeiting government health/pension benefits?

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  • Yes, no more socialisme!

    2 20.00%
  • No, those benefits are important to me.

    8 80.00%
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Thread: If given a choice to opt-out of Social Security

  1. #1

    Default If given a choice to opt-out of Social Security

    www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4029.pdf

    Sorry for the Amerikan-focused poll. If you could opt-out of Social Security and Medicare, would you?

    You wouldn't have to pay for it now, but you would not get any of the benefits later.

  2. #2
    What happens to the social security I've already paid?

    Either way, I'd probably still opt out. I don't want to wait until I'm 67 to retire, and I'm skeptical about my ability to get back all the money I put in, so I'd rather take care of it myself. I've been planning for my retirement like it's not going to be there anyways.

  3. #3
    Actually, going to make this more first-world centric.

    Would you take a 10% annual income increase in exchange for forfeiting government health and pension benefits?

  4. #4
    It is also more then just 10% since your employer pays their half too. But even at 10% it would be a wise investment choice to take the extra pay.

  5. #5
    Senior Member Evidently Supermarioman's Avatar
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    I would take this deal in a heartbeat.
    I enjoy blank walls.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    Actually, going to make this more first-world centric.

    Would you take a 10% annual income increase in exchange for forfeiting government health and pension benefits?
    No.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  7. #7
    I'm not sure I'd take the deal. Certainly there is policy risk inherent in SS and Medicare, but there is effectively zero risk otherwise (e.g. longevity risk, currency risk, market risk). The SS I wouldn't be too worried about given that I could just buy an immediate annuity with the extra money I made (after investing it in very safe assets until retirement) and replicate much of SS. But Medicare is awfully hard to replicate in the private sector, especially now when everyone else who's old is covered separately. The premium would likely be quite high, and I know I'd have substantial health costs in retirement.

    Absent good and relatively cost-effective private healthcare for seniors, I'd probably decline.

    ...that being said, my current job doesn't pay any FICA/etc. taxes anwyays so it's a moot point until I move to another job.

  8. #8
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    Seeing what choices non-mandatory private insurance (unnecessarily) forces upon people who are older I'd rather not opt out. I also doubt that 10% really would do the trick for Social Security.
    Congratulations America

  9. #9
    Social security isn't about me, its about the community I live in. I know there's a LOT of people who would choose to opt out and those people will either be:

    A. Fine when they retire because they are smart enough to save (and lucky enough not to get wiped out in one of our periodic 'bubbles') or they made a boat load of money

    or, more likely

    B. Totally fucked when they can't work anymore because they didn't bother to save at all, or enough, or they got wiped out in a bubble, and they never made a lot of money anyway.


    And for those who don't opt out, well, they would be:

    C. Totally fucked because all the (either) stupid and/or greedy/selfish people who opted out made the system collapse so nobody gets the benefit they need at retirement.

    I don't expect to need social security when I retire. My retirement plan pretends its not going to be there anyway. I could probably do better with the money by managing it myself. But social security isn't just about me.
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

  10. #10
    Personally, I think everyone should be required to pay in, and those who don't actually need it shouldn't be allowed to collect.

    Like Chacha said - I don't personally know anyone who actually needs it, or will need it when they get to retirement age. Why take it away from old Granny who can't even afford to fucking heat her house?
    We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by littlelolligagged View Post
    Personally, I think everyone should be required to pay in, and those who don't actually need it shouldn't be allowed to collect.

    Like Chacha said - I don't personally know anyone who actually needs it, or will need it when they get to retirement age. Why take it away from old Granny who can't even afford to fucking heat her house?
    That's what SSI is for...
    Hope is the denial of reality

  12. #12
    Personally, I think everyone should be required to pay in, and those who don't actually need it shouldn't be allowed to collect.
    So you envision SS being a form of welfare? What will actually occur is people will find ways to 'hide' money to pass whatever government test for "needing" it would require. I guess you like to give more money to financial planners and lawyers.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Lewkowski View Post
    So you envision SS being a form of welfare? What will actually occur is people will find ways to 'hide' money to pass whatever government test for "needing" it would require. I guess you like to give more money to financial planners and lawyers.
    The usual Lewk-logic would dictate everyone hiding the money be shot. Possibly raped beforehand, I'm fuzzy on the details.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
    B. Totally fucked when they can't work anymore because they didn't bother to save at all, or enough, or they got wiped out in a bubble, and they never made a lot of money anyway.
    I thought of this after I posted, and you're right, if this were an option there are going to be a class of people who opt out so they can spend more money on things they want now, when the only rational thing to do with the extra money is to put it towards long-term savings. I can't see any good way of preventing this.[/QUOTE]

    Quote Originally Posted by littlelolligagged View Post
    Personally, I think everyone should be required to pay in, and those who don't actually need it shouldn't be allowed to collect.
    That would just create an incentive to ensure that you need it when it becomes possible to collect. It'd also be a reversal of what the government's been telling us for the past half a centuryish - SS is supposed to still be our money, the government's just holding onto it for a while.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Wraith View Post
    I thought of this after I posted, and you're right, if this were an option there are going to be a class of people who opt out so they can spend more money on things they want now, when the only rational thing to do with the extra money is to put it towards long-term savings. I can't see any good way of preventing this.

    That would just create an incentive to ensure that you need it when it becomes possible to collect. It'd also be a reversal of what the government's been telling us for the past half a centuryish - SS is supposed to still be our money, the government's just holding onto it for a while.
    They didn't invent social security to help people who were already well off and/or who were meticulous and conscientous planners. It's for everybody else who, like it or not, are in the far majority. As far as I can tell from what I've read, at the time it was conceived, people who couldn't work anymore were finding themselves destitute and either dying of neglect or becoming a heavy burden on their children. And this wasn't for lack of working or from living high off the hog, it simply was life. Things are different now, but not that much different, I don't think. The program fills a big need.
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

  16. #16
    Being one of the privileged elite, I don't need any of the safety net system (though diversification is a no-brainer good idea, as Wiggin notes). But I consider a good chunk of my taxes to be an investment in civilization. Like the Chinese economy, the Old West romanticized by lolbertarians was a lousy place to live. A certain fraction of people are going to fail at the game of life. If we kick them to the curb, our society will be a dangerous and undesirable place to live. Consequently, I consider investing in these safety net features investing in a society worth living in. I consider the contrary to be naive.

  17. #17
    And you might not always be among the elite. It occasionally happens to mid-level types. Not so much to the real elite, but hey, their parents they earned it, so....

    There's also morality and God and such. If we are a Christian nation, then our nation cannot afford to kick the under-privledged to the curb, lest we anger God, risk losing His favor, and risk our immortal souls.

    And regardless of what the libertarians romanticise, we are a communal, collective species. That's our biggest survival advantage. We do our best by working cooperatively at every level. If the US had been a libertarian ideal through the last century, we'd be living more like the people do in Mexico today. Or worse. That would be an interesting thought exercise - what would have happened in the 20th Century if the US wasn't there to interfere in the death throes of the colonial empires?
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
    They didn't invent social security to help people who were already well off and/or who were meticulous and conscientous planners. It's for everybody else who, like it or not, are in the far majority. As far as I can tell from what I've read, at the time it was conceived, people who couldn't work anymore were finding themselves destitute and either dying of neglect or becoming a heavy burden on their children. And this wasn't for lack of working or from living high off the hog, it simply was life. Things are different now, but not that much different, I don't think. The program fills a big need.
    SS was started for widows and orphaned children. Back then, most women weren't in the work force and depended on men to provide for the family. If the man died the family suffered; if both parents died the children were screwed. IIRC that's when work houses (posing as orphanages) were closed. Orphans were still shipped (or sent by train) to distant relatives if they had any, or to strange families who used them as labor on the farm.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
    And you might not always be among the elite. It occasionally happens to mid-level types. Not so much to the real elite, but hey, their parents they earned it, so....
    Oh, I'm very, very aware of this. Without a loving and generous extended family, there's a chance that I'd be disabled now without the insurance to pay for a transplant. The wait list for a kidney is 5.5 years in my state. Given my gout, I almost certainly would have been crippled while on dialysis, and therefore not able to work. OK, I'd get some disability, but it would be a fraction of my salary. And given the pain, I might have killed myself by now, or doped myself into insensibility. My prospects were very grim, which was the source of my thread saying, essentially, "this is really fucking scary!"

    {NOTE: this does an injustice to the two non-family members who made it to the final group considered for my donor. I am exceptionally fortunate.}

    There's also morality and God and such. If we are a Christian nation, then our nation cannot afford to kick the under-privledged to the curb, lest we anger God, risk losing His favor, and risk our immortal souls.
    Try telling that to certain CINOs.

    And regardless of what the libertarians romanticise, we are a communal, collective species. That's our biggest survival advantage. We do our best by working cooperatively at every level.
    Agreed. The limited libertarian principles we use allow us to maximize our potential (and the speed of our departure from humanity's dark ages). Remove the checks, and they'll destroy us and take us straight to an authoritarian government style.

    If the US had been a libertarian ideal through the last century, we'd be living more like the people do in Mexico today. Or worse. That would be an interesting thought exercise - what would have happened in the 20th Century if the US wasn't there to interfere in the death throes of the colonial empires?
    Meh, not sure I agree with that. The US can hardly claim savior status. Also, the US could have swung the opposite direction and embraced authoritarian communism. It certainly seemed possible in the late 30s. Few consider what WWII saved the world from.

    What cracks me up is that lolbertarians rally around Ayn Rand like she was some kind of uber-genius. If you've read Rand, you'd realize that there's a special kind of naivete involved there. Because not only were her books spectacularly poorly written, but they were transparently a manifesto to justify a selfish life, especially once you know how she conducted her personal life. As a package, I can't imagine a more poorly executed promotion of lolbertarianism, which is why it seems to attract a certain type of near-autistic cluelessness. But it is oddly consistent, given how lolbertards worship Rand. Because except when heavily leavened with checks and balances, it is a very naive philosophy. {The exception: when promulgated by those who favor a dog-eat-dog world where THEY are the ones who crawl to the top over the corpses of all the others. THAT flavor of lolbertard is not naive at all: they know exactly what they want, and what changes are needed to get it.}

    You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need.
    You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street,
    You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed.
    And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight,
    You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking.

    And after a while, you can work on points for style.
    Like the club tie, and the firm handshake,
    A certain look in the eye and an easy smile.
    You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to,
    So that when they turn their backs on you,
    You'll get the chance to put the knife in.

    You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder.
    You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you
    get older.
    And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south,
    Hide your head in the sand,
    Just another sad old man,
    All alone and dying of cancer.

    And when you loose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown.
    And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone.
    And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw
    around.
    So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone,
    Dragged down by the stone.

    I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused.
    Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used.
    Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise.
    If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this
    maze?

    Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending
    That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend.
    And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner
    And everything's done under the sun,
    And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer.

    Who was born in a house full of pain.
    Who was trained not to spit in the fan.
    Who was told what to do by the man.
    Who was broken by trained personnel.
    Who was fitted with collar and chain.
    Who was given a pat on the back.
    Who was breaking away from the pack.
    Who was only a stranger at home.
    Who was ground down in the end.
    Who was found dead on the phone.
    Who was dragged down by the stone.



    [/digression]

  20. #20
    Tear, any other American with your maladies might well be dead by now. Not so much to do with your benevolent extended family, but your station in life. Partly due to your ancestry, of course. If you were a poor, dark skinned person, working 60 hours a week as a pool cleaner or lawn mower, you'd be dead by now.

    {The exception: when promulgated by those who favor a dog-eat-dog world where THEY are the ones who crawl to the top over the corpses of all the others. THAT flavor of lolbertard is not naive at all: they know exactly what they want, and what changes are needed to get it.}
    Those boots were made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do? One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you? Sounds like vengeance as a way to pump up self-esteem.

  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Wraith View Post
    I thought of this after I posted, and you're right, if this were an option there are going to be a class of people who opt out so they can spend more money on things they want now, when the only rational thing to do with the extra money is to put it towards long-term savings. I can't see any good way of preventing this.
    True, but it would stimulate the economy, wouldn't it?

    In all seriousness, with the current system there will be a class of people who contribute to Social Security over the course of several decades and will probably get almost nothing in return. I don't see how that's a viable alternative either.

    Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
    They didn't invent social security to help people who were already well off and/or who were meticulous and conscientous planners. It's for everybody else who, like it or not, are in the far majority. As far as I can tell from what I've read, at the time it was conceived, people who couldn't work anymore were finding themselves destitute and either dying of neglect or becoming a heavy burden on their children. And this wasn't for lack of working or from living high off the hog, it simply was life. Things are different now, but not that much different, I don't think. The program fills a big need.
    The elderly income conditions were more a function of the economy at the time. But it doesn't make the utter fiscal reality of Social Security any different. And it doesn't make it any more right to force people to contribute to a giant pension system that, actuarially, is only going to pay them a fraction of that money back.

  22. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Wraith View Post
    That would just create an incentive to ensure that you need it when it becomes possible to collect. It'd also be a reversal of what the government's been telling us for the past half a centuryish - SS is supposed to still be our money, the government's just holding onto it for a while.
    I wasn't going to play anymore - and I'm still not entirely sure I want to...

    But social security doesn't pay so much that people can live off it comfortably, anyway - it's why you hear the discussions of elderly people on a fixed income, anyway. And I'd say the cut-off would be any sort of income that is the equivalent of what you pay in SS. So that if you want to collect SS, you're stuck living off that and no more. Somehow (I haven't actually thought it through or anything, and I'm really not going to).

    I'd be fairly Marxist in making it equitable, which probably wouldn't work too well here in Amerika. You'd be screwed. But it would at least guarantee that the people who really need SS actually get it.
    We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.

  23. #23
    There's also morality and God and such. If we are a Christian nation, then our nation cannot afford to kick the under-privledged to the curb, lest we anger God, risk losing His favor, and risk our immortal souls.
    I'm not against charity. I am against forcing someone at gun point to hand over money to an inefficient bureaucracy that creates unhealthy dependencies.

  24. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Lewkowski View Post
    I am against forcing someone at gun point to hand over money to an inefficient bureaucracy that creates unhealthy dependencies.
    Until your brand of Evangelical ding-battiness starts raping kiddies and hoarding guns (mostly the latter), you won't have guns pointed at you. Stop making useless and offensive straw-men about the execution of fucking taxation in modern society, it's as tiresome as it is irksome.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  25. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Lewkowski View Post
    I'm not against charity. I am against forcing someone at gun point to hand over money to an inefficient bureaucracy that creates unhealthy dependencies.
    http://www.theworldforgotten.net/showthread.php?t=1180



    Now read that very closely, and pay attention to page two. My Amish neighbors are more than willing to take care of their own. They're also willing to pay sales tax and property tax. For years they also paid into SS and Medicare but never ever expected to get their dollar back, but they also never begrudged the "English" from their system.

    They also never refused to serve in the military, and didn't run to Canada as COs as a way out. They figured out a way to serve humbly and with grace, for their country, even though they're basically pacifists, by being in non-combat roles.

    And you dare to talk about guns, or being forced against your will to share your good fortune with your neighbors. Sour grapes for your countrymen. All the while shilling as a Christian?
    Last edited by GGT; 09-22-2010 at 09:19 AM.

  26. #26
    The link I posted was the form Amish people use to opt-out of Social Security and Medicare.

    It sounds like they aren't in line with mainstream Amish. IE they are too mainstream with "regular" society. But I could also be misunderstanding what you're getting at.

  27. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by GGT View Post
    SS was started for widows and orphaned children. Back then, most women weren't in the work force and depended on men to provide for the family. If the man died the family suffered; if both parents died the children were screwed. IIRC that's when work houses (posing as orphanages) were closed. Orphans were still shipped (or sent by train) to distant relatives if they had any, or to strange families who used them as labor on the farm.
    Do you have a source for any of that? I suppose I could look it up on wikipedia, but that might be too politically charged an issue to be objective there . . . .
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

  28. #28
    It's not true. My understanding is SS was started primarily for the elderly. Children don't get access to SS funds, that's kinda the point.

  29. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by ']['ear View Post
    Meh, not sure I agree with that. The US can hardly claim savior status. Also, the US could have swung the opposite direction and embraced authoritarian communism. It certainly seemed possible in the late 30s. Few consider what WWII saved the world from.
    I don't know enough about WW1 to comment on whether US involvement affected the outcome of the war, but in WW2 it seems if the US didn't get involved in Europe, the Soviets likely would have gone all the way to the English Channel. And in Asia? If the US didn't go after Japan, who knows what would have happened.

    What cracks me up is that lolbertarians rally around Ayn Rand like she was some kind of uber-genius.
    I heard a piece on NPR about Rand's circle of libertarian thinkers, all about personal freedom and responsibility, and anyone who didn't follow her thinking in lockstep was chastized and cast out. lol
    .... it seems to attract a certain type of near-autistic cluelessness.
    Yikes.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    It's not true. My understanding is SS was started primarily for the elderly. Children don't get access to SS funds, that's kinda the point.
    IIRC there is a provision for children to get SS if their parents die or are crippled or something. I think GG ought to do the research though. BTW, you didn't vote in your poll. Come on, lets have it.
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

  30. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    It's not true. My understanding is SS was started primarily for the elderly. Children don't get access to SS funds, that's kinda the point.
    It was also intended for people who live to a very old age. Not too many people lived to get social security when the program was created (life expectancy was about 60). It certainly wasn't intended for all old people or all old poor people.
    Hope is the denial of reality

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