the cato institute explains why young people should be pissed off

[MrFun]

Wow -- even if I disagree with you Chegitz, that is an interesting, good allegory to back up your own argument.

[GePap]

"The Market" is an abstraction-it is a theory, NOT a reality.

How efficient a market is is based on how educated the buyer is, and how informed they are as to the options they are being offered by the sellers. Finally, of course, how you define efficiency is based on what your aims are. A hammer is a very efficient way of hammering in a nail-and horribly inefficient at cracking eggs so I could make an Ommelette.

The real world gives us one in which the buyers are generally poorly educated as to what they are buying, driven by fads and fashion and facing some level of lying by the sellers. All of these realities make the market less efficient than the theoretical market some people here worship. People also utterly ignore the connections of economic to political power. They CAN'T be separated, and whether a program is run by the public or by private interests, one must ask how the conenction of money to power will determine this mix and who wins out.

So enough of this silly santification of the market, and the equally stupid villification of the publi sector.

[DinoDoc]

Che: You're not making any sense. Argue against people stated opinion not what you think they are.

[GePap]

who are you talking to?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Caligastia

Yeah, I like the idea of elderly people dying in shacks.

Well if you don't then be quiet.

I can't say I have all the answers, but I know what doesn't work.

But it does work - elderly people are not dying in shacks!!! The possibility you are excluding is that this might be the best we can do, given human nature. Perhaps we could tweak the system a bit to make it more efficient, but no alternative has yet been found.

If we don't have a reasonable alternative, then it is childish and idiotic to throw away the one that we have.

If your investments are diversified, and you transfer your money into low-risk areas well before you retire, this won't be a problem.

Yes it will. For one, it is irrational to just save for your retirement because you don't know when you'll die. This is why risk sharing by insurance schemes is most attractive. It prevents people running out of money when they live too long.

The people who have the most incentive to pay into an insurance scheme are those who stand to get more out than they pay in. Hence the scheme will have to start denying people products because there isn't any money in it. Private insurance schemes always face problems like this.

How can someone be too poor to put money aside for retirement, yet they can afford to pay into SS? It's one or the other.

Because if private insurance was the only option it would cost more. A compulsory scheme avoids adverse selection risks. Look at what happened to private health insurance in NZ when the government started cutting health care.

So I'm not a real New Zealander unless I support socialist government programs?

No, you are just one of those cloud cuckoo land folk who bought into the failed Rogernomics rubbish. New Zealand is better off without you.

Yeah, that's why NZ has historically had significantly higher unemployment than the US.

No. You obviously weren't around in the 70s. It doesn't matter anyway, the standard of living and health care for most people in NZ which is not a rich country is a lot better than the US.

Exactly, and as with all things government, there is no competition and therefore no motivation to provide value for money.

That deserves a Ming laugh



The whole point of government providing services is that they are things that a market wouldn't provide. Otherwise we'd leave it to the market. That's why the police among other things are funded by compulsion.

There can be problems caused by lack of competition, but that doesn't mean there are no pressures. People will vote out governments that do not provide a decent level of service in favour of reformers.

But this is still irrelevant. If the government is providing a service, however badly, that people need and that markets would not provide, then it is on balance a good thing.

Yes, the market would no doubt provide a better sevice.

Prove it. All you have done is repeat silly Tory slogans without providing any substantial reasons. Both Chegitz and I have challenged numerous people on this thread to show how a private scheme would do as well as SS at providing such broad public goods. But no one has come up with anything other than whining about having to pay tax.

In fact conservative governments don't believe you because none of them will totally get rid of SS either.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Agathon
In fact conservative governments don't believe you because none of them will totally get rid of SS either.

The reason is that the elderly are loud annoying and vote in large numbers.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by MrFun
Wow -- even if I disagree with you Chegitz, that is an interesting, good allegory to back up your own argument.

Why thank you. I won't think bad thoughts about you for five minutes, starting . . . now.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Che: You're not making any sense. Argue against people stated opinion not what you think they are.

My point is, people have forgotten what it was like in this country before the programs that made this country livable came into existence. Take away what made this country a middle class nation, and soon, you won't have a middle-class nation.

[GePap]

And thus show that there is a "market" for this, and a public democratic will.

I say, lets give the conservaitves a middle of the road state, say Ohio, and let themr un it using all their little pet theories as a test case of conservative ideas, since they have never actually been explored, given that before big government the private sector had failed utterly to provide any of the services people here claim the private sector can do so much better.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
My point is, people have forgotten what it was like in this country before the programs that made this country livable came into existence.

Yes and the point of most of the people you have been argueing with in this thread has been that SS is horribly mismanaged and that it fails to provide the service it claims too in anything approaching an efficent manner.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Yes and the point of most of the people you have been argueing with in this thread has been that SS is horribly mismanaged and that it fails to provide the service it claims too in anything approaching an efficent manner.

But it's incorrect, as it has succeeded quite well, and the alternative being proposed is to return to the odl way of doing things, which was to leave the elderly to fend for themselves.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
But it's incorrect, as it has succeeded quite well,

Properly managed 401ks provide a better retirement income than anything I have heard being provided by SS. This alone seems to be a major strike against it as a pension plan. Anyway let's take rah as an example of this. Do you seriously think that the money he's paid into SS will provide him with enough income to maintain his standard of living esp. when we are told what the money would have been worth with any sort of reasonable interest?

[chequita guevara]

What percentage of the population has 401Ks, let alone properly managed ones.

[DinoDoc]

How would you describe a pension plan that is consistently out performed in its rate of return by virtually every other plan imanginable? Would you put your money into it if you were at all interested in providing for your retirement?

[Imran Siddiqui]

There once was a country that built a great wall to keep out barbarians. It was very costly, and very expensive, but it worked, no barbarians came. But generations passed, and no one remembered that there were barbarians, and they began to complain about the cost of the wall, and why should they have to pay. We've never seen a barbarian, they don't exist.

And so they stopped maintaining and manning the wall. And the barbarians came and killed them, stole their women and children, and took their land.

That's a simplistic view of the fall of China. The reason the Mongols were able to win was because of a gradual fall of the Confusian system. The wall fell into disrepute not because they chose not to pay for it, but because they couldn't.