The General Economics Thread

Generally, retirement savings plans and pensions are roughly equivalent in terms of impact, as they are not taxed as present income. Therefore there is a significant net benefit to the consumer who enrolls in them. However, if you were to take the net amount of the tax benefit and the employer contribution portions of those plans, and give them to the employee as present income, that would be superior in terms of its economic benefit.

edited 25th Jun '15 2:28:20 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Then I guess the minimum income idea automatically includes those that have retired as well?

Keep Rolling On

Obviously, yes.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Why wouldn't we?

Like I said, either you accept the elderly and infirm need support, which means paying out money from the Government, or we push for Eugenics-Incinerate the Old Folk, if you don't want this huge drain of old folks and their evil Pensions of Darkness that the IMF hates.

You can't gut Pensions and insist people "be careful with their money" when the very system makes Savings fucking un-affordable. It's beyond hypocritical.

The IMF hates the government-funded pensions, i thought?

Yes. That's what I'm saying.

Pensions are the evil darkness of dread doom that will undo everything that makes Western Civilization great, et al. (/Snark)

edited 25th Jun '15 3:36:05 PM by PotatoesRock

Not really, the IMF just plain hates loaners using IMF loaned money to pay pensions.

Wrong thread?

edited 25th Jun '15 3:52:42 PM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges

edited 25th Jun '15 10:20:07 PM by rmctagg09

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

God forbid old people breathe.

(I really really take a dim view that "being responsible" is fucking the Elderly.)

Technically since the IMF money was supposed to be used on projects to improve the recipient's economy and generate a return to the creditors and not for charity work, they do have a say how it should be spent.

Inter arma enim silent leges

The IMF wants sustainability and sees too-generous pensions as a source of unsustainability. Good investment is the ideal retirement model, the whole problem is that it presupposes that these people have money to invest.

For some poorer countries it could be the hard truth that they simply don't have the money to let the old live well.

The issue is how much of the IMF's policy is tied up in nice old-fashioned "fuck the poor" neoliberalism, but there is some grounding for what they say.

The whole point of a retirement system is to invest it for a period of time, so that the interest helps defray the cost.

What breaks the system is when pension payments are deferred or the fund is raided in favor of other expenditures, such that liabilities add up with a lack of interest-bearing assets to offset them. If you don't have money in the fund to generate the interest that is supposed to pay out over time, then you've lost all the benefit.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Not necessarily. The US' Social Security system is not funded like that - part of what makes Libertarians call it a Ponzi scheme is because it really does take money from workers to pay retirees, then repeat the cycle with the next generation. Not all pensions need to be (or even should be) fully-funded, though as Fighteer has noted, the better thing to do is simply to pay everyone a basic income out of taxes on the rich.

Social Security is supposed to be "invested" in treasuries, but the whole idea is pointless; governments aren't supposed to earn money on interest; they are supposed to take in revenue through taxes and borrowing and pay out expenditures. Social Security is an expenditure, no more, no less. The idea of taxing it separately is a numbers gimmick that, in aggregate, makes the tax code more regressive.

Of course, this notion is grotesquely offensive to people who think that the government needs to be run like a business, with an eye towards profitability and balanced accounting.

edited 25th Jun '15 9:03:39 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Actually, governments earning money on investments is a very, very good idea and one that more countries should look into. But yeah, the Social Security method of investment is just silly.

Derek Khanna, the guy who wrote the House Republican Study Committee report urging major copyright reform, has done something similar for patent reform, with a free-market view that the number of patents overall should be exponentially reduced, and that, among other things, "intellectual property" is an incredibly misleading term that isn't actually property.

Keep in mind that this is a guy who is a known Republican who now works for Lincoln Labs, a free market/libertarian think tank, but he's actually sane and highly intelligent. I could actually see him eventually becoming a great congressman or senator. The report itself is a great read.

Though I do see a number of special interests getting uppity about someone trying to steer the narrative on patents against them. Khanna was fired from the RSC because Hollywood went ballistic, forced the RSC to take down his report on copyright reform (while claiming it wasn't vetted properly, which is bullshit) and certain Republicans pressured the RSC to let him go.

edited 26th Jun '15 1:13:20 AM by Cronosonic

Except the poor and lower middle classes can't put their money into savings for these retirement funds, because they're too busy living paycheck to paycheck. Neoliberalism can go fuck itself.

(I'm bitter on this because family members of mine did the "Nest Egg for Retirement" method like middle class workers. They got blown the fuck out by one family member getting severely ill due to multiple illnesses, and were left with nothing.)

That's hilariously awesome.

edited 26th Jun '15 4:00:57 AM by PotatoesRock

Libertarians saying something that the Republican donors don't like. Who'd have thought?

The Law Of One Price.

I'm guessing that's part of why the Euro is such a pain.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

More on Uber — The end of the road for Uber? Executives detained by French police

Keep Rolling On

...I hate siding with Uber, I really do. But the taxi drivers' lobby is sounding like an example of everything that's wrong with state-granted monopolies: the taxi drivers are using the government to protect their ability to charge higher prices to customers.

The taxi drivers are protecting their right to make a decent living. Right now they're barely breaking even. It's a though, stressful, thankless job. Have mercy on them.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

We've had this discussion before, but I love Uber because I travel for a living and it's an easy, convenient way to get a ride in most cities nationwide. Unfortunately, they're also bastards when it comes to business practices, which is unfortunate. However, I have very little sympathy for traditional taxi companies for being out-competed in their niche by a newcomer to the industry leveraging new technology. Uber does their job better than them, so they can get bent.

edited 30th Jun '15 12:21:46 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Puerto Rico - 3.5 million people - owes 72 billion dollars.

Where the (bleep) did all that money go?

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.