Ok comrade. Who provides the dough for your universal income? State planning? Google Venezuela.
Ok. Now we have some common ground. But I have no idea how we can correct their problems and ours at the same time. I’m sure you have some winning ideas on how we can do that.
seems like doesn’t it?
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Inviting the usual suspects when the thread is already at full capacity for noids sure does make it seem that way.
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While I normally appreciate sarcasm, this hits a bit close to home. My parents are baby boomers. My father was once an executive who quit to open his own small business which failed. When he tried to make real estate investments in the 80’s and 90’s my mom blocked him from doing it as too risky when in reality if he had done it they would have been set for life. So in the end he was in fact too old to go back to school or retrain, worked dead end crap jobs, and now has zero retirement and lives off SS. Meanwhile, mom stayed with the same company for 50 years because “that’s what you do” in her mindset and then got laid off with a shite compensation package and a pension that is ok, but nothing fantastic because she stayed under thumb for 50 years at one company as opposed to job hopping and greatly increasing her base earnings.
So…honestly…its actually sad. They lived by their generational ideals and it failed them because times changed too rapidly for them to adjust and catch up.
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Canada seems to be doing a fairly good job of it, comparatively.
Single-payer healthcare.
A [well-funded] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Pension_Plan#Description_2) (but not fully funded) federal pension system.
Supplementary Old Age Security.
Etc.
In short, a social safety net.
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Well, oddly enough, it’s done through taxation. Because - and it might shock you to learn this - people do actually generally want to work and earn money. But work that becomes toil just to put food on the table feels to me to be getting a bit close to slavery. (And no, before anyone says anything, I’m not saying that it is, just that it’s my view.) Instead, you have to challenge the entire concept. Once you start from a position that says that you shouldn’t be worrying about the baseline (food, water, maybe a roof over one’s head), then you can start to explore entirely different models. I’m not saying that there’s a single, obviously correct solution - history suggests that all economic models collapse after a few generations - but at the moment it feels that we can hardly do worse than we are at the moment.
To grossly oversimplify, the debate is between those who believe that nobody wins unless everybody wins, and those who believe that nobody wins unless somebody else loses. At the moment, the second ideology is winning hands down (“America First!”) - you might surmise that I’m a subscriber to the first position - but then I live in a country which at least pays lip service to a social safety net. That there should be people who are actually willing to pay tax to ensure the provision services that they might not personally benefit from is a significant social and cultural divide - there seem to be some people who can’t even conceive of that notion.
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THIS.
I’m a “Generation Jones” (technically a Boomer, but like Barack Obama too young to remember Howdy Doody or to have worked for a company that had a pension). I’m doing pretty good, but lots of same-age and slightly younger friends are going to be in sore shape. I’m wondering if I’m going to have to work longer than planned in order to buy insurance and maybe eventually rent for slightly younger relatives.
Social Security and gubbmint health care must be preserved, and GROW.
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But Venezuela!!
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I wouldn’t say nil. There are winners out there (always OTHER people). But, yep. Playing everyday – given the odds – increases ones chances by only a teensy-weensy degree. Playing the same number everyday, by a just as teensy amount.
well nil is the chance for prayer to work.
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Hasn’t everyone heard enough of those droning, buzzing abominations since the 2010 World Cup?
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Sorry to hear about your parents. To be fair, that was one of those “comedy coming from a place of painful reality” comments more than anything. Your parents’ stories hit pretty close to home for a large portion of my family, to be honest. If I hadn’t shown some computer aptitude at the right time, I’d likely have followed in their footsteps. Even now, I’m not sure what I’ll be able to provide for my daughter, since I fall into the shrinking middle class Gen-Xer profile of computer guy, not the “got to the Valley at the right time” kind.
The commentary really comes from watching so many relatives of the previous generation doing what they were supposed to – and getting screwed by doing so after often voting against their interests unknowingly – and my generation not learning the lesson for various reasons (often just disinformation and not getting out enough to learn otherwise).
This also comes from watching my dad – who was doing relatively well given that he did manage to not get screwed by doing the right things a blue collar Boomer (work for the State Highway Dept, had a pension, lived cheaper than anyone on the planet) – get robbed slowly of his savings by our health care system followed by a faster cleanout by the fake IRS scammers last year. The very government he rails against is the one thing that’s offered any sort of help here, and he still rails against them.
The jokes come because I just can’t handle the alternative sometimes, and really don’t know what to do about it anymore.
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Agreed, but generally, human nature is such that it still fastens prayer to some desired outcome (even while good hard work is being put in to achieve that outcome; what’s with that insecurity?). Perhaps the science of human behavior (or evolution) could explain that.
Why? I don’t have to Google “Venezuela” to know that its economy under Chavez and Maduro was very different than the U.S. economy. Whatever problems the American economy has, it doesn’t provide giveaways to the citizenry based on the expectation that the spot price of a single commodity will keep rising forever.
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I don’t think we should call people with just a few millions in assets that can afford to retire to be “super-rich”, but not having a safety net for people is a problem.
But what exactly will this intergenerational alliance try to build?? I find it quite vague.
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Canada does not equal the US. Apples to orange crates.
Then why draw a comparison to Venezuela?
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Good point. Not sure. Too much coffee. But but but “socialism”…
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Not quite ‘cooking’ or pensions, but slightly related: there’s a grow shop in a town near me which is mainly patronised by women approaching middle age - given the demographics of the area, it’s single women, probably with still one or two kids at home, who are being badly shafted by the Tories’ ‘bedroom tax’ and the rest of their awfulness, who are putting a cupboard/loft to good use, I reckon.
As for cooking, they do reckon you don’t need much sleep as an old, so two people ought to be able to conveniently work out shifts to keep a Red P synth going non-linear, I guess.
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