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PaperclipPerfector  25d ago (text post)   28737 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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The division of societal surplus in the gerontocracy

One oft-repeated epithet on the left is that we ought to be working 10-20 hours a week due to productivity increases. I always found that this is kind of funny or misguided, as we have kind of done just that - we just decided to give the surplus of productivity to the old (30+ year boomer retirements with eye-watering healthcare costs and redistributive transfers) and the young (10+ years of schooling and an adolescence that now almost lasts until you are 30).

I often think about how societal surplus is spent. If you look at the fastest growing sectors in most western countries, it's almost always healthcare and related professions. This is probably due to a whole host of factors but a big one is something akin to the median voter theorem; the median voter is most western countries is now very old and wants a lot of money spent on healthcare. Hence you get 10% to almost 20% of GDP (in the US!) going to that. As someone in their late 20s who hasn't seen a healthcare professional in more than a decade, that's wild. Healthcare has a low fiscal multiplier and is often purely a consumptive good, but people rarely think we spend too much on it per se - critiques are often made at nebulous administrative bloat (which when examined is often less of a good narrative than people think it is).

Another thing is immigration. Looking at it at face value, all western democracies are addicted to it. Even though right-wing culture warriors often single out Japan or SK, even these places have seen significant immigration (and concomitant pushback) in the past decade. Even places like Russia or Belarus do it. Again very often in service of aging populations - in order to stem inflation, keep asset prices high, etc.

Many western countries now how a U-shaped happiness curve - happy when young, happy when old, relatively miserable in old age. The meme "Nick 30 ans", perhaps not so common in the US, embodies this. If you are Nick (male), 30 years old and working, you are paying into a system that benefits everyone but you, chiefly the old, the the young, then women and then maybe the unemployed. I am one of these Nicks, I am 28 years old and I pay, for the country I reside in, a massive tax bill (probably 5-6x the median) and see nothing for it.

If the purpose of a system is what it does, the the purpose of modern western democracies is to drain young people (chiefly but not exclusively young men) and give the surplus to the old, the infirm, the antisocial. There is some rebellion or exit (people moving to Dubai etc.) though it's often hard to effectuate and sometimes punished by the system.

The striking thing is that when polled, most Nick 30 ans type people think old people are something like hard done to, think they deserve their pensions, think that the issues are not structural or redistributive but something to do with greedy corporations and the rich. I think some economists, Stiglitz or Friedmann or such, predicated concentration camps for the old due to accumulation of wealth and power, but young people do not rebel, they mostly submit and place the blame on other things as the system or the rich.

I sometimes wonder what the optimal thing is for someone who is the target of redistribution is to do. NEETdom is probably rational in many cases if you are not exceptional. I also wonder how various kinds of nationalists square the fact that their elders are quite happy to sell out their country, culture etc. for yet another cruise.

This is all downstream of more general phenomena such as egalitarianism and the resultant democracy it produces. There is no point discussing this, the redistribution is zero-sum and is bad for people like you, but people like you either don't have the power to get out from under the thumb of the democracy, or you don't have the stomach for it, because it would mean reducing the majority of people to servitude underneath you. In this thread people talk about „Boomer concentration camps,“ but the upper middle class young-to-middle-aged Patriarchy doesn't even have the nerve to demand the servitude or submission of their elderly parents, or their wives, and increasingly their children, who they usually drug up for behaving poorly, instead of directly confronting them. There is no abolishing of old age pensions for people who are afraid to tell their elderly mother to be obedient to them.

It’s hard to demand obedience from your wife when she can divorce you, take half your assets, and take away your children based essentially on nothing other than her feeling “abused.”

Hard, but not impossible. Jim the Reactionary talks about this. And the laws are how they are because your male neighbors don't have the stomach for it. It's not some conspiracy, it's just your neighbors.

I also wonder how various kinds of nationalists square the fact that their elders are quite happy to sell out their country, culture etc. for yet another cruise.

I mean, fascists are generally fairly open to the idea of there being a whole pile of parasites on society, and for all its usual reactionary trappings it's fundamentally a young man's philosophy.

(Not all nationalists are fascists, of course.)

Ok, but average life expectancy is ~80. If we assume retirement at 65 and full time employment starting at 21, that's 44 years of full time work vs 36 of nonproductive time. So a forty hour workweek is still far more than 20 hours of productivity not allocated towards old age.

full time employment starting at 21

Buddy, I have bad news for you ...

I'm pretty sure that young men have ALWAYS created a surplus which was used to support the young, the elderly, and women. The difference is that in the past, this surplus was distributed in a way that was less formal and more voluntary. Before social security, it was pretty normal and common for adult children to financially support their elderly parents; before AFDC women were far more desperate to marry and had far less contempt for men; a few hundred years ago, families were ecstatic about the birth of a healthy baby boy. In part because having an able-bodied man in your family could easily mean the difference between life and death.

So perhaps your real complaint is that your hypothetical 30 year old working man is not getting the respect he (arguably) deserves.

Maybe they should have a special express lane on the highway for people who pay more than $50k a year in taxes.

Exactly this too, it's not a new phenomenon. You were always having to take care of your elderly parents and your children, and often your wife. Now even back then it wasn't enough for most men to work just on their own, child labor was the default whether it be at a factory or on the land with their dad and women did lots of hard labor at home like hauling firewood/water/sewing clothes (did you know households used to spend a higher percentage of their budget on apparel than they do now on cars?)/cleaning which was way harder without modern chemicals and machines like washing machines/dishwashers/vacuums/etc, but it was the default that the man was the main breadwinner for any outside work.

We've helped to diffuse that responsibility through welfare programs instead, and technology freed women's labor from domestic chores to be used on outside work too. And everyone has become so much wealthier that we now consider it as immoral to have our kids work, despite being necessary throughout almost all of history.

It's not as if the people 200 years ago hated their elderly parents and left them to die. It did happen more frequently than it does now, but you've always had that responsibility to your elders. They give birth to you and raise you, and you work for their benefit the same way you have children now who will hopefully love you and help take care of you when you need it. The same with the sick and infirm, there was always cruelty to the disabled but they were often someone's sibling or cousin or parent or whatever who had the responsibility to take care of them.

I think people forget about how much labor household appliances have saved, and how poor a lot of people were until relatively recently. I deposed a guy who grew up in West Virginia in the 40s and 50s in a house without running water and he talked about how every Saturday his mother did the laundry and he, his dad (whose clothes were filthy from the mines) and all his brothers and sisters would spend half the day hauling buckets of water from a spring in the woods behind their house so their mother could heat the water on a stove and do the laundry with a wringer washer.

Let alone laundry- ironing all that took an entire day. They didn't have wrinkle free fabrics, and they didn't have electric irons either.

IIRC it might have been here, but I recall reading recently that almost all of the Amish have adopted mechanized laundry.

And besides just the hard work there, knowledge spread a whole lot slower and in much lesser quantity. The number of women with stories about coming from laundry day with their hands burned on the lye improperly mixing it and thinking that was normal is astounding. Even with labor that is still around, you were likely doing inefficiently and taking more time with more suffering than you do nowadays.

The problem is that the lack of respect is there because we've made it non voluntary. You seem to see this as a good thing, can I ask if you are a middle aged man who pays a lot in taxes?

The problem is that the lack of respect is there because we've made it non voluntary.

I agree that's a problem. I think the lack of respect issue is connected to the problem of family formation. A man who is respected is a more attractive marriage partner. And generally speaking we want young people to marry and reproduce. I have always found it fascinating that two of America's subcultures which do a good job in this area -- the Amish and the ultra-Orthodox Jews -- both give men a clear path to obtain status and respect. With the Amish, modern farm equipment is forbidden and the practical effect is that almost every man can become a respected member of the community by working the land with a plough -- something which typically requires male physical strength and durability. Ultra-Orthodox Judaism offers the path of advanced religious study and rabbinical school, something which is open only to men.

Of course modern society doesn't impose these kinds of restrictions on people, but even without them I think it exacerbates the situation to forcibly transfer resources (money and social status) from men to women.

The problem is that the lack of respect is there because we've made it non voluntary.

What does this mean exactly? If your parents don't respect you, then it seems like a you and your parents issue. If you mean that older generations kinda look down on younger ones, I'm pretty sure it's always been that way. If anything, young people are more free in this sense considering the traditional view is to respect your elders and obey their authority.

You seem to see this as a good thing

I explicitly said I am against most welfare, but I can acknowledge the areas where it does help like with my own extended family members. And I don't think that governments should just shrug and not fulfill their promises.

can I ask if you are a middle aged man who pays a lot in taxes?

I'm not "middle aged", younger, but otherwise yeah my family does.

What does this mean exactly?

Young productive men are functionally slaves in modern western societies. They work for a pittance while the vast majority of their economic output goes to their betters through many mechanisms of taxation and redistribution, they have no political representation as a class (it is illegal) and are regarded with malicious contempt by their master classes.

All areas of society are made to cater to women and the elderly under the systematic rule of this tendency, and young men are legal targets of institutional ridicule, persecution and ever growing extraction by legitmate authorities. Propaganda films are made showing them to be innately evil, large budgets are spend on their political reeducation and the press and entertainment media use them as scapegoats constantly.

This unthough hierarchy is especially salient in my own country of France. Pensioners have more income than working people (you read that right) and yet on top of it every class but young men gets subsidized tickets and other trivial advantages in every area of life at their expense. Moreover, goods, areas, services and even jobs are routinely reserved by custom and at times law to the elderly or women. A common feature of such systems throughout history.

Of course this is all a byproduct of a political regime of limited democracy that has both accidentally and by design minimized and essentially neutralized the political power of youths and men even as they are the providers of the security and violence that upholds the system. Another common feature of slave societies.

As others have warned before, including famously Friedrich Hayek, this is unstable and ripe for a revolution. One that I hope won't feature the concentration camps for pensioners he foresaw.

The main difference between this system and patriarchal elderly rule is that it is impersonal and therefore void of empathy. The State confiscates economic output out of the hands of productive youths and doles it out to its clients who therefore are loyal to the State, not to productive youths. And indeed the State uses this loyalty to repress and humiliate uppity member of its tax cattle, not to uplift or empower them. There is no ascension into the ruling class or passing of the torch here. Nor is there any recognition of the effort or reward to be expected except more confiscation.

Like the horse Boxer in Orwell's story, the system just wants young people to work themselves to death to fund pensions and benefits with no expectation of reward or amelioration of their condition. And explicitly no expectation that they'll get to enjoy pensions of their own because it is demographically impossible.

In contrast the traditional system would afford political leadership, familial leadership and social status to its earners in exchange for loyalty and sacrifice to the death for their dependents and the State. A more constraining deal on the surface, but also a much better one than subsistance as cattle bereft of rights or dignity.

Eh, in less modern societies it seems to me property has been king too. It'll be awesome to be a young able-bodied man with no property versus an old decrepit dude with no property, but any given property is more likely to be in hands of some older patriarch than the young man. Hereabouts in more rural times it was a common arrangement for the eldest son taking the reins of a homestead farm to sign a contract spelling out how to keep up his retired parents' lifestyle. A man without an inheritance will have a really hard time getting to having it made as good as one who does. The reason the industrial revolution was fed by an endless supply of workers happy to go for Victorian sweatshop wages and working conditions was, AFACIT, if you didn't have your own homestead or cottage or whatever, even if young and able-bodied, the pre-modern pastoral lifestyle might not give you much of a chance at a home or marriage or dignified old age. There was an endless supply of itinerant laborer men in dead ends that sucked way more viscerally than the the present day sort.

And explicitly no expectation that they'll get to enjoy pensions of their own because it is demographically impossible.

I don't think that is "explicit". You might consider it obvious but I don't think it's something political messaging typically owns up to - at most they acknowledge the existence of a problem but gesture at immigration as a surefire fixer.

He's talking about France, where everyone acknowledges that the pension system is going to have to be cut eventually- and eventually means 'in the mid term future', not 'in 100 years'.

French politicians have publicly declared on now multiple occasions that our pension system is unsustainable and will collapse if not drastically reformed. It is a commonly (though not universally) held truism in my country that even immigration cannot solve this problem. We no longer are in the 1990s. What was implicit is now explicit.

Young productive men are functionally slaves in modern western societies. They work for a pittance while the vast majority of their economic output goes to their betters through many mechanisms of taxation and redistribution, they have no political representation as a class (it is illegal) and are regarded with malicious contempt by their master classes.

I think there are really two separate but related issues here: The forced redistribution of wealth and the lack of respect. Based on what I know about human psychology, I think it's the second issue that's more important.

As others have warned before, including famously Friedrich Hayek, this is unstable and ripe for a revolution.

I tend to doubt this. Because if France is anything like the United States, there is still a lot of opportunity for the most talented (or otherwise elite) young men to achieve the social status and respect I mentioned above. Let's suppose you are earning roughly $1m a year as a man in the West. Yes, you are paying ridiculous taxes and probably supporting a few single moms, but there is still a lot left over to (voluntarily) make a nice life for yourself and for the people around you. A life which is far better than anyone could get from collecting social security, welfare etc. Why would such a man put together some kind of revolution and disrupt the system which is working reasonably well for him? And without elites, how far is a revolution going to get?

I think the bigger problem is family formation. When men achieve money and status, they tend to get married and stay married. When women achieve money and status, they tend to get divorced and stay single. Ergo, forcible transfers of money and status from men to women can be expected to negatively impact family formation. And this does seem to be happening in the West.

France has very, very few salaries anywhere near that high.

if France is anything like the United States, there is still a lot of opportunity for the most talented (or otherwise elite) young men to achieve the social status and respect I mentioned above

France is unlike the US precisely in this way. Which is why French Engineers are so numerous to leave and work for US companies.

I think Americans don't have a feel for how ridiculous taxation and redistribution is in France because they are always astonished when I give specifics. For instance: we are now to the point that the French State spending in proportion of GDP is higher that it ever was in the Soviet Union.

Young productive men are functionally slaves in modern western societies. They work for a pittance while the vast majority of their economic output goes to their betters through many mechanisms of taxation and redistribution,

Young productive men are substantially better off now then they have been for practically all of history. Despite taxation, the amount of wealth even the poorer man in the first world can access is still greater than many kings of the past. No matter how rich or powerful you were in the 1500s, you did not have a car or a smartphone or a video game console or a TV or take flights to Hawaii for vacation and probably not even indoor plumbing in many areas. Your food was still mostly limited to regional availability and what was in season. Most of your children would still die before they were five, and you were still unable to treat health and pain concerns in a meaningful way. Have an infection as a king? Tough it out like everyone else

Even the poorest dudes working at a gas station, it is not "a pittance", you have wealth beyond the dreams of many in history. Your children are alive, you have basically infinite entertainment at your fingertips, you have all the tasty food you want, you have clean and good looking clothes, you have incredible healthcare that can do what just a few centuries ago would be considered miracles. You aren't spending your time hauling buckets of water or poop as domestic chores.

they have no political representation as a class (it is illegal)

Are you not talking about the west here? Every young man has political representation in western democracy. IDK what country you could be referring to with "it is illegal", but I'm not aware of any where men do not have suffrage.

This unthough hierarchy is especially salient in my own country of France. Pensioners have more income than working people (you read that right) and yet on top of it every class but young men gets subsidized tickets and other trivial advantages in every area of life at their expense.

I will say I do not know the inner workings of France well, but I can confidently say that the general point that you are richer, meaningfully richer in what you have and the quality you have it in, than almost everyone in history remains true. And from what I can tell at least, France still has suffrage for young men so I don't know what you mean by it being illegal.

  1. Rich slaves are still slaves, absolute wealth is not in contention, dignity and station are. The station imposed on young men by modern western society is one of subservience and inferiority.

  2. Suffrage is not voice, nor is it political representation as a class. No political party or organisation represents the interest of men as a class and those that purport to are banned by law or decree in France, Germany, the UK under the aupices of discrimination.

  3. Liberal democracy in effect only serves the interest of the selectorate, which by the demographic force of the baby boom does not need include young men. It follows from the natural laws of politics that all viable politicians are bound to extract from them to give to their coalitions.

Rich slaves are still slaves, absolute wealth is not in contention, dignity and station are. The station imposed on young men by modern western society is one of subservience and inferiority.

The average modern man is more free and more rich than basically anyone in history, we are not in any way similar to slaves.

Suffrage is not voice, nor is it political representation as a class.

Even better than "political representation as a class" is you getting to personally choose who and what best represents your views. Men are not a hivemind and plenty of other men (perhaps like me) would disagree with you on a number of topics.

No political party or organisation represents the interest of men as a class and those that purport to are banned by law or decree in France, Germany, the UK under the aupices of discrimination.

I don't know enough European politics to say much about it, but what policy ideas do you have, that you also believe are common among men "as a class", that are not represented by any party and is universally banned across all three nations?

Liberal democracy in effect only serves the interest of the selectorate, which by the demographic force of the baby boom does not need include young men. It follows from the natural laws of politics that all viable politicians are bound to extract from them to give to their coalitions.

One of the biggest reasons why young people typically aren't represented as much as they could be is purely by their own choice to not vote. When young people do actually bother to vote, they can have a meaningful say in things.

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Young productive men are functionally slaves in modern western societies. They work for a pittance while the vast majority of their economic output goes to their betters through many mechanisms of taxation and redistribution,

Young productive men are substantially better off now then they have been for practically all of history. Despite taxation, the amount of wealth even the poorer man in the first world can access is still greater than many kings of the past.

The same would be true, if you literally reintroduced African slavery in the US today, and It was probably even true back when slavery was still legal in the US, so I don't see how this argument is valid.

Gonna go out with a hot take here, the average modern first world man is not living a life remotely similar to slavery. We have a life more free and more rich than basically everyone in history.

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Yep. What he said.

I'd add to this that there really weren't that many completely infirm/economically useless people back then either. Without modern medicine, even assuming you got past childhood mortality, there were very few people who would've made it to their 60s since a lot of things we handle nowadays, such as early heart disease or infectious disease, would've just been fatal back then. In addition to that, while there was always some degree of welfare in states, the destitute likely would die within a decade due to their weakened constitutions.

It's a good problem to have that tons of people who would've been dead in the past are alive thanks to modern economics and medicine. That being said, their continued living does necessitate a societal negotiation on how resources are distributed.

Without modern medicine, even assuming you got past childhood mortality, there were very few people who would've made it to their 60s since a lot of things we handle nowadays, such as early heart disease or infectious disease, would've just been fatal back then.

Making it to your 60s was never that uncommon. Pre-modern life expectancy was low, but that low number masks a bimodal distribution where most of the ones who didn't die as babies lived into their 50s. There were some fairly-hard limits in a bunch of cases (e.g. commoners eating bread with rock bits in it will have their teeth ground away over time), but there were definitely quite a few people who made it to 60.

I think the point that comparatively few people used to live long past the point of becoming a net fiscal drain still stands, though. Modern medicine has made eking out low-quality end-of-life years, at exorbitant expense to the taxpayer, much more common than it once was. See also the comment downthread about Down syndrome life expectancy over the years.

To a fair degree, yes. Just spotted a common misconception regarding pre-modern lifespan and sought to point it out.

Also a good point, like the down syndrome life expectancy went from their mid 20s to their 60s in just a few decades.

Today the average lifespan of a person with Down syndrome is approximately 60 years.

As recently as 1983, the average lifespan of a person with Down syndrome was 25 years.

And in the same way with other disabled/elderly, those down syndrome people are our friends and family too.

38% of Americans know someone with Down syndrome

Even if the numbers are inaccurate a bit, lots of Americans know someone with down syndrome and I doubt most would be too be happy to see those people get locked up or killed. So the "let's lock up or kill anyone with disabling down syndrome" isn't gonna get too much widespread support.

We've improved the life conditions of disabled people a lot, and through technology a lot of folk who wouldn't have been able to work before now can (although likewise a lot of people who were just barely able to work can no longer compete in more complex jobs), but even more than that we've just helped them live a lot longer than before in general. And we did that, because we want that. Because God said so/we evolved to be empathic for some reason/whatever you believe to be the cause, it is the truth that humans are generally kind and caring like that.

But it does mean they're a financial drain for longer.

Maybe they should have a special express lane on the highway for people who pay more than $50k a year in taxes.

I’d settle for a plaque from Lockheed Martin/Raytheon/Northrup Grumman every time I pay enough tax to fund a new Tomahawk or something

Worth noting that more of your tax dollars are going to buy diapers and nursing for old people than those Tomahawks. You'd get more plaques for each bed year in a hospital you pay for.

So perhaps your real complaint is that your hypothetical 30 year old working man is not getting the respect he (arguably) deserves.

Maybe they should have a special express lane on the highway for people who pay more than $50k a year in taxes.

There's no need. When the support was voluntary, respect was required because the support could be withdrawn from the ungrateful. Now that it's mandatory, the supporters are merely slaves (or "tax cattle") and need no respect.

Young men were not an esteemed group in the past when that support was voluntary.

They absolutely we're. Strong young successful men were at the apex of social status historically in almost every culture. What makes you say this?

In the vast majority of traditional societies, male status continues to increase with age until you are visibly decrepit. I don't think there was ever a society where young men were at the top by default.

The apex of social status was filled by strong young successful men; it does not follow that the majority of strong young successful men, or even a significant fraction of them, were at the apex.

The apex of social status was filled by strong young successful men; it does not follow that the majority of strong young successful men, or even a significant fraction of them, were at the apex.

I agree, but I think that in the past, a basic guy who worked an average job was respected more by society than a basic guy today who holds down a job. To be clear, I don't have definitive evidence for this . . I am just going by my general impression. People in previous generations just seemed to hold men, especially working men, in higher esteem.

30 year old working men were not considered "young men" when that support was voluntary.

Young men were not an esteemed group in the past when that support was voluntary.

I was born after the welfare estate was established, but my grandmother lived her youth at a time when there was no social security, no AFDC, etc. She was overjoyed to have a healthy young man as a grandson, to the point where it really annoyed my sister. I think this was a pretty common attitude among people of this generation. Has this attitude changed? My general impression is that it has changed quite a bit.

I am open to alternative explanations, but to me the obvious explanation was that back in the day, having an able-bodied young man in your family could easily mean the difference between, on the one hand, malnutrition and grinding poverty and, on the other hand, eking by.

I'm generally against welfare but I do think it does have some actual value even to us who pay for most of it, a more stable and protected society. The default of the world is not modern peace, but more something like a third world country where gangs rule and government is basically just the biggest gang around. It's not perfect in the US, but for the average American crime is not actually that meaningful of issue anymore. Like as Cremieux covered on X, even things like murders are extremely hyperlocal, focused down to specific streets. Unless you go looking for trouble, you'll rarely ever get into it.

A typical leftist claim is that crime comes from poverty and need. I agree that a lot of crime would come from that, but one issue is that poverty, true deep poverty does not exist in the US anymore. The only people who do not get help are the ones who explicitly choose to forego it. There are no hungry orphans left needing to steal bread, our poorest children if anything get too much food now. Crime and antisocial behavior has been reduced only to those who want to do it, not those who are forced into it. And that is at least in part because of our redistribution. I have an aunt who went crazy in her early 50s (I presume in part from the severe abuse that my own father as the oldest was just barely able to escape albeit it with multiple scars, + her possibly being sexually abused) and for some reason in the past five years she somehow just got better? She's not great, but she went from not wanting to do better and living on the streets> wanting to do better, and now she has a shared apartment, a bus pass, clean clothes, food, etc other basics despite not having a job. She is on SSI now and lives in subsidized housing, with other programs like SNAP supporting her. When you want it, help is there. It is not perfect, bureaucracy would never see to that no matter the best intentions but it is there. Similarly I think that's part of why UBI studies seem to do much better in the poor countries and flop hard in the west, I. America we already have the floor available to anyone willing to stand up and work.

But what if it wasn't there for people like her? Well, I don't think she could have escaped her situation then. She's old and still somewhat unstable, I doubt she would have long term employement. Most likely she'd be either a direct parasite off of us or other family, or have to turn to crime now. The welfare services I pay into help to diffuse these costs, sure I pay a little bit to help other people's crazy aunts/brothers/parents/children/whatever relation, but other people pay a little for my family and my father is not left feeling responsible for her through the bad luck that my grandfather was a horrible piece of shit.

The striking thing is that when polled, most Nick 30 ans type people think old people are something like hard done to, think they deserve their pensions,

Do keep in mind a few things.

  1. They do "deserve" their pensions. Either formally through pension systems or informally like the social security system, our current old people were promised their benefits back in their working years. Maybe the right thing to do is to renege on society's promise to them, or at the very least negotiate the terms better like the UK's stupid "triple lock" but it's not like I can't understand where the olds are coming from. Even Ayn Rand famously took her social security, because being against the program doesn't mean you can't ask the government to at least fulfill the promise it made when it took your money from you. She didn't think it should be stolen to begin with, but it's not hypocritical to say "then at least do what you said you would" right?

  2. We're all going to be old and everyone knows it. A lot of the worries about social security right now I see even among young people is often that they're scared they won't be getting it. Their complaints are the same as the old people, they're just not in the fold yet. But they expect it too, so they're not willing to dissolve things and give up on their share of the promise either. Anything done to the old now is likely to be done with you too and people understand this. Like seriously, how could anyone expect concentration camps for the old unless they were delusional enough to think they'd stay young forever? What 50 year old is gonna be happy with "in 15 years we lock you up and murder you". And that's ignoring that the old are our loved ones and we don't want to hurt our loved ones. What psychopath would want to concentration camp his own parents?

The Promised argument makes it seem as if our society actually honors or cares about promises whatsoever. Social Security was Promised to never be spent on anything else. Income tax was Promised to never go above 2%.

Don't go on about Promises as if they actually mean anything when it comes to political decisions in the U.S.

Social Security was Promised to never be spent on anything else.

I would recommend looking up how social security and trust funds work cause the funds for it have never been spent on anything else.

The funds were “invested” in Treasury bonds which means that they were spent more or less immediately on whatever the government at the time wanted. The return on that investment will ultimately come from taxing future generations, or inflating away the debt, so it’s really just an intergenerational Ponzi scheme with extra steps.

But I agree with you that this was the plan from Day 1, so strictly speaking it’s not a broken promise per se (at least not yet).

Ok, the issue with the protection money argument for welfare- and I'm 100% willing to believe that certain programs reduce the crime rate- is that most of that welfare goes to criminally-uninclined demographics. Old people who can't maintain a normal standard of living are a known phenomenon, we know what it looks like, and they're not mugging people with their walkers. They're living in squalor and dying of malnutrition-worsened diseases. Sure, that's bad, but the argument for avoiding it isn't 'well it's worse when they rob a liquor store' because they won't rob liquor stores.

Again, I'm 100% willing to believe that, say, TANF reduces shoplifting and prostitution rates. But that's a completely separate argument.

Ok, the issue with the protection money argument for welfare- and I'm 100% willing to believe that certain programs reduce the crime rate- is that most of that welfare goes to criminally-uninclined demographics. Old people who can't maintain a normal standard of living are a known phenomenon, we know what it looks like, and they're not mugging people with their walkers

Like I covered before, in modern societies you don't have to do crime for basic survival and needs anymore. It's imperfect and has some wait times obviously, but people in need like my crazy aunt can get the food and shelter and clean water they need. Modern crime in modern first world nations is a choice. Now I'm a big arguer that criminals are mostly idiots with poor reasoning and self control skills before they are particularly "evil", but the point remains that crime isn't necessary in the first world and anyone being rational wouldn't resort to it for their basic needs. The diminishing returns hit really hard when it comes to aid. People will steal and fight and mug to go from 0 meals to 1 meal. Most won't to go from 3 to 4.

"Old people who can't maintain a normal standard of living are a known phenomenon," isn't really a thing in the US and most other developed nations, at least not at all how it used to be. But regardless the welfare for old people isn't from the "protection" scheme logic anyway, social security and pensions are from the "promise" logic. Like Ayn Rand wasn't gonna go around stabbing people, but she still collected on what was promised to her.

Yes, it's not a thing in the US. There's nowhere in the world, ever in human history, where the elderly committed lots of crime to survive. They just died. The logic for taking care of the elderly is compassion, not crime prevention. There are places right now where senior citizens need to eat dog food to survive. They're not stealing better food(potatoes and shit, not steak). 'Old people suffering from malnutrition until they get knocked out by flu season' happened because they'll just suffer rather than steal/rob.

Yes, it's not a thing in the US. There's nowhere in the world, ever in human history, where the elderly committed lots of crime to survive. They just died. The logic for taking care of the elderly is compassion, not crime prevention

My argument for the elderly isn't crime prevention, crime prevention is for people like my crazy aunt. The argument for the elderly is that they were promised pensions or social security either explicitly or implicitly and I don't think it's right for governments to rug pull on that. They were stupid promises, but you still should keep stupid promises.

I think it's more just for the government to rug pull than to commit to a civilizational suicide pact even if the boomers and whoever preceded them promised themselves riches 3000 years ago off the expense of future generations. What obligation does the younger generation have to a policy where they're robbed during their youth and left with ruins when they're old? And to finish the civilizational KO, we're being replaced en masse where we have 3% of newborns being named Mohammed. We have a pincer maneuver of a labor shortage of short-supplied generations who can't support pensioners and a Boomertopia which is so rotten that you can't even find a job as a new grad.

I'm generally against welfare but I do think it does have some actual value even to us who pay for most of it, a more stable and protected society. The default of the world is not modern peace, but more something like a third world country where gangs rule and government is basically just the biggest gang around. It's not perfect in the US, but for the average American crime is not actually that meaningful of issue anymore. Like as Cremieux covered on X, even things like murders are extremely hyperlocal, focused down to specific streets. Unless you go looking for trouble, you'll rarely ever get into it.

Ah, the protection money argument. The thing is, the west didn't use to have to handout masses of money to people to keep them from rioting. Crime and poverty are not as connected as is often made out.

But what if it wasn't there for people like her? Well, I don't think she could have escaped her situation then. She's old and still somewhat unstable, I doubt she would have long term employement. Most likely she'd be either a direct parasite off of us or other family, or have to turn to crime now. The welfare services I pay into help to diffuse these costs, sure I pay a little bit to help other people's crazy aunts/brothers/parents/children/whatever relation, but other people pay a little for my family and my father is not left feeling responsible for her through the bad luck that my grandfather was a horrible piece of shit.

That is not "Boomer UBI". Disability pensions and the like also get abused but are the far smaller evil.

There are infinitely many options between "total boomer luxury communism" and "concentration camps for the olds". Though politically we seem to tend towards the former...

They do "deserve" their pensions. Either formally through pension systems or informally like the social security system, our current old people were promised their benefits back in their working years. Maybe the right thing to do is to renege on society's promise to them, or at the very least negotiate the terms better like the UK's stupid "triple lock" but it's not like I can't understand where the olds are coming from. Even Ayn Rand famously took her social security, because being against the program doesn't mean you can't ask the government to at least fulfill the promise it made when it took your money from you. She didn't think it should be stolen to begin with, but it's not hypocritical to say "then at least do what you said you would" right?

What does "deserve" mean? Pensions (and even things like 410k) are a fiction, they are redistribution from working people to pensioners. Money is a neat abstraction that allows expression of deferring consumption but if you look at the flow of goods and services it's always working -> non-working, barring AI and general (non-healthcare/welfare) capital infrastructure investment.

Of course I understand the boomers. Were I a boomer I'd have a massive incentive to believe I'm entitled to relief on property taxes, blocking development, fat pensions that grow faster than inflation, labour markets being propped up by mass immigration of "carers" without care for externalities, etc.

The social contract (as it even exists) when the boomers were working was markedly different from the one now. The boomers reneged on it already by not reproducing and offloading the resultant externalities on the next generation.

Ah, the protection money argument. The thing is, the west didn't use to have to handout masses of money to people to keep them from rioting. Crime and poverty are not as connected as is often made out.

Right. Besides, what do we do to functional people who don't pay their protection money? We send men with guns to drag them off to jail. Why not skip the extra step and send the men with guns to drag any rioters off to jail? The men with guns have to be paid either way, but the rioters don't.

The men with guns have to be paid either way, but the rioters don't.

Actually people do have to be paid, jail is extremely expensive and even at the minimal level you still have to provide the main basics in that of shelter, food and clean water. You're just spending it in a crueler and less direct manner.

And no, "just kill them then" doesn't work because like before, they are our families and loved ones. My crazy aunt when given a little bit of support is fine enough, she's not a danger who needs to be locked up for our safety. So why would my family we want to do that to her?

My father would be appalled if the solution was to lock his sister up in jail, he still loves her as family. We would much prefer that she can get the basic needs without such cruelty, because we are not psychopaths who want to lock up our family and concentration camp our elderly.

Likewise I have an uncle (well great uncle) on my mom's side who is developmentally disabled. When left alone during the day while his caretaker (another extended family member) is at work he is fine. He can press the button on the TV to turn it on which is kept on his favorite channel. He can take a frozen meal from the fridge and use the microwave by pushing the +30 seconds button a few times but is forbidden from using the other buttons cause he'll set the time wrong and leave the microwave on for hours cause he inputted wrong and won't think about it, and he can use the bathroom on his own. But he is a man who needs great support. And it is helped immensely that he is on SSI, SNAP and has a housing voucher for shared rent despite his inability to work. It's an immense drain on the family member still, but it makes life far better off than it would have been before. We've diffused the responsibility for my uncle, and many people like him, throughout society.

And just like before, we are not psychopaths. I like my uncle, he's slow and dimwitted and can't hold a good conversation but he's one of those types who is lighthearted and cheerful anyway. I don't want him in a concentration camp or a jail because I am not a sicko. And yet if it wasn't for our family and the support systems from society, I don't know what would happen with him. He'd probably be exploited and used by criminals and end up clumsily going around trying to steal food or something until he did get locked up. Which again, is something I do not want if it can be helped cause I love the guy. And I do not want that for other people like him.

I want people like my crazy aunt and dimwitted disabled uncle to have a free life without torture if it can be helped. So does most of society, modern nations all around the world have welfare programs to help support people like them. And it can be helped, and it has been helped.

It is scaling incredibly poorly and proving a considerable dead weight. Especially when any milquetoast charitable gesture like expanding Disability coverage or refugee status inevitably ends up getting abused to the enth degree as it naturally snowballs.

For almost all societies, there was always some form of welfare for the poor. The amount varied, but the only time I can think of when a society either showed complete indifference or actual facilitation of harming the poor was when the poor was an outgroup. St. Domingue being an example.

Ah, the protection money argument. The thing is, the west didn't use to have to handout masses of money to people to keep them from rioting. Crime and poverty are not as connected as is often made out.

There's tons of violent crime throughout history, the US itself started as a violent crime. There have been civil wars and revolutions across the world regarding civil and fiscal inequalities, and that's still putting aside that crime is down significantly since the past too.. And keep in mind, a lot of things we would deem as violent crime nowadays wouldn't have even counted in the past like capturing and enslaving others, beating children hard for not working enough in the field, dueling being a primary way to settle disputes, the honor killings. Or things that might have been technically crimes but were overlooked, like the lynchings. When 11 Italians were mass lynched future president Teddy Roosevelt referred to it as "rather a good thing" and journalist editorials while many might have hem and hawed a little often would openly support the lynchers. Or how about the many many many violent strikes and riots by worker unions. It's extremely rare for an American union to beat up the scabs nowaday isn't it? Mass widespread violence was pretty normal of the past.

Also of course one big issue here is in the inequality itself. People who don't know there can be a better life are going to be more content with what they have. There's a reason why North Korea goes to extreme extents to prevent the average citizen from seeing western wealth, because even they understand their regime is rockier and less stable if people know there is better if a revolution happens. The more people can improve their situation, the more likely they are to take action. North Korea has to constantly suppress the people to prevent revolution, meanwhile the idea of another revolution now in the US is laughable because there's not much to earn and a lot to lose. They don't have to suppress it with force, most Americans just don't want to revolt.

What does "deserve" mean? Pensions (and even things like 410k) are a fiction, they are redistribution from working people to pensioners. Money is a neat abstraction that allows expression of deferring consumption but if you look at the flow of goods and services it's always working -> non-working, barring AI and general (non-healthcare/welfare) capital infrastructure investment.

Imagine you get offered a service, you pay 100k now and in 40 years they'll pay you 50k a year. If in 40 years they change their mind and don't pay, they scammed you. They broke their promise. While pension services don't work exactly like that, it's a similar logic. Workers are essentially promised their pension schemes in exchange for the money stolen from their paychecks, so when the time comes they have in fact earned it. It is a scam if they are not able to collect.

Imagine you get offered a service, you pay 100k now and in 40 years they'll pay you 50k a year. If in 40 years they change their mind and don't pay, they scammed you. They broke their promise.

Normally when this happens you get to sue them for breach of contract and you win, that gets you a piece of paper and if they have money left over you get it taken from them and given to you. However if they are out of money you just end up with a piece of paper and nothing else, the government doesn't then increase taxation on everyone else in society just to fund your agreement and make sure you are made whole. The fact that there was a promise by the other side and they broke their promise doesn't mean shit.

Something similar can be said to apply to pensions, now you may say that as long as the government itself isn't bankrupt you should get your money because pensions come from a government subsidiary and the government can always increase tax to get enough money to pay for its obligation (or just turn on the printer), but that's not how contracts work either, if you have a contract with B which is a subsidiary of A and then B goes bankrupt in normal situations you don't get to recover from A, you're just out of luck. Similarly with pensions. A government can very easily go "Our pensions department will have X% of government earnings each year, funded from general taxation, if the total liabilities are higher than this then everyone takes a haircut, end of".

Normally when this happens you get to sue them for breach of contract and you win, that gets you a piece of paper and if they have money left over you get it taken from them and given to you. However if they are out of money you just end up with a piece of paper and nothing else, the government doesn't then increase taxation on everyone else in society just to fund your agreement and make sure you are made whole.

In this case though it is the government itself that made the promise. And it made that promise while taxing you, but then it tries to say it can't tax others later? It's perfectly fair to call BS on that. We don't expect government to fulfill the private promises of a private person, but we should be able to expect it to fulfill its own promises. Who wants a country where the main dominant power structure keeps rug pulling its own citizens?

Which promise are you talking about? In most countries the payouts from state run pension schemes have some hard lower boundaries but are otherwise subject to the whims of the legislature and the courts. Few systems keep a personalized account that creates concrete contractual financial claims.

Even disregarding that, the promise you're asking the state to keep is not the same promise that was in effect when the Boomers were young. You can look up how much of an average worker's wage bill went to elderly welfare in e.g. 1950, 1980 or today and notice a steep increase, the idea that what's being asked of today's workers is somehow equivalent to what the current recipients paid in is ludicrous.

The legal technicalities surrounding what beneficiaries are actually entitled to and the financial realities of what they're getting compared with what they paid in aren't relevant to the discussion. Bring that argument up to conservative retirees who will bitch endlessly about all the handouts "the blacks" get and you'll see them get defensive about their Social Security checks. "That's different; I paid into that for 40 years!" Same with Medicaid.

Which promise are you talking about? In most countries the payouts from state run pension schemes have some hard lower boundaries but are otherwise subject to the whims of the legislature and the courts. Few systems keep a personalized account that creates concrete contractual financial claims.

Which is why I said there's room to negotiate the terms. The UK's triple lock is stupid. Retirement ages need to be upped around the world as people are healthier and able to work at older ages (the general promise at least for social security was an insurance for old age, so only when old age is crippling to most should it apply). Etc other examples of ways we could better the system without having to break the promise.

If a subsidiary of a government department or a contractor that's 100% owned by the government (we have this in the UK for certain IT and Software development functions) makes a promise and then the subsidiary fails due to lack of cash that doesn't leave the rest of the government liable and you may very well end up out of luck.

Plus we already have the government rug pulling its citizens literally every year every budget. This is something that isn't unique to a specific country or situation.

If ... the subsidiary fails due to lack of cash that doesn't leave the rest of the government liable and you may very well end up out of luck.

The tax collector can't count as an unrelated branch of government that doesn't have to pay you because when the government was making the promise, the government claimed that the tax collector was closely related enough to fulfill the promise. If the government now says "it's just the subsidiary who has to pay you, and the tax collector is not related to the subsidiary", the government is contradicting what it originally said about the relationship.

1 is somewhat absurd when a huge chunk of people aren't meaningfully paying for themselves, and as a younger person I've got the full expectation that whatever current plans for funding the elderly will be nuked from orbit by the time I'm in any position to get hold of them. People simply aren't working enough years in comparison to an extended dotage of consuming insane amounts of medical spending. Something has to give.

Plus the current state of effective years of healthy living added to the end of people's lives versus 'we have continued the heartbeat at massive expensive' is not good calculus. MAID is unfortunate but to a certain degree the calculus of these efforts would work a lot better if palliative medical science hadn't responded so effectively to the gigantic pool of money on offer to squeeze another year or two out at the very end.

as a younger person I've got the full expectation that whatever current plans for funding the elderly will be nuked from orbit by the time I'm in any position to get hold of them

Already being done. They're talking about means-testing Social Security and Medicare, and proposals to tax away the houses of those older people who have paid for them are a dime a dozen.

1 is somewhat absurd when a huge chunk of people aren't meaningfully paying for themselves,

They did pay for themselves, they paid taxes for 40-50 years (some began working at 15 and didn't stop till 65!) to "buy into" the system.

I've got the full expectation that whatever current plans for funding the elderly will be nuked from orbit by the time I'm in any position to get hold of them

See exactly, your complaint is theirs. "I'm afraid I won't get the due I've been told I'll get in exchange for my taxes now". It's just that you personally don't want that potential risk so you want the rug pull to happen earlier to your parents generations.

People simply aren't working enough years in comparison to an extended dotage of consuming insane amounts of medical spending. Something has to give.

Which is why really, we should have been ratcheting up the retirement age more as people have been able to work into old age more often. The US is able to get away with this way easier than the typical pension countries even since the idea of social security was always a buy in into an insurance for people who can not work any longer whether that be from infirmity or seniority. But the latter especially is far less crippling nowadays so it's far less of a rug pull to ratchet the age requirements up. But pushing up age requirements upsets the current workers too! The 50 year old is thinking "I gotta work for 18 more years and not 15? That's bullshit" and gets angry because again everyone knows they gonna get old

They did pay for themselves, they paid taxes for 40-50 years (some began working at 15 and didn't stop till 65!) to "buy into" the system.

Not really in most cases. The average person's tax burden is barely covering their normal consumption of government largesse, especially if they're low enough income to receive governmental support. This whole shambolic 'but I put my $10k a year in for 30 years, gimme $50k a year from 55 till 90' side of things doesn't balance, especially when a large chunk of people are immediately getting most of their contributions back in other social spending.

See exactly, your complaint is theirs. "I'm afraid I won't get the due I've been told I'll get in exchange for my taxes now". It's just that you personally don't want that potential risk so you want the rug pull to happen earlier to your parents generations.

I know that the current system is a gigantic unsustainable ball of stupidity that's only semi-tenable since pensioners have huge power in Democracies due to lack of else to do with their time. That goes for both senior generations and my own. It needs to be cut down to stop literally collapsing most social democracies.

They did pay for themselves, they paid taxes for 40-50 years (some began working at 15 and didn't stop till 65!) to "buy into" the system.

No, they paid for the people receiving benefits when they were working. They didn't pay for themselves. Now workers are paying for them.

Regarding point 2, I'm obviously not endorsing concentration camps for the old, but you're overlooking an element of vague generational moral culpability in this. The current and soon-to-be recipients of elder welfare grew up in demographically healthy or at least stable societies, and the problems with the systems that are now slowly breaking apart have been known for their entire lives, and this has been discussed ad nauseam out in the open for decades!

Yes, theoretically current young people will be in a similar position themselves later on, especially considering their even worse birth rates, but given that they already grew up in a heavily demographically imbalanced society they have much less economic slack to maneuver and a ton more social inertia to fight against to meaningfully reform these systems, with the numbers being the way they are in a democracy it's a coup-complete problem. Either you wait until you yourself can benefit marginally or you hope the eventual collapse will bring an opportunity for improvement. Meanwhile, current old people had fewer elderly people to take care of (thanks to two world wars) and fewer children to raise, they were in an historically uniquely ideal position to set up the system in a way that is more sustainable. But across the entire West they didn't, they went into a socio-economic disaster with open eyes.

What 50 year old is gonna be happy with "in 15 years we lock you up and murder you"

Why do you think MAID is being pushed so hard? We won't "murder" you, we'll just convince you life isn't worth living and let you murder yourself. Conveniently, we've already been abusing this method of avoiding the costs of helping certain demographics for years by ignoring the causes of elevated rates of suicide...

young people do not rebel, they mostly submit and place the blame on other things as the system.

You have to think in the context of the fact that most people aren't exactly "Nick, 30 ans, big net taxpayer" and of generationally falling fertility. Old people welfare and healthcare are beneficial to the old, yes, and maybe too generous, but the government subsidizing the polite fiction of most retired people being financially independent is also an implicit subsidy toward working people in that they are generally spared having to feed/house/care for their elderly relatives.

Put another way, have you ever had to pay your single mom's rent, or gotten a crying phone call from her saying "I'm about to be homeless."? For most 28 year olds, the cost of paying mom’s rent would exceed their entire tax burden. Worse, imagine the case of an only child with two parents requiring something expensive like memory care, or some other chronic illness. In that case it’s almost impossible to lose as a non-exceptional taxpayer when accounting for that implicit subsidy.

The implication of this is that as working age people are facing an ever more impossible expected task in terms of eldercare they will only become more desperate to socialize the cost of preventing this. Likely, this bargain will require subsidizing the not so needy as well. Upper middle class people want their expected inheritances, after all.

There's a substantive difference here in that Nick would have much more agency in deciding his mom's living standard and consequently the hit to his own if he had to take care of her by himself. The state is going to send thugs to collect his money regardless of whether voters, who increasingly consist of the beneficiaries of this, decide to be reasonable or to utterly drain the remaining workers.

Then there's an argument to be made that socializing these sort of costs is part of the reason why there won't be enough workers in the first place. If socialized retirement systems only covered hard and sympathetic edge cases and otherwise you'd have to rely on relations to sustain you in your old age, maybe the idea that you can forego reproduction and just stack green paper in the expectation of having your consumption needs fulfilled in the far future would be less seductive to the masses.

There's a substantive difference here in that Nick would have much more agency in deciding his mom's living standard and consequently the hit to his own if he had to take care of her by himself.

I agree that this is a significant issue. Before social security, it was pretty normal and common for children to financially contribute to their parents. So that in effect, social security replaced a system that was informal, voluntary, and disorganized with one that is formal, involuntary, and better organized. And it definitely seems like older people are -- in general -- collecting an amount which is not subject to the vagaries of their children's fortunes.

But still, it does seem you lose something when you switch to an involuntary system. Arguably, in a voluntary system, the hypothetical 30 year old man would enjoy a great deal more respect from his parents; his (hypothetical) wife; and the people around him. In an involuntary system, there's much less need to respect the guy since he is going to provide either way. There is some hypothetical single mom out there; he's supporting her along with some other man's child; and the mom has utter contempt for him. (Ok, that's an exaggeration, but you see the point.)

Mom is overwhelmingly likely to be a homeowner and be able to indefinitely defer property taxes.

Mathematically someone has to balance the books here. The total cost is the same whether it's concentrated or diffused, the difference is who pays for it.

Sure, some people benefit by having their parent's care socialised, but I think that's rarely Nick 30 ans - his parents are generally not that far gone yet and if he had to subsidize them he would at least get a say over how much, what extent, how much healthcare, etc.

You wouldn't pay Mom's rent anyway, Mom is more likely to have property, which she then might have to liquidate. Some people would have to pay Mom's rent. Mom might live a lot less well than under boomer UBI.

Upper middle class people want their expected inheritances, after all.

Most people get their inheritance in their 50s. I think on average it'd be better for UMC people to not subsidize old people for hope of a diffuse future payout but to rather get to steer the economy now.

The implication of this is that as working age people are facing an ever more impossible expected task in terms of eldercare they will only become more desperate to socialize the cost of preventing this.

Probably and that might mean even more immigration and at some point sovereign defaults.

Mathematically someone has to balance the books here.

Until the bond vigilantes say otherwise, this empirically hasn't been the case, as evidenced by G7 sovereign debt levels since 2000. Unfortunately, since the Silent Generation RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris (aka. cigarettes) haven't been utilized to their full potential, and those pesky doctors have gotten better at keeping people alive, so balancing the books is getting harder even before we take falling fertility into account.

You wouldn't pay Mom's rent anyway

I did pay my mom's rent, because she was poorly paid, exited the divorce with no property, and, shocker, the man she divorced for being bad at paying the bills defaulted on the alimony as soon as their child was off to college and out of the blast radius. I was the only kid who wasn't still in college or flat broke ("Lying flat" is absolutely the winning strategy when it comes to avoiding familial obligations. No one expects any help from the broke fuckup sibling, but is that really how you want to live?). If not for some dubious VA disability (Semper-Fi!) my mother would presently be begging me for money. Boomer UBI just stops this from happening to a potentially large amount of people at ~65. It's easy to say "They'll just have to accept a lower standard of living.", but do you want to have to tell Mom to eat shit or move her into your house?

Maybe I'm missing something and my family are filled with an atypically large amount of fuckups (This is definitely the case for my father's side; on mom's side at least the Gen X men have their shit together.), but I'm pretty sure that Boomer welfare is the only thing sparing large amounts of the working and middle class from dealing with this sort of stuff until Mom becomes too old to live independently for medical reasons.

I'm not even endorsing fiscal gerontocracy, necessarily. I'm just giving a reason why people support it, and we haven't even gotten into how many people's jobs rely on the government subsidizing retirees' bills.

It’s almost like borrowing and dropping a bunch of cash into certain industries have caused costs to explode.

Having moved from a Western country to an Asian country where 'elderly are taken care of by their children and tend to cohabit houses' is the norm. The latter seems verymuch more functional than the current metagame of the West? I'm admittedly fortunate in that nobody in either of my families is a high-grade fuckup and I could see how that'd cause issues with the current state of things.

I've got small children, I much prefer having access to elderly members of my wife's family within a 3 minute walk versus my parents having fucked off to Australia's equivalent of Florida that's a 2 hour flight away. There's a ton of issues created by allowing the elderly to do luxury space communism.

I'm admittedly fortunate in that nobody in either of my families is a high-grade fuckup and I could see how that'd cause issues with the current state of things.

IMHO this is literally the entire argument (whatever you think of its merits) for a redistributive welfare state to take care of the young, the old, and the incurably indigent. You are indeed very lucky to have at least some family members of an older generation alive and in good enough shape to provide a degree of childcare, but from behind the Rawlsian veil, such good fortune is hardly guaranteed.

Who did you think the welfare state was for? Yes, you have to pay into the system, but you have freedom not afforded to the young and physical and mental ability not afforded to the old. That's the social contract. The theoretical benefit of immigration is that you bring in people who haven't spent 18 years consuming resources and are putting money into the system immediately; of course it doesn't always work out that way.

And people here absolutely complain about the spiraling healthcare spending growth (though in the past few decades the US has grown more slowly than comparable countries). It's pretty clear that medicare/SSI are going to fuck the budget soon, and it's politically impossible to seriously cut them.

I don't recall signing a contract. More like the social imposition? I would only agree to a contract that gives me what I deserve.

I don't recall signing a contract. More like the social imposition? I would only agree to a contract that gives me what I deserve.

Obviously it's impractical to get voluntary agreement from everyone. The idea is set up a system with a kind of rough proportionality of advantage (ex ante) and then impose it on everyone willy-nilly. But even so, the system should be fair, sustainable, and pro-social. Based on these criteria, I would say there is a lot of room for improvement in the current system.

Obviously it's impractical to get voluntary agreement from everyone.

Yes, well, too bad, because it's not a valid contract without this element.

But even so, the system should be fair, sustainable, and pro-social.

With respect to whom? It is none of these to Nick 30 ans, but it may feel that way to Pierre 68 ans.

Yes, well, too bad, because it's not a valid contract without this element.

In the strict, legal sense, I would agree. But when people say "social contract" that's not what is meant.

With respect to whom?

For every category of person.

It is none of these to Nick 30 ans

If that's correct, then that's a big problem. If the social contract is abusing (ex ante) a category of persons, then it's arguably illegitimate.

That's the social contract.

The social contract is whatever society's representative (the state) says it is, and nothing more or less.

The freedom is not something given, but taken away.

I am aware of the concept of a social contract. But the contract here is drafted almost solely by those benefitting at this point - that's not a contract, that's coercive extraction of resources from those with power from those with none, with most people being unaware where the money is flowing and who is paying for whom.

The social contract being boomer UBI is also something somewhat unprecedented in a democracy. Maybe not in history.

Exactly. Plus the current boundaries of the amount of Boomer UBI, the age it's received and what it can be spent on (Endless arm-wrestling with the grim reaper to claw a month at a time is just not useful for anybody) can all be shifted without killing 'the social contract'. Most people are effectively not covering their own costs, retirement is a privilege.

You can also, much more easily, just end the cap on social security contributions. Sure, the high income won't like it, but an almost literal 'raise taxes on the rich and only the rich' policy would be popular enough that they realize it's not going away.

"Just" raise the top tax bracket to 50%.

Much easier than getting your government hands on the boomers' medicare.

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