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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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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".
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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