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Your parents, who will be old later, and to whom you will therefore owe a pension. What's your point?
To enjoy any those things aged 70, you need to be able to afford a comfortable living without having to work anymore. But more to the point, you seem to be flip-flopping back and forth as rhetorically necessary between "actually, old people don't need pensions to enjoy comfortable idleness in retirement" and "actually, old people's comfort doesn't matter, screw them, as soon as you're out of the labor force you might as well croak". It is the latter I primarily take issue with.
When they die I inherit? I actually owe them while I don't owe strangers? They won't nickle-and-dime me like strangers will at the expense of their grandchildren?
I believe both. Old people can be comfortable if they earn it, but unless they're my family I'm not willing to make the comfortable at my expense. All they did is take from me and my family.
Except you also say old people who worked and saved ("earned it") should be "cleared out." So you don't want them to be given anything, and you don't want them to keep anything they earned, you basically just want everyone but your parents put on an ice floe once they can no longer work?
No, I just don't want them to take from me, which they are.
You said old people who have saved money they earned while working should be "cleared out." You can rationalize it however you like with a retooled version of the Privilege argument, but your definition of "taking" from you appears to be "having things you want." You're essentially making the same argument that reparations people do, that white people have all this Stuff they don't deserve because of historical inequities blah blah blah and therefore they deserve to have it taken from them and redistributed.
Telling people "You owe me" does not make them sympathetic to your suffering. And it's honestly hard to take your "suffering" seriously when you simultaneously claim to be in the top 5% income bracket yet unable to afford a family. I am not sure if you're sincere or just a high-effort troll. You're approaching the @KulakRevolt level of cartoonish edgelordy ragebait. You are not presenting serious arguments, just an inchoate spew of resentments.
I did not say that. I said
As much as it might pain you to here, having had worked entitles you to nothing but becoming dust in the wind, which is the ultimate destination of all those who have worked. Our civilization is much more built on those who are dust than those who sit on boats with OAPs. To those who are dust we feel we owe nothing. Really we owe them much more than we currently render. The only thing an animal is really entitled to is what he is now, and my comment is that while it feel like that pension and that savings account is a sure thing for some current 65 year old, it's really not. It's really a gift from the young people who give it present value. We can take part or all of that gift away like a toy from a toddler if the 65 year old acts too entitled over it. It's a privilege, not a right. That is my point. There is this delusion in a lot of 65 year olds that they are the ones who give their savings accounts value, as if they are the ones who are currently keeping the lights on, keeping the enemy at the gates, and so on. No, of course it is men of youth and vitality who are presently working who own all the value. Being retired or FIREd or whatever other form of idle you like is a privilege that is never really sure.
The topic of how much of the gift to take comes up naturally when young people cannot live their best lives and start families. That the boomer response is typically shut your bratty mouth, I am completely entitled to my ridiculously bloated lifestyle, because I appeared to make value in some corporate job 25 years ago does not help their case. The response should be, I'm sorry you don't have enough money, maybe cutting 10% of OAPs could help, and I could cut back on my lifestyle a bit. I know how important starting a family is and how lucky I am to even get to be alive at 70 years old and idle. In other words, they should have gratitude, not entitlement.
All we are is dust in the wind. None of us are "entitled" to anything, it's all what we can earn and what others give us.
Every civilization has made various provisions for the no-longer-working elderly. Some took the attitude you do, that once they can no longer work, they serve no purpose and should just die. Those civilizations were not nice, and are now dust in the wind, and that's a good thing.
It's not a gift. It's an inter-generational agreement: "We will take care of our old, and in turn our young will take care of us." You can of course argue that you want to change or abolish that agreement. Maybe you are confident your children will take care of you, or maybe you're content to walk out onto an ice floe when you are too old to work. But the reason we don't typically decide "Appropriate all savings, abolish all pensions, nullify all previous agreements" is that this leads to extremely unstable, low-trust societies in which everyone maximizes their own immediate benefit because they expect the young to take everything from them at the first opportunity. If I know young people are going to try to take everything from me when I can no longer defend it, I am not going to think about how to make young people's lives better to appease them, I'm going to think about how I can protect myself and keep them powerless. Rather the opposite of what you want.
So the degree to which old people should be allowed to keep anything is the degree to which they flatter and appease you?
That is what boomers did, so they should be treated like they behave. They broke the social contract, not young people.
The elder generations should pay the young their due for protection, service, and reproduction. Many zoomers believe they are being short-changed, and many boomers believe they are entitled to do the short-changing.
What social contract did boomers break? Being too healthy and not dying young enough?
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