Topic: Opting out of Social Security - page 3. (Read 7319 times)

Certainly better than a groupthink circle-jerk. I for one think FirstAscent raises valid and interesting points.

You're right about at least one thing... I haven't thought about it from all angles and certainly can't; my solution wouldn't even be the best one by now if it had to compete with all others.

In my humble opinion it's preferable to have many insurance companies with varying policies and rates than one monitoring entity with one rate, one policy, and armed investigators patroling the streets. "Big Brother" isn't just collecting data, he's pulling me over and looking in my window.

Just as bad? The differences are choice, competition, and nonviolence. I can easily escape an unfair insurance company.

(It's kinda funny, most of the time I feel like these political analogies are inaccurate, but seatbelts turned out to be quite comparable to Social Security.)

Or you could just ask the customer if he wears a seat belt, then refuse to pay out if he claims to always wear a seat belt but the accident investigation reveals that he wasn't wearing it at the time of the accident.

Most of the members in this forum are sock puppets for the libertarian 'think tanks'. Organizations, I might add, that can be shown to be quite deceptive, and in general, political idealists masquerading as stewards of scientific studies.

And you decided we needed help :O

I see the forum's two most preeminent sock puppets are hard at work derailing this thread.

I'm not sure what your point is. I mean, I understand what you're saying, and it's not a bad idea, but have you thought about it from all angles? I suspect not. Consider...

1. Most everyone wears seat belts now. I have looked around when I drive, and I mean everyone wears seat belts. Most everyone feels more comfortable doing so.

2. The above is because of the seat belt laws.

3. People now put on their seat belts habitually, not even thinking about laws. They feel more comfortable doing so.

Now, tell me how points 1, 2 and 3 above are less preferable than being forced to hand over monitoring of your daily life to a corporation?

Furthermore, your proposal might as well include vehicle telemetry: speed, rate of acceleration, rate of deceleration, cornering speeds, records of tire replacement, records of vehicle maintenance, etc. Sounds just as bad as Big Brother.

Are you assuming that insurance companies wouldn't change their policies if the law was different? What you're describing sounds like an information asymmetry market failure.

If I was an insurer and had no data from seat belt tickets, I would require that the car records detailed seat belt data, and that the customer shares these data. Right now it would be pointless because cops are checking instead.

In either the seat belt analogy or SS, I think that people will respond to their incentives. If you give people a situation where they can assume all risks are mitigated on their behalf, of course they will be less careful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

What a load of crap.

Let me repeat myself: Seat belts are a habit today and most people actually feel naked without wearing them because in the '80s, they were forced to start wearing them.

As for insurance companies, again, you miss the mark. Insurance companies only raise your rates for not wearing a seat belt when you get a ticket for not wearing one.

Do me a favor. If you're going to post, post legitimate material that is logical and has a ring of truth to it.

A minority of people use seat belts just because it makes sense.

A far greater number needs legal compulsion.  And they know it - thats why politicians who make laws like that always get elected. 

Cute anecdote, but it doesn't mean anything. Perhaps the driver doesn't normally have a passenger. Maybe you'll now claim that it was a taxi that had been plying the streets for five years, but I don't care.

The seat belt was available for you to use. Why advocate violent compulsion?

I once had a white shirt ruined in Turkey when I put a seat belt on and no-one had used it before.  It was an inertia reel seat belt and the damn thing had years of dust on it.

Same people use seat belts all the time now as its illegal not to. 

That's not accurate. Seat belt wearing became the norm, not because of the law change (which just rode on the coat-tails of increasing awareness of road safety), but because the inertia-reel seat belt was invented. This reduced the inconvenience of seat-belt wearing.

I was a child in the 1960s, and our family car came without seat belts. We voluntarily fitted after-market seat belts, long before there were any laws. But they were the old type that had to be adjusted for each person, which was a real nuisance.

Even today, if there were no seat belt laws, most people would wear them because insurance companies would charge much higher rates for non-wearers. But those few people who didn't want to wear them would retain that freedom.

Wearing seat belts wasn't practiced too rigorously until it became mandated. Perhaps you're too young to remember? The law requiring you to wear seat belts is exactly what has made it a natural habit to put one's seat belt on when they drive.

It wasn't always like that. You have the law to thank for what is now considered a norm.

Then you are part of the righteous minority who do things because they make sense.  But you have to accept that there are a lot of people who are not like you, that those people vote and they make laws to force themselves to do the right thing.  In the case of social security, people want it and the scheme seems to be a huge success.  I wish we had something that good here...the UK pension is about only $100 per week and above that you have to rely on savings/pensions which have been gutted over the last 15 years.

Governments that mandate savings, wearing seat belts, or putting babies in seats, while good intentioned, are not good ideas.

Don't wear your seat belt then take the risk to die.

Why stop at mandating seat belts? There are plenty of things that can be mandated to 'save' lives. Make everyone move out of flood zones, Make eating a pound of bacon illegal, get rid of McDonald's.

Governments shouldn't replace personal responsibility nor should it try.  It should guide not mandate. Create voluntary programs, publish statistics (real ones), offer programs to change behavior, etc... there are tons of examples.

This whole debate and argument is moot though. Entitlements just can't be saved as they are. People can debate about it all they want, just like the families debating over Steak or Spam with $2 to spend.

Social security is exactly the type of thing government is good at.

There are things that people know they should do.  For example, not driving after a few drinks.  Or saving for retirement.  Or wearing seatbelts and putting babies in special car seats.  A righteous minority do these things because they know that its right.  A small group won't do them no matter what you say.  The majority will do it if they are forced to.

That same majority will vote for laws that forces them to do the right thing.  Social security is a perfect example of this.

Is government the right institution to run social security?  That I don't know.  In the UK, it would be run by a private company and one of our ongoing issues is "fat cats" that run these companies making ridiculous salaries regardless of success.  Brits say that the private companies do the same work for less money than having civil servants do it because you can't fire incompetent civil servants.  Most of the guys who say that publicly are part of a magic circle that bounces between these big companies and parliament so they have a vested interest.  I really don't know.  

When SS first started it was just a fixed life annuity.  When the US government started to add disability coverage and survivorship to children coverage, that is when the time to insolvency started to emerge.

People have to purchase private insurance for life and disability anyway.  They also have to save for retirement.  There is absolutely no financial advisor that would tell people to not purchase private insurance or to save for retirement and to only rely on Social Security.  Since people have to go to the private insurance market and save for retirement themselves anyway, then what is the purpose of SS?  It is just an extra thing in case the person never planned, didn't planned enough, or their plans failed.  If that is the case, then SS should not be paid to those with a certain high income level and instead should be given to low income retirees, disabled persons, or survivors of a deceased parent or spouse.

It seems you have a heart, as do I, so lets just ask this: Do you think the Government is the appropriate institution to run Social Security?

I despise Government run programs. Dole out money, yea. They are good at that, but managing the money? No, not so good at that.

I'm for a limited government, pretty darn limited Government. I realize that means a lot of people will lose their jobs but the government shouldn't have hired them in the first place.

I am also against 'career' politicians. I am for 'representatives' being like jury members: you don't want to do it because you have a life but you have to do it because it's a civic duty.

There shouldn't be a Congressional Retirement Plan (Seriously?).

I'd prefer, Joe the Plumber in the White House especially since he'd know what to do with all the BS people will tell him.

There is a reason the founding fathers put American Citizen age 35 or greater. NO requirement for Ivy League University and Foreign Affairs Experience, or having life experience as a 'community organizer'.

Social Security, as it was written, provided/provides a good safety net so people aren't dying in the gutter as you put it. However, it has run amuck and needs serious review. Maybe even scrapping and a re-write. I am thinking a means testing on a yearly basis. If you're below the poverty line you get it, if not you don't. The 'grey area' will just have to suck it up and make a little more or a little less.

But just raising the age requirement is a travesty. It's a trick so they can say: We fixed it.  When actually they screwed the pooch and mismanaged it so badly that they need more people to die before they get it. So, NO, the government is saying: Die in the gutter if you didn't make it to our required age.

LOWERING the required age requirement would show good management not raising it.

Sorry... I do tend to rant on certain subjects. I try to wake up 'the sheep' (people that act on emotion and believe everything that is told to them and don't bother to find out anything themselves.)

You are absolutely right.  But you left out the essential part:  "If you have opted out of social security and you are starving in the street, then die in the gutter and stop bothering the rest of us."

Also, the private pension system is way more expensive to run than social security.

Good luck persuading people to vote for either of these ideas.