alt Hacker NewsIt's happening in the US, too.
I know of a senior couple where the husband recently retired after forty years of working in a professional field. They live in a house worth over $750k that is paid off. They have three new or late-model vehicles. Both the husband and wife could, if necessary, work for an income.
They also collect Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance checks after enrolling for them. The common name for this is Social Security.
Why the hell are they able to collect on that? They have the ability to work and assets that could readily be made liquid to fund living expenses.
Replies
Because they were promised it - fundamentally leaving the rich out of the social safety net doesn't even get us much and administrating the distinction costs money, and I am no fan of the wealthiest get additional benefits.
I think solving inequality will not be about reducing access to said safety nets but increasing them for all.
> Why the hell are they able to collect on that?
People in the higher income brackets get far less back on SS than they paid in.
If you work for 40 years, chances are you will have accumulated some assets. I'm not sure that "sell your house and cars to pay for food" is a policy that will be popular.
Equally those same people have paid taxes for 40 years, paid into social security (to the benefit of their elders) and so on.
Keeping them in the work-force is largely undesirable. A job occupied by a 70 year old is a job not occupied by someone younger. If retirement age was say 80 instead of 60, there would be 25% fewer jobs to go around. (using imprecise simple math).
Look, most all of us will get old and eventually claim on social security or whatever. Politically just "ending that" is pretty much a non-starter to anyone who has been contributing for any length of time. Even fiddling with the edges of it (raising the retirement age) will get you voted out of office.
SS has to pay everyone to be viable. If you make it more complicated the politics turn into a nightmare.
> They have three new or late-model vehicles.
Depends on geography of course, but it's not rare at all for boomers to have this many houses as a normal part of how they experienced middle-class life. As a group they are not only more likely to have rental/investment property, but also more likely to have multiple such properties. Why would they sell? They can get you to pay for all their services, and vote as a block to deny and remove services elsewhere.
They paid for Old Age Insurance, and they reached old age, so they get to collect.
Social Security as an insurance product is fiction, but playing into the fiction helps it survive to do the thing it was built for: keep the elderly out of the poor houses / off the street.
Payout rates drop at higher income, and portions of the payout are taxable at higher income, so it's not like it's completely income/wealth blind.