#safetynets — Public Fediverse posts

(continued from previous post on thread)

This topic is very apropos in the current market. We may be about to enter another recession, perhaps a depression. 401K's are down. So the claim that we could do better investing on our own is uncertain, but is again certainly going to test a lot of ordinary citizens, postponing their ability to retire.

And I emphasize that the choice f when to retire is not just a whim. Even ignoring age discrimination, age wears on a person, and some people do physical jobs (read: ACTUAL hard work, as opposed to metaphorically hard work done by rich executives) that leave them depleted. So delayed retirement is not just an inconvenience, it is in some cases torture and in some cases impossible.

But even as we are potentially entering a depression, the billionaires are salivating. They are looking forward to "buying low". They're treating this roller coaster as a buying opportunity. They plan to get rich on this depression. Even as others suffer and probably many die. They are gleeful.

This is the time when Social Security should be doubling down and assuring people it will increase benefits to cover rising costs (although it wouldn't be terrible if we just impeached the President who's causing those rising costs artificially with tariffs that really no sane business people think are a good idea). Because Social Security is again a contract with the population about what our priority is. And if we need more money, we should be bumping the tax on those gleeful about what a great buying opportunity this is.

They, the rich, would probably whine that this singles them out. That people are jealous. No one should stand for such rhetoric. The ones making the noise did not get their power by dealing honorably with us citizens. This is not jealousy speaking, it is a desire for justice. Be glad I'm not suggesting (as some are) that we just eat the rich and be done with it. Proper taxation of accumulated wealth (not just income) works for me.

No one needs that much money anyway. It's CLEAR from their observed behavior that one can only buy so many gold toilet seats before one starts to wonder what the point of excess riches is, and really it seems the only thing that one can find to spend such wealth on is buying governments. And then, apparently, running them badly and cruelly. No, I'm not going to feel sorry about suggesting taxation.

2/2 (probably the end)

#SocialSecurity #Privatization #USPolitics #Politics #SocialContract #justice #inequality #poverty #SafetyNets #tariffs #401K #RetirementSavings #retirement #AntiPoverty #dignity

I often hear people say that Social Security should be eliminated, that we'd do better with our own 401K's.

There are a lot of problems with that argument.

First, it turns us into gamblers. The argument is that people could invest their money better. Maybe. But they can also invest their money worse. So it's a very uneven policy. And that is ultimately cruel. That's just gambling, and experience shows that gamblers are often a lot more confident than is warranted.

The sociopaths among us often say, "Too bad. Individuals should take responsibility for their lack of saving. It's not my fault that some people don't plan." Those same people, though, are telling us that we should eliminate the minimum wage, that if the market doesn't want to pay someone enough to even live, why should it have to. So exactly where is the savings supposed to come from? On the one side, people work hard for hardly any money. On the other side, they're told their failure to save is a moral failing. Where is the discussion of moral failing in having more money than God and still being unwilling to help raise people out of poverty? That seems the biggest moral failing.

Moreover, a lot of what makes the difference in who succeeds or fails is one's parents. Dynastic fortunes. Better schools. Better connections. Sometimes even just better health or better clothing. The narrative is spun that the rich worked hard for their money, but in my experience, poor people work much harder for the scraps they are thrown than rich people ever do, and the notion of "meritocracy" is nonsense because the people who get ahead are just those who get to start ahead of the others.

But while on the topic of morality, let's also look at the structure of Social Security itself. People like to compare it to a 401K, but it's not like that. It's not a bank account. It's a very different beast.

As an example, you become suddenly unable to work, it kicks in right away, even if you didn't pay for a long time. That's very different than a bank account. If you live a long time, it continues to pay you.

There may be issues with cost of living adjustments, but the only reason we don't do those more often is that the aforementioned rich sociopaths insist it's better to give tax breaks to the wealthy. They'll tell you that Social Security is intended only to supplement your retirement, not to be the full amount, and yet they'll back penalties for trying to draw money out of Social Security if you're also getting other income. That's not really how supplements work, and it's a disincentive to additional work.

But my point is that the contract is not for a specific quantity of money. It is a social contract, that you pay into it while you're able and you are paid when you're not able. We could do better on the getting paid part, but the point is for it to keep you from falling into poverty, to add dignity.

It's worth noting that Social Security did not arise in a vacuum. While people COULD invest their money, a lot of people didn't, or else were losers in that gambling. Before Social Security, in the 1930s, the elderly poverty rate in the depression was something like 70%. So there is an objective way to understand what this did for the public. Some have called it the most successful anti-poverty program in the history of the US.

And if we were really worried that investing in the market were a better bet, we could arrange for the Social Security trust fund to do that. That's just an implementation detail and has nothing to do with the overall social promise. If DOGE wanted to do something HELPFUL, instead of aggressively dismantling all of the US government's ability to provide value to the public, they could analyze whether there are better ways to manage the funds.

But, ultimately, government is not a business and social security is not a profit & loss center, even if it's popular for some who don't like it to portray it that way. It mostly pays for itself, but from a moral point of view, its real purpose is to say that we as a society need to have a commitment to our sick and elderly, to assure they are taken care of, BEFORE we declare a profit. If we as a nation are able to give tax breaks to rich citizens only by cutting social programs, then the rich are preying on the poor. The health and welfare of all citizens is our first priority as a nation. We should not be preferencing the already-preferenced before we have attended to that.

1/2 (continued next post)

#SocialSecurity #Privatization #USPolitics #Politics #SocialContract #justice #inequality #poverty #SafetyNets #tariffs #401K #RetirementSavings #retirement #AntiPoverty #dignity

@climatebrad

It feels to me like "build more housing" can't be the answer. You almost might as well say "make more land". It's not a durable solution. And it doesn't address the many other aspects of society that need to be addressed. Jobs food commerce in general, schools, the nature and flow of community itself.

A favorite quote comes to mind.

"Better implies different."
--Amar Bose, at an MIT Enterprise Forum event

(He was trying to explain to sales people at stores that would sell Bose speakers why they had to make changes in how they set them up. "Couldn't they just do what they'd always done?" The people would ask. They were used to that and did not want to change. He was trying to explain succinctly why you can't just radically improve something and leave it the same at the same time. So he, explained, that slogan had emerged.)

Surely higher population density at some point means using existing resources differently. I'm not pushing an agenda here, but I am observing that higher density feels less compatible within every person for themselves and traditional-ownership / rent-taking-for-profit model. Surely that brings a 2-tiered citizenship and breeds discontent/danger as inequality simmers.

In computer science, we talk about building systems that scale, planning for higher traffic. This could really be done in a system that did not plan for scale without the architecting the system entirely, and I've even seen some of pine that every factor of 10 in scale requires a redesign.

Sometimes the architectural plan is indeed to just add servers, but that has to be planned in, and there has to be a source of servers, and the system architecture has to be structured such that in the new model, all the necessary flows will happen correctly and resources won't be cut off from each other or too hard to access or too expensive.

"Build more housing." does not sound like the kind of answer I could give in a job interview and expect to be hired, with the hiring manager saying "this person has clearly demonstrated their understanding of operating at scale". The answer is not of a shape that seems right to me, nor does it offer sufficient detail.

A lot of capitalism seems to operate on a theory that you just twist some knobs and everything will just happen right without coordination. I think this is less and less true as either populations grow larger or resources grow smaller or resources become more stressed.

I did not write the accompanying article specifically to address this issue, and yet I feel like it says some important additional things I might say here if I were to ramble on. It is not a complete discussion of scale, but more discussion of why I don't think the traditional ways of thinking about just turning a few knobs is likely to keep working.

Losing Ground in the Environment
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2019/09/losing-ground-in-environment.html

It also just not addressed the issue of urgency, and the way in which urgency materially changes the set of usable solutions. I did try to address that issue here:

The Politics of Delay
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-politics-of-delay.html

#climate #ClimateMigration #SystemsThinking #scaling #ScalingSoftware #Community #Housing #LateStageCapitalism #capitalism #population #collapse #inequality #sustainability #SocialPolicy #SafetyNets

Um... Proving again that #ProBirth is NOT #ProLife!

In states that ban #abortion, #SocialSafetyNet programs often fail families

By LAURA UNGAR and KIMBERLEE KRUESI, December 27, 2024

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — "Taylor Cagnacci moved from California to Tennessee with hopes of starting a new chapter in a state that touts a low cost of living and natural beauty.

"But she’s infuriated by Tennessee’s meager social services, which leave her and many other moms struggling in a state where abortion is banned with limited exceptions.

"'I was going to have my child no matter what, but for other women, that’s kind of a crappy situation that they put you in,' said Cagnacci, a 29-year-old Kingsport mom who relies on #Medicaid and a federally funded nutrition program. 'You have to have your child. But where’s the assistance afterward?'

"Tennessee has a porous safety net for mothers and young children, recent research and an analysis by The Associated Press found. It’s unknown how many women in the state have given birth because they didn’t have access to abortion, but it is clear that from the time a Tennessee woman gets pregnant, she faces greater obstacles to a #HealthyPregnancy, a #HealthyChild and a financially stable family than the average

"Like other states with strict abortion bans, Tennesseans of childbearing age are more likely to live in maternal care deserts and face overall doctor shortages. Women, infants and children are less likely to be enrolled in a government nutrition program known as #WIC. And Tennessee is one of only 10 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid to a greater share of low-income families."

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-tennessee-medicaid-wic-2a67e38c0d523a008ec8e1b173b67297
#AbortionBans #SafetyNets #ChildPoverty #FoodInsecurity #USPol

Informal safety nets help many Americans with expenses – people at all income levels benefit from this ‘financial interdependence’ (By Eric Hengyu Hu and Paul L. Morgan, University at Albany, SUNY) #FinancialInterdependence #SafetyNets #IncomeEquality
https://theconversation.com/informal-safety-nets-help-many-americans-with-expenses-people-at-all-income-levels-benefit-from-this-financial-interdependence-242178

Lauren Boebert Maligns Working Poor While Fighting for Cuts to Needed Benefits! - https://youtu.be/Ut1BYTL5iQY?si=1hjGPEYk9T10LcRy #SocialBenefits #WorkingPoor #LowIncome #SafetyNets #BrittanyPage #PagePerspective #PublicPolicy #LaurenBoebert

@KPED

Someone I know well did professional typography. Once a visible art form, now mostly niche, as too many publishers decided it wasn't moving books and settled for either the "good enough" of automatic layout, in part because that made books retargetable to various media. But it's not art. Same deal as commercial clothing and furniture. One by one more industries will go this way.

Our problem as a society is that we are contriving ways to save labor, but not conveying the benefit of the savings to the laborers. In plain terms, it's not about the smarts, it's about the utility, and it's not about the wealth but the distribution of wealth.

If artisans still got paid they could do their work as a hobby, or not. But we have no social plan for the unemployment. Claims other jobs will come but no path for those laid off to get those jobs. Or just universal basic income.

We have as a society, as they say, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, creating a society that requires far less labor to survive but demands ever more just because it suits the ever more tyrannical lusts of those hoarding the spoils.

All egged on by technologists who think they're enriching society when really they're widening the gap between rich and poor. This cannot end well. We must stop debating singularities and start seriously debating humane social safety nets and wealth sharing.

In such a world, too, education becomes a cruel economic gamble because one may find one has trained for a dying career and is stuck with the tab. Another reason education must all be free, so people aren't burdened by risk and cost of ever more frequent need for reeducation. (This, too, underscores the importance of UBI, to eliminate need for some reeducation, and to cover life expenses as it is still otherwise forced.)

#WritingCommunity #Capitalism #OpenAI #AI #ethics #society #UBI #SafetyNets #education #tuition #TuitionLoans #debt