[Doomsday Economics] your economic system is a piece of shit

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Doomsday Economics] your economic system is a piece of shit

(Thread IKs: skooma512)

Zodium: Jun 19, 2004

anime was right posted:

i think america will deteriorate later if only because we're going to do some truly heinous things to other countries to keep things going a little longer

that's what they did the last 70 years. this is the part where they're starting to do those things to you

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:21

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 05:39

Hubbert: Mar 25, 2007; At a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

anime was right posted:

the good news is not even the rich will retire because we're all going to be wasteland raiders in like 30-40 years

POV: you encounter a future cspam poster / retiree in meatspace

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:22

Zodium: Jun 19, 2004

empires dying, cloud

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:22

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

It really doesn't matter if you have retirement savings or not, they'll charge all of it + 20% + interest.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:24

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003; Can't post for 6 hours!

lol yeah, even if you have a 401k they'll figure out how to loot it

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:25

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

selec posted:

you will have the opportunity to sign up to play wasteland raider as a kind of adventure vacation to actual wastelands for quite a while before you’re forced to do it in the imperial core. maybe decades.

This is true. The collapse will be entrepreneurialized

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:27

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

lol yeah, even if you have a 401k they'll figure out how to loot it

How many people have enough that it's worth looting at retirement age? Don't most people have a woefully inadequate amount in their 401k for it to do much of anything at all without a pension, which no one gets anymore.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:27

HallelujahLee: May 3, 2009

Zodium posted:

that's what they did the last 70 years. this is the part where they're starting to do those things to you

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:31

Vox Nihili: May 28, 2008; Can't post for 5 hours!

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

lol yeah, even if you have a 401k they'll figure out how to loot it

401Ks are basically a tax shelter for upper-middle to upper class people

doubly so for IRAs, which even the capital class can use to great effect

they are the result of pensions being raided. finance companies charge fees on these accounts, they don't want them to go away

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:37

Bishyaler: Dec 30, 2009; Megamarm

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

lol yeah, even if you have a 401k they'll figure out how to loot it

The whole purpose of a 401k is to force us to tithe 10% of our income to the Capitalist Class. They get our money today and they can give us back 2040/2050/2060 heavily-inflated monopoly money if we even live long enough to retire or the country even exists.

Its a loving scam

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:40

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003; Can't post for 6 hours!

Nuclearmonkee posted:

How many people have enough that it's worth looting at retirement age? Don't most people have a woefully inadequate amount in their 401k for it to do much of anything at all without a pension, which no one gets anymore.

IIRC the leading edge of people set to retire on 401Ks is hitting retirement age. no loving idea if anyone's going to do it successfully

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:41

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

anime was right posted:

i think america will deteriorate later if only because we're going to do some truly heinous things to other countries to keep things going a little longer

a more local less global world means a relatively more powerful but absolutely less powerful US.

so potentially yes especially when climate gets more involved in world events.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:43

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

I had clients who retired with 401ks. the ones who did so successfully never got divorced or had kids afaict

they also have 1 mill + in home equity because they bought a house before 1975

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:43

Zodium: Jun 19, 2004

Bishyaler posted:

The whole purpose of a 401k is to force us to tithe 10% of our income to the Capitalist Class. They get our money today and they can give us back 2040/2050/2060 heavily-inflated monopoly money if we even live long enough to retire or the country even exists.

Its a loving scam

scam implies you have a choice. it's more like coercion.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:44

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003; Can't post for 6 hours!

so they're retiring on house equity, not their 401ks

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:44

Zodium: Jun 19, 2004

it'll actually be worse in the core countries like north america and europe because their ability to extract value from the periphery will decrease, but the capital density remains far higher, and the capitalist class will thus need to exploit domestic labor more intensely.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:47

Chad Sexington: May 26, 2005; I think he made a beautiful post and did a great job and he is good.

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

lol yeah, even if you have a 401k they'll figure out how to loot it

yeah it's called eldercare and they're already doing the looting

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:48

Father Wendigo: Sep 28, 2005; This is, sadly, more important to me than bettering myself.

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

, they and their precious investments and wealth are going to be under the gun too.

They will be gentrifying SubTropolis with trendy tiny homes, crossbow ranges, flavor laboratories and mushroom farms.

We will be fertilizer.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:49

shazbot: Sep 20, 2004; Ah, hon, ya got arby's all over my acoustic wave machine.

I can only invest 3% of my salary into my 401k because I make too much money. so my investment strategy is lottery tickets and a gun

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:51

shazbot: Sep 20, 2004; Ah, hon, ya got arby's all over my acoustic wave machine.

my sister won 100k on a scratcher so I know it�s a good idea

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:54

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

so they're retiring on house equity, not their 401ks

it�s possible to do it, just very rare. but yes in order that do it they will tend to also have house equity and often also a pension. and they never got divorced as eurphronius pointed out. and they never had a major medical issue. and they never had an unexpected job loss. and they had supportive family. and they had a relatively high wage early.

and they probably didn�t have kids but one can get away with kids if one saved extremely early and waited until like 30 to have them.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 20:58

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

Potato Salad posted:

Sanders was the only guy in Congress who could actually walk what all these fake populists talked, and that scared Trump shitless at the outset of Covid because Trump knows that his positive coverage largely hinges on the lies that he tragically peddles to the downtrodden and desperate. Sanders is far from perfect and even sucks, but god drat it my family members needed food on their tables at the time and the programs Sanders stuck his neck out for made that happen.

one loving guy saw an opportunity in our hosed up legislature to single-handedly twist the arms behind both his own corporatist party (by threatening to shut down everything down that the handout-capitalists were demanding) AND the faux populist president going through an acute image crisis, and he took it.

There would have been no "shutting Sanders down" because the entire collective handout-capitalist armada that is our ruling class was pissing itself. They were begging parties for the invisible hand of the market to be carried on the back of the state through the uncertain darkness of "oh poo poo our labor supply might be disrupted." Sanders used their urgency to as a liability against the executive and his own party, making sure we actual human beings got something too. I respectfully urge that some posters are forgetting how this actually went down.

hypothesis: sanders was not actually this powerful during the trump administration under a gop senate majority

# ? Sep 25, 2023 21:24

BRAKE FOR MOOSE: Jun 6, 2001

Bar Ran Dun posted:

it�s possible to do it, just very rare. but yes in order that do it they will tend to also have house equity and often also a pension. and they never got divorced as eurphronius pointed out. and they never had a major medical issue. and they never had an unexpected job loss. and they had supportive family. and they had a relatively high wage early.

and they probably didn�t have kids but one can get away with kids if one saved extremely early and waited until like 30 to have them.

it's rare but not this dire, you don't need a pension or a house or extended family, you just need a comfortable wage that allows you to save after taking care of your needs and not blow money on dumb poo poo. like you'll almost certainly be a millionaire if you're saving $500/mo from your 20s, but how many people can pull that off?

# ? Sep 25, 2023 21:28

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

KFF did a study on how "medicare" "advantage" is marketed and found that:

quote:

* TV airways were flooded with ads for Medicare plans. Nearly 650,000 airings of Medicare ads appeared during the nine weeks of advertising, more than 9,500 airings per day. Most of these ads were aired in local media markets. While most TV ads were sponsored by health insurers, about one in every five TV ads were sponsored by brokers and other third-party entities, such as marketing firms.

* TV ads for Medicare Advantage comprised more than 85% of all airings for the open enrollment period for 2023. The remaining ads focused on other types of plans, such as Medigap and stand-alone Part D prescription drug plans, or promoted the open enrollment period more generally. Medicare Advantage ads were disproportionately sponsored by health insurers who offer plans that comprise a relatively small share of Medicare Advantage enrollees.

* TV ads for Medicare Advantage often showed images of a government-issued Medicare card or urged viewers to call a �Medicare� hotline other than the official 1-800-Medicare hotline. More than a quarter of all airings (27%) included a government-issued Medicare card or image that resembled it, including 28% of insurer-sponsored airings and 21% of airings sponsored by brokers and other third-party entities, a trend that CMS has flagged as potentially misleading to beneficiaries. Roughly 16% of airings featured a privately-run phone line described as a �Medicare� hotline, most of which were sponsored by brokers and other third-party entities.

* Some ads suggested that people with Medicare miss out on benefits to which they are entitled if they are not enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. These TV ads were more common among ads sponsored by brokers and other third-party entities than those sponsored by health insurers, and used language that implied viewers were �missing out� on benefits they were �entitled to,� or receiving incomplete coverage under Medicare Parts A and B if they were not enrolled in a Medicare Advantage (Part C) plan

* The vast majority of Medicare Advantage ad airings touted low costs and extra benefits, while few mentioned quality ratings. Nearly all Medicare Advantage ad airings emphasized extra benefits, such as dental, vision, and hearing (92%) or the potential for lower out-of-pocket spending (85%). Airings sponsored by brokers and other third-party entities often (67%) promoted the potential for enrollees to get money back in their Social Security check (or lower their Medicare Part B premium). Few airings (4%) mentioned quality star ratings.

* Medicare Advantage ad airings often featured active seniors engaged in physical activities, but rarely showed people who appeared to have a serious health problem or visible disability. One in four Medicare Advantage ad airings (26%) showed seniors taking part in activities such as hiking or yoga, but few included people with visible disabilities (4%) or the appearance of serious illness (1%) for whom health insurance coverage and choice of providers may be a high priority.

* TV ads sponsored by brokers and other third-party entities used celebrity endorsements more often than health insurers to promote Medicare Advantage. Celebrities, such as actors, athletes, and politicians, appeared in more than half of Medicare Advantage ad airings sponsored by brokers and other third parties (55%), but rarely appeared in airings sponsored by insurers (3%). Familiar figures included Joe Namath, Lionel Richie, William Shatner, and JJ Walker. Joe Namath was featured more than any other celebrity, appearing in nearly 56,000 airings.

https://www.kff.org/medicare/report/how-health-insurers-and-brokers-are-marketing-medicare/

# ? Sep 25, 2023 21:49

PoundSand: Jul 30, 2021; Also proficient with kites

BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:

it's rare but not this dire, you don't need a pension or a house or extended family, you just need a comfortable wage that allows you to save after taking care of your needs and not blow money on dumb poo poo. like you'll almost certainly be a millionaire if you're saving $500/mo from your 20s, but how many people can pull that off?

yeah even if you wait till 30 to start if you're maxing out your 401k annually and going with historically average returns you're looking at 4 mil when you retire, possibly more depending on employer match (cause that doesn't count against your limit), another 1 mil or so with maxing out an IRA alongside it.

The reality is most people obviously can't afford that, and even those that hypothetically could often won't because that means not having 5 figures a year in "fun money", even just splurging on upgrading/getting a new car cause you feel like you deserve one from that promo or whatever is gonna take up the bulk of that money annually in payments, and that's an incredibly common thing for keeping up with the joneses americans to do.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 21:51

shrike82: Jun 11, 2005

I think a large swathe of the professional class especially computer touchers will still be able to retire - we just went through a decade of ZIRP so home ownership not to mention fully paid off home ownership isn't uncommon.

At the big tech level, total comp has been crazy for two decades now so early retirement for people in their 40s isn't unheard of. People could have gone from student to retiree only seeing cheap credit and increasing incomes.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 21:55

Rectal Death Adept: Jun 20, 2018; by Fluffdaddy

yeah everyone, if you are worried about retirement just max out your 401k every year for 30 years

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:01

corona familiar: Aug 13, 2021

Rectal Death Adept posted:

yeah everyone, if you are worried about retirement just max out your 401k every year for 30 years

also, don't forget to hope that all of your major organ systems continue to work without medical intervention, and that the place where you own property (and you do own property, right) does not encounter any destructive force, natural or otherwise, that would render your dwelling uninhabitable

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:05

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

shrike82 posted:

I think a large swathe of the professional class especially computer touchers will still be able to retire - we just went through a decade of ZIRP so home ownership not to mention fully paid off home ownership isn't uncommon.

that is a small portion of the cohort. averages and median by ages:

40-45 $90,774 $26,989
45-50 $123,686 $33,605
50-55 $161,869 $43,395
55-60 $199,743 $55,464

none of those is retiring lmao.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:07

Akratic Method: Mar 9, 2013; It's going to pay off eventually--I'm sure of it.

Any day now.

There's a chance the writers' strike is coming to an end soon: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/25/hollywood-writers-strike-end-wga-deal-details-negotiations

Didn't see actual details on the contract terms yet though, so no way of knowing whether that's good or bad.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:15

Brain Curry: Feb 15, 2007; People think that I'm lazy
People think that I'm this fool because
I give a fuck about the government
I didn't graduate from high school

Bar Ran Dun posted:

that is a small portion of the cohort. averages and median by ages:

40-45 $90,774 $26,989
45-50 $123,686 $33,605
50-55 $161,869 $43,395
55-60 $199,743 $55,464

none of those is retiring lmao.

is that tracking total retirement savings per person, or per retirement account?

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:15

JAY ZERO SUM GAME: Oct 18, 2005; Walter.
I know you know how to do this.
Get up.

LeeMajors posted:

I work 2-5 cardiac arrests/overdoses on this guy per week.

In a hotel room. A gas station bathroom. A McDonalds booth. A tent in the woods.

It�s loving real and you�re spot on. This country tells you you�re worthless unless you can work and then gives you all the tools to kill yourself as quickly as possible�cheap, impure drugs, a vacuum of social services and mental health disorders.

gently caress

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:18

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Brain Curry posted:

is that tracking total retirement savings per person, or per retirement account?

that�s average 401 K combined totals (so all they may have) per person, I think.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:34

anime was right: Jun 27, 2008; death is certain
keep yr cool

cant you only have one 401k account that you have to transfer over to your new company or whatever

you cant have a joint 401k so yeah thats per individual

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:37

Ebola Roulette: Sep 13, 2010; No matter what you ~~win~~ ~~lose~~ ragepiss.

eXXon posted:

The lack of accessible and affordable child care could pull more women out of the work force, potentially leading to higher inflation

How exactly will more households living on 1 income instead of 2 lead to increased inflation? All the big smart economy guys have been saying higher wages are driving inflation :confused:

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:41

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

anime was right posted:

cant you only have one 401k account that you have to transfer over to your new company or whatever

no you don�t have to roll over. and you can roll over into an individual 401k account too. so you can have more than one. but the total annual limit is still the total limit.

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:41

Father Wendigo: Sep 28, 2005; This is, sadly, more important to me than bettering myself.

Akratic Method posted:

There's a chance the writers' strike is coming to an end soon: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/25/hollywood-writers-strike-end-wga-deal-details-negotiations

Didn't see actual details on the contract terms yet though, so no way of knowing whether that's good or bad.

How disappointing, the most flailing we got to see was Disney re-airing the football game using Toy Story CGI.

Meanwhile, in probably nothing news...

https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1706413717548834960?t=s24BVDe1ZZt2OZGcCsUPKQ&s=19

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:44

anime was right: Jun 27, 2008; death is certain
keep yr cool

btw this was a really small but hugely impactful thing that the trump tax bill or whatever did, and that was if you inherit a 401k or ira you now have to distribute it out over 10 years no matter what instead of holding onto it for retirement. this means you get HEAVILY taxed if you inherit a retirement account. its not specifically aimed at loving over millennials, but its pretty loving close.

like, i know "oh wow theyre lucky to have inherited money" or whatever but like, its very specifically meant to tax the poo poo out of boomer retirement funds (for those who have them) without taxing boomers specifically

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:45

Der Meister: May 12, 2001

anime was right posted:

btw this was a really small but hugely impactful thing that the trump tax bill or whatever did, and that was if you inherit a 401k or ira you now have to distribute it out over 10 years no matter what instead of holding onto it for retirement. this means you get HEAVILY taxed if you inherit a retirement account. its not specifically aimed at loving over millennials, but its pretty loving close.

like, i know "oh wow theyre lucky to have inherited money" or whatever but like, its very specifically meant to tax the poo poo out of boomer retirement funds (for those who have them) without taxing boomers specifically

does that sunset too like the other dumb poo poo

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:50

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 05:39

FlapYoJacks: Feb 12, 2009

What if we gave everyone 80% of their maximum salary earned in their lifetime capped to inflation for retirement as a public pension system?

# ? Sep 25, 2023 22:52

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Doomsday Economics] your economic system is a piece of shit

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