>This is the thing I don't get. Do you not understand that it's not sustainable?
There's nothing about it that it's not "sustainable". Pensions aren't and shouldn't be a pyramid scheme (of younger vs older generations etc).
Let's consider UBI.
A UBI of $1000/month for 300M Americans comes about $3.5 trillion/year. That's around 18% of the US GDP.
And that's flat out giving the money.
Now reduce that by the current welfare spending which is $1.2 trillion (and which you could replace with the UBI, or perhaps just keep the 0.2 trillion of it for special cases), and you get to $2.5 trillion/year, or ~13% of the GDP.
For comparison overall government spending was 38% of GDP in 2017.
Of course "free pension" would be far less than that amount, because this UBI amount is calculated for 300M people. Whereas pensioners will be only people > 65 y.o or so -- a much smaller number.
We're getting to something like 5% of the GDP or less.
And that's assuming everybody is equally entitled to that money. Which people already having wealth need not be, living even less people entitled to that "free pension" -- if you have a million in savings you don't really need that $1000/month, do you?
And of course, workers pay (or can be made to pay, with an automatic tax of say 10% month, as most civilized western countries have) for their pensions throughout their careers. So a large amount of pensions can come from that.
Not to mention the pension money wont magically disappear -- it'll be reintroduced into the economy (and further taxed etc).
With sane housing laws and no crazy lifestyles, people can live just fine on $1000/month. In fact they do just that, even with less, all over the world, including in places with more expensive food and consumer products than the USA.
The two things that need to be kept low are rent (which should be: the US has ample space to built on --nobody said pensioners have to live in Miami or NY, and should not be costing more than a few tens of thousands for the kind of constructions that pass for homes there) and healthcare (which in the US is laughably overpaid for what it offers -- I have been asked to pay $200 for perfectly common and safe procedures one can do themselves, and which in other western countries you can have at your average pharmacy for $10).
There's nothing about it that it's not "sustainable". Pensions aren't and shouldn't be a pyramid scheme (of younger vs older generations etc).
Let's consider UBI.
A UBI of $1000/month for 300M Americans comes about $3.5 trillion/year. That's around 18% of the US GDP.
And that's flat out giving the money.
Now reduce that by the current welfare spending which is $1.2 trillion (and which you could replace with the UBI, or perhaps just keep the 0.2 trillion of it for special cases), and you get to $2.5 trillion/year, or ~13% of the GDP.
For comparison overall government spending was 38% of GDP in 2017.
Of course "free pension" would be far less than that amount, because this UBI amount is calculated for 300M people. Whereas pensioners will be only people > 65 y.o or so -- a much smaller number.
We're getting to something like 5% of the GDP or less.
And that's assuming everybody is equally entitled to that money. Which people already having wealth need not be, living even less people entitled to that "free pension" -- if you have a million in savings you don't really need that $1000/month, do you?
And of course, workers pay (or can be made to pay, with an automatic tax of say 10% month, as most civilized western countries have) for their pensions throughout their careers. So a large amount of pensions can come from that.
Not to mention the pension money wont magically disappear -- it'll be reintroduced into the economy (and further taxed etc).
With sane housing laws and no crazy lifestyles, people can live just fine on $1000/month. In fact they do just that, even with less, all over the world, including in places with more expensive food and consumer products than the USA.
The two things that need to be kept low are rent (which should be: the US has ample space to built on --nobody said pensioners have to live in Miami or NY, and should not be costing more than a few tens of thousands for the kind of constructions that pass for homes there) and healthcare (which in the US is laughably overpaid for what it offers -- I have been asked to pay $200 for perfectly common and safe procedures one can do themselves, and which in other western countries you can have at your average pharmacy for $10).
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