"Live frugally" , "FIRE" , "work in tech"

All incompatible with 99% of the upper class, neither do they want to eat ramen to retire early.

You're also one medical disaster away from being "very very wrong"

And health insurance as soon as the ACA is gutted and you have a pre existing condition? Sure I could retire to Costa Rica or Panama. One of those are a plan B and we will be in CR for six weeks and we are both learning Spanish - I am. decent at it.

I bet you also your idea of upper middle class is not statistically valid.

https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/

Statistics! Can a person below the median income afford to retire early? The answer is a resounding no. Can a person the top 10th percentile (upper middle class) afford to retire early? Yes.

Thanks for living frugally. Since you now have some spare money, I decided it's time for a rent increase. And a tax increase.

Here are the numbers for context:

https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentiles/

The median household income doesn’t earn the median wage every year from when they started working. That’s just a snapshot and it’s highly correlated with age. I’m 51, I damn sure couldn’t afford to max out my 401K. That means I was 25 in 1999. I definitely could afford to max out my 401K - which was then $10K a year - when I was making $35K a year.

Especially when new grads are coming out now with student loan debt.

Does that answer the question about what happens when the ACA is gutted and you can’t get insurance at any price with a pre-existing condition?

That happened to me right before the ACA went into affect. I was engaged to my now wife and we moved our marriage up early so I could get on her insurance.

Until the Republican Party finally succeeds at gutting the ACA or make it so bad that insurers wing cover it.

Let’s say you maxed out your HSA for 20 years and have $200K - that can be wiped out with one uncovered major medical incident the HSA max is relatively low.

My property taxes are $3000 a year. They were around $7K a year before we moved. We also downsized to a two bedroom condo -1200 square feet - from a 3500 square foot house in the most expensive county in GA (Forsyth) after my step son graduated in 2020 and after Covid. We sold our house for twice what we had it built for 8 years earlier and bought our condo for the same price as we paid for our house in 2016.

Florida - especially when you live in the same county as DisneyWorld - is heavily subsidized by tourism

Ah yes, the 4chan retirement plan. Die of a preventable cause at age 42 while waiting for your captcha.

The top social security taxable income hasn’t been as low as $90K since around 2005. It’s currently $184500. 93% of income earners earn less than that

https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

It definitely answers why. You are asking for an appeal to some moral justification. But there isn't one, and it doesn't matter. That's the whole point of "might makes right".

What question do you want answered exactly? Why we have governments and not anarchy?

>We should just socialize necessities like food, shelter, and medical care so there is no chance of "Fucking it up."

How does socializing work if there are insufficient workers relative to non workers? I.e. the supply of food/shelter/medical care is insufficient to meet the demand?

We should each ask ourselves such questions and review our view on them from time to time during our life because they're important, but mostly by doing our own research and self study. But asking point-blank strangers such a vague question is putting an unfair burden on them.

There's maybe a few hundred people worldwide who could casually drop a proper answer to your question while casually browsing hn.

I believe it'd be more fair to start answering your own question to show how far you are in your intellectual journey on that topic.

because lifespans are increasing much more, people are outliving what they used to and are using a lot more money in retirement than they used to. Old people used to sit in houses and watch grandkids, now they're flying to foreign countries for fun.

Not for the majority of retirement savings in the US, where Social Security makes up only about 25%.

In the case of 401(k)s/DC plans and private pensions/DB plans, the government allowed savings without "confiscation," i.e. immediate taxation. They gave us the benefit of deferred taxation if you wait until retirement age.

A lot of that here in the US is because we've lost the will to participate in the systems that establish these things. We leave that to other people, and those other people represent our interests poorly. The people in a democracy take a really long time to effect change. It can be a life's work for some people. But the premise is that if we can find common ground we can eventually see some of our ideas take shape. That does still work here, but we have to actually have real conversations with each other that respect each others' differences to get anywhere.

> A lot of our taxes in this country seem like a giant waste or are grossly inefficient at best.

It's our duty to elect people who use tax dollars wisely and to vote out officials who neglect their responsibility to the people and use tax money to enrich themselves and anyone else willing to bribe them. Our government is filled with grifters because we've failed to hold them meaningfully accountable for robbing us and failing to provide the benefits we're funding.

Many of the grifters in government have been working hard to make it difficult to hold them accountable. They disenfranchise voters, they keep us afraid and our futures uncertain, they collude against efforts to reform the system they've established for their own benefit.

Government was never going to just let us have "liberty and justice for all" the job was always on "we the people" to insist on it. We can't just pay taxes and expect everything to work out. We have to use the democracy we have to force the government to work for us and not just for themselves. If we've reached a point where that's no longer possible then it's our duty to "refresh the tree of liberty" until we have a government that works for us.

I wouldn't mind taxes if everyone paid their fair share and it went to improving the lives of everyone instead of the wealthy few. We live in the most productive times per capita that have ever existed. Why do we need to scrimp and save to buy food while the number of billionaires continues to climb?

There is no "we" and has never been. Anybody who talks to you about "we" or "us" or your "duty" is just seeking to exploit you, hoping that you're dumb enough to fall for it.

If you don't like it, join the Amish and file a Form 4029.

I almost feel like the employee/employer distinction is actually worse than tariff fakery because at least tariffs are somewhat confusing to the average person, so you almost see why they get fooled.

But I feel like no-one would be fooled if you changed an e to an r on payslips (employee contribution to employer) - it's just obviously the same.

Yes. Bluntly put, the government maximizes residence of high net worth individuals, and a 37% forced purchase of low interest bonds would be outrageous to them.

Well, would you have a better standard of living with $0 or $1000 when you retire?

Even if that $1000 used to be worth $10000, that $0 is still worth $0.

> virtually all Singaporeans believe they own their houses, and it is a point of pride and financial security. Most houses are on 99 year leases

It's not as if the US fairs any better. Here you never own your home, you have to pay property taxes your whole life (basically rent) or it will be taken from you. Eminent domain means that they can take your property from you at any time even if you've kept paying them.

Singapore has a home ownership rate of ~90% vs 65% in the US and prices are so unaffordable that on average people buying their first starter homes in the US are in their 40s! Most Americans, if they're lucky will get maybe get 30 years of their life in a home they own while they are still young and healthy enough to enjoy it.

Last I heard Singapore only had about 1,000 homeless. Whatever they're doing with housing could probably be improved on, but they seem to be doing a lot better than we are.

99 year leases make complete sense. Much of the value of a 'house' in an urban area like Singapore is actually in the land, and the value is being created by the community on a day-to-day basis. It makes no sense for that value to be captured for all future time by a single owner, that just encourages pointless speculation and makes it harder to allocate real estate towards its highest and most valuable use.

I think Singaporeans have a decent idea, and given their quality of lives, they have no problems with the trade-offs. If they do, they leave. And many go back, because the trade-offs in the West are even worse.

> Despite the iron mathematical law that these houses must depreciate their lease value

SERS means that houses slated to be torn down are resold back to the government at near-market rates excluding the effect of the 99-year leasehold.

In Singapore, the government owns everything, even ostensibly 'freehold' land. If they want to run an MRT line under your house, and they need to tear your house down to get to it, they will force you to sell your house and your land to them. Has happened before, will absolutely happen again. It's an island city-state smaller than London. There is literally no space anywhere else.

Adult coloring books are a thing. I could definitely see a person enjoying a version of that, that also had a purpose beyond killing time.

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