We should establish UBI and universal health care, not tied to age, and then the concept of "retirement age" can go away.

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arjie 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I suppose we could pay everyone about $1.2k/mo and that would exhaust the entire current federal budget but that would eliminate the 60% or so of the federal budget dedicated to the aggregate of all social welfare programs. The tax increases required would be substantial to keep Medicare, Social Security, Health services, Education, and so on.

Without more productive capacity the extra $1.2k/mo would cause enormous inflation. Just a question of what the country is optimizing for, I suppose, but I think people would be unhappy with the result.

	▲	JoshTriplett an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> that would eliminate the 60% or so of the federal budget dedicated to the aggregate of all social welfare programs The combination of UBI and healthcare largely should. UBI serves as a better alternative to most such programs (and has much less administrative overhead). Also, any form of UBI will likely result in substantial spending increases (trickle-up economics is well-established as actually working, incremental dollars handed to the average person are typically spent, not saved), as well as reducing structural friction in the labor market (people can change jobs more easily). > Without more productive capacity UBI will also likely result in more businesses/entrepreneurship, R&D, and other substantial improvements to productive capacity. Studies generally show that UBI does not cause people to substantially leave the job market.