“An increasingly popular sentiment around the globe; the survivors of abortion are now fighting for the right to euthanize their parents. A friend who is a financial planner describes a situation where his elderly client (who is a long-time friend) delegated power of attorney to him, and now he is fighting the grown children who want to remove the client from life support. Very creepy...”
Agree...creepy. Not what I’ve wanted, but creepy - when money transcends life. In my case, I still believe that government has a duty to older people that can’t fend for themselves, but government is also helping to pay for Winnebegos for retired fire fighters that already get $100k to begin with. If Social Security were sitting out there with a pot of money, like a well-funded pension, then I’d shut up...but it’s not.
So, as I’ve mentioned at times during the past few years, you make Social Security and Medicare into traditional welfare programs, which means they would be needs-based - only the truly poor could collect. On top of that, if an older person has kids, which have decent income, you go after that first...the state only kicks in as a last resort, to keep them off of the street.
People don’t like it, because it rewards those that didn’t save for retirement...but you can phase in the government goodies, so the savers do better than the ones totally on government money (much as our income tax does now, for them, anyway...just a lot steeper).
I understand both sides - but the money simply isn’t there, not even from my grandchildren, to sustain this system as we’re set up.
I had a cop complain to me that NJ was reducing Social Security payments to retired cops, firemen, etc.; I thought he was lying about that because it is a federal program and I don’t understand how a (prior) NJ governor could do that. I don’t doubt that any government program will be adjusted due to “need”; that is how they will keep the programs solvent. For cash flow purposes I stopped contributing to my 401K (the money is still there, but I don’t add to it). I saw no point in having debt while paying into a program that I believe in the long run will be used to reduce my SS payments.