Are mandatory pension contributions 'systemic discrimination'?

[stauffenberg]

'Systemic discrimination' refers to any structural feature of society which has the effect of disadvantaging certain minorities, even if it is not deliberately designed to do so.  I wonder whether mandatory pension contributions collected from people with diseases which will almost certainly shorten their life expectancy so much that they will never live to collect the benefits amount to a form of 'systemic discrimination'?  If people with AIDS, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, or endstage renal failure have to contribute a large portion of their income to job-related or government pension plans they will not likely survive to benefit from, aren't they being treated unfairly?  Shouldn't everyone with a probable life expectancy which is too short to make it to retirement age be given the right to opt out of mandatory pension plans, given that their contributions will likely go just to benefit other people?






EDITED: Moved to work topics-kitkatz,moderator

[glitter]

It brings up abandoning hope...........do you? Or do you hope medicine will make enough breakthroughs to extend your life?

[st789]

Hmmmmm...........I have to think hard and long about that question.  I hope to receive my pension when the time comes if I do get there.

[skyedogrocks]

You can be 100% healthy with mandatory pension taken out of your check each week and get hit by a bus.  You would be in the same situation as a person with a life-threatening or chronic disease.  Life is short, you make the most out of it that you can.  You can't always think that you will die if you have a chronic disease.  If my husband thought that way he would be in much worse shape than he is now.  If I thought that way, I would be severely depressed.

In any event, Rob has mandatory pension that comes out of his check each week.  We like it, we know that with his pension and my 401-k, we will have a wonderful time once we retire.  I don't ever think that my husband will not be around to enjoy his retirement, I know he will and he knows he will.

[Sara]

1. I would not want to be one of those people on the list who is told "well, we really don't expect you to live to retirement age, so you can keep your pennies on the dollar that would go toward retirement."  Talk about having a bleak outlook.

2. You really don't know when anyone is going to die.  If a normal, healthy person contributes money toward retirement but then is run over by a bus, should his family get back his money paid toward retirement?

3. If you allow some people to not pay, others will want to not pay also.  They'll say, oh I'm fat so I'll probably die sooner than Skinny Minnie over there, so I shouldn't have to pay.  Or I drink and smoke, so therefore my life will be shortened and I don't want to pay.  Or I'm from a poor uneducated family so I don't have access to everything that richer people do, so I'll probably die sooner, or I didn't get my Flintstone vitamins when I was a kid, so I might not make it.    Then when all those people who were projected to possibly not make it to retirement age actually reach that age and they have no pension to help support them, what happens?  Then we're back like it was when there was NO pension plan and old people depended on family or the kindness of strangers, or they starved.    Pensions like social security are there for a reason.  They provide a LITTLE bit of security so that you can usually have the bare necessities (or some of them) when you're too old/sick to work.  

4. If a large percentage of the population wasn't paying into the pension, there wouldn't be enough money to invest and support those who were on it.  It's like the tax money that goes to public schools.  You can homeschool your kid, or send them to parochial school, but your tax money is still going to support public school because it HAS to.  The system would collapse otherwise.

[brenda]

You make it sound like you would never benefit from it. Have you not drawn from any public money while you were disabled? In Canada, as you should know, if I decided tomorrow I could no longer work I could take my Canada Pension. And I would no longer be contributing. Therefore I would be getting back what I put in.

[BigSky]

'Systemic discrimination' refers to any structural feature of society which has the effect of disadvantaging certain minorities, even if it is not deliberately designed to do so.  I wonder whether mandatory pension contributions collected from people with diseases which will almost certainly shorten their life expectancy so much that they will never live to collect the benefits amount to a form of 'systemic discrimination'?  If people with AIDS, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, or endstage renal failure have to contribute a large portion of their income to job-related or government pension plans they will not likely survive to benefit from, aren't they being treated unfairly?  Shouldn't everyone with a probable life expectancy which is too short to make it to retirement age be given the right to opt out of mandatory pension plans, given that their contributions will likely go just to benefit other people?

I do not think people have to contribute to job related pension plans.

As to government, I would guess you would be talking SS.  Most people with the conditions you list at some point do end up collecting from that pension plan so they do benefit.

[stauffenberg]

Although it is true that anyone can die at any time, the fact is that people with serious diseases have a much higher probability of dying before they reach retirement age, and on the basis of this higher probability, they should have the right to opt out of all the various mandatory systems which require contributions from their paychecks for benefits which will only be available to people after age 65.  Imagine if a person with normal health were to live on another planet where the normal lifespan was 300 years, and he had to contribute to a pension plan whose benefits would be paid out to everyone reaching his 250th birthday.  That would obviously be unfair, just as it is for young dialysis patients to have to contribute to a plan which bays out its benefits to people when they reach an age 10 or 20 year's beyond the patient's life expectancy.

[Chicken Little]

Which company do you know of that has mandatory employee contributions?  The mandatory plans that I know of in the US require the employer to make the contributions.

Social Security pays if you are disabled or retired.  Disability actually pays more. 

[skyedogrocks]

Which company do you know of that has mandatory employee contributions?  The mandatory plans that I know of in the US require the employer to make the contributions.

Social Security pays if you are disabled or retired.  Disability actually pays more. 

Unions do this.  State & City jobs do also, many of them are part of a Union.

[vandie]

Which company do you know of that has mandatory employee contributions?  The mandatory plans that I know of in the US require the employer to make the contributions.

Social Security pays if you are disabled or retired.  Disability actually pays more. 

Unions do this.  State & City jobs do also, many of them are part of a Union.

I am a State employee.  I have a mandatory 3% taken out of my income each pay period.  If I die before I reach retirement, my beneficiaries will receive my retirement benefits.

[skyedogrocks]

Same thing with my husband Vandie, he's a city employee and has a mandatory 11% come out of his check, if he passes, it goes to me.

[Sara]

2. You really don't know when anyone is going to die.  If a normal, healthy person contributes money toward retirement but then is run over by a bus, should his family get back his money paid toward retirement?

I had a brain fart , I think with Social Security and probably most, if not all, retirement plans, your benefits would go to surviving spouse and/or children, and that's how it should be.

[stauffenberg]

And where is the fairness of the system if you are single?

[skyedogrocks]

It goes to the person who is your beneficiary.

[Zach]

'Systemic discrimination' refers to any structural feature of society which has the effect of disadvantaging certain minorities, even if it is not deliberately designed to do so.  I wonder whether mandatory pension contributions collected from people with diseases which will almost certainly shorten their life expectancy so much that they will never live to collect the benefits amount to a form of 'systemic discrimination'?  If people with AIDS, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, or endstage renal failure have to contribute a large portion of their income to job-related or government pension plans they will not likely survive to benefit from, aren't they being treated unfairly?  Shouldn't everyone with a probable life expectancy which is too short to make it to retirement age be given the right to opt out of mandatory pension plans, given that their contributions will likely go just to benefit other people?

With you're way of thinking, healthy persons in their 20's should not be forced to pay taxes in Canada that go towards its national healthcare.  Since they're healthy, and won't need it for another ten years or more, why should they pay for it if they're not going to use it?

 

[jbeany]

It goes to the person who is your beneficiary.

I don't think SS here in the states pays to anyone other than spouse or minor children if you die before you are old enough to collect.  You can't leave those benefits to anyone else.  And if you die before you are old enough to collect, they only give the survivors a very small portion of what you would have collected if you were alive.  When my mom died, they sent my dad the "Death Benefit" check, which was so small - about 280 dollars, that it was almost insulting.  The spouse also has to wait until the year when the deceased would have turned 65 in order to collect that reduced monthly amount, too.

Which company do you know of that has mandatory employee contributions? The mandatory plans that I know of in the US require the employer to make the contributions.

Social Security pays if you are disabled or retired. Disability actually pays more.

The amount you get is based on how long you worked and the salary you received while you were working.

[livecam]

Yes and no.  Most of us renal patients at least in the U.S. are going to see far more from government plans such as Social Security and Medicare than we are ever going to put into those programs.  That is particularly the case for Medicare which pays most of our dialysis and some of our transplant and drug costs.

One place where major unfairness comes in is with the ability of our increasing population of illegal aliens to receive these benefits.  They add little or nothing of value to these programs or the country as a whole for that matter yet they seem to be able to access both programs and others with little or no trouble.

Add illegal's benefits to a government system that already siphons much of your Social Security contributions to pay for its war of aggression in Iraq and a thousand other things and you have a system that really discriminates against every legal, contributing U.S. citizen.  It steals your retirement savings to feed it's war machine, it's population of illegal aliens, and other forms of effluvium from the third world.

We're all being screwed and the system as it is now is unfair to all of us.

[stauffenberg]

To Zach's point, I would say that while young, healthy people in their 20's have to contribute to company or national healthcare plans which are mainly used by older, unhealthy people, these young people can in principle expect to be old and unhealthy themselves some day, so they are not being cheated over the long run.  But when someone with a 20-year life expectancy has to contribute at age 30 to a benefit program which only starts paying out to people when they reach 65, then there is no possibility of the person paying ever to benefit from the program he is forced to support.  It is a pooling of risks and resources applicable only to a group to which he cannot belong -- those who will live past 65.

[jbeany]

So how are you suggesting they fix it?  Would you offer those with a medically given shortened life expectancy a way to opt out?  What would the penalty be for living too long then?   If you don't pay your taxes here in the States, the penalties are 4 or 5 times what the original taxes would have cost.  How much of a fee would they want you to cough up if you managed to outlive your life expectancy and then couldn't afford to pay your medical bills and needed back in the system?  We are talking about the government here - it wouldn't matter to the bureaucrats about the logic of not having enough money to pay bills and having to pay a penalty.  Besides, would anyone really take that option?  Most people need to maintain some form of hope in the face of chronic or terminal illness in order to stay sane, so how many would actually sign off?

[skyedogrocks]

To Zach's point, I would say that while young, healthy people in their 20's have to contribute to company or national healthcare plans which are mainly used by older, unhealthy people, these young people can in principle expect to be old and unhealthy themselves some day, so they are not being cheated over the long run.  But when someone with a 20-year life expectancy has to contribute at age 30 to a benefit program which only starts paying out to people when they reach 65, then there is no possibility of the person paying ever to benefit from the program he is forced to support.  It is a pooling of risks and resources applicable only to a group to which he cannot belong -- those who will live past 65.

It's that negative way of thinking that really pisses me off.     Why assume that most people with this disease won't live past 65???  This just really aggrevates me.