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Trading stocks makes me feel dirty
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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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chapotraphouse
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I would at least sympathize with the idea that in a worthwhile society someone who has served the country their entire life deserves a dignified retirement funded by people of working age. Insofar as that goes, the money in a 401k doesn't grow on trees, but it's still a reasonable way to appropriate the funds theoretically.
The government can always create the money for retirement funds out of thin air.
The fact that retirement is tied to 401k is an explicit instrument in financializing the entire economy i.e. turning America into one giant casino where a very small proportion of the people always win big while the rest of the people lose.
You're describing social security entitlements, which are badass
Social security is not sufficient to provide for a retiree on its own, and assuming the bourgeois vampires in Congress won't kill it completely is a huge gamble.
They're destroying social security because it's good and it works, yes. I'm not telling anyone to gamble on it being around.
You literally said people should feel dirty for having a 401k.
What's that have to do with social security?
You should feel dirty if you have a 401k that's invested in stocks
Love to pretend not to understand the context of my conversations so I can score debate points or something.
For working class Americans, there are 3 options:
Just want to be sure, you think everyone who isn't independently wealthy should just do 3), because doing 1) is immoral? Do you feel I'm misrepresenting your position here? It's easy to get misinterpreted in text so I want to be 100% sure that you're not saying something else.
If the only two options for investing are "become a ghoulish rent seeker" or "don't do that" then yeah that's where it would come down
You didn't mention "become a landlord" as an option. Why not? That's a perfectly viable path for many working class Americans to retire into.
So you do think people should just work until they die.
What does that even mean? I think people should not invest their money in rent seeking and should put it elsewhere when they can, even if it means receiving less of a return on investment.
Are we just debating ethics and morality? It's pretty boring ngl
Where? Specifically?
Like a savings bond? Is that what you're asking?
So instead of a stock index fund, which is where a pension would have put the money anyways if I were lucky enough to have one, I should give the money directly to the US government to hold onto so they can ensure that they can afford Israel's bomb budget? That's way more ethical?
EDIT: like the ethics gap is so big that anyone who just puts the money in the stock index instead of choosing to give it to Uncle Sam is a "rent-seeking ghoul" who should "feel dirty?"
"so they can ensure that they can afford"
They don't need your money
In an economy based on generalized commodity production, you actually do need a certain amount of money to sustain yourself.
Whatever helps you sleep at night while paying not only taxes into the US military's budget, but voluntarily buying bonds to fund them.
Do you see how this conversation is asinine? There is no ethical choice under capitalism.
There's a moral difference in owning a savings bond and being a landlord. Sorry if you don't want to engage with that and think it's all a wash because nothing is ethical under capitalism.
Having a savings bond and being a landlord are different and both are different from having a 401k account that is invested in mutual funds.
Putting your retirement savings in a mutual fund doesn't make you a capitalist anymore than owning the savings bond makes you a bomb manufacturer.
I said above:
We can disagree there, then. There's a much cleaner and direct connection between a fund and rent extraction than there is between a savings bond and a bomb. That's exactly my point. These details matter.
You can lump it all together if you want. I see more nuance.
I don't agree that the connection is much more direct.
Do you feel the same way about pensions?
EDIT:
Also, when I was 19, making less than minimum wage waiting tables at a buffet, struggling to make my half of the rent payments for my shithole apartment I put what I could spare into a 401k. I didn't look at the investments at all, which means they were whatever the fund did by default, aka probably stocks. Was I a landlord at the time?
I addressed pensions in my initial comment.
Most pension funds have a similar issue in that they are investing in rent seeking etc. But unlike 401ks, pensions carry with them significant political power than can influence where the money is going. This is (imo) why they are being gutted in favor of individual 401k accounts.
Unions and pensions can be powerful tools. They're being replaced by Independent Contractors and 401ks.
If a pension fund looks identical to a 401k index fund then yeah I'd have the same opinion.
This is so fucking tiresome.
Unions exist to support their members' interests. To that effect they want the pension funds' money invested efficiently and safely. They're not buying bonds for moral reasons (again they're not, it's a direct investment in the US Empire) but for security reasons. They're not buying specific stocks because they're more moral, but because they look like promising investments.
It's not morally better than a 401k, it's just more efficient and removes the individual worker from having to deal with the investments personally.
They're being gutted because it's cheaper for the companies who are extracting every dime they can from their workers.
So I guess revised list of options
Damn those are some bleak options, yeah. Almost like the US is a capitalist hellscape or something.
"Join us or perish" is what they seem to be signaling, yeah.
Apparently you see that as only having two choices and are going with "join them," which is fine I'm not your morality coach. I'm certainly not asking you to sit down and die.
You can rationalize it all you want. That you have no choice but to participate. I hear it all the time from people telling me to vote for Biden.
Eat my ass
They usually say that too eventually. Have a good one.
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