[colechristensen]

Things which aren't true:

>In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance.

>unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement

Your health and car insurance covers exactly what it says it covers, and retirement plans aren't a mystery. In America you take personal responsibility for things which are done for you in Europe; you can make the wrong choices, but you're allowed to _make_ choices.

Vacation doesn't have much of anything to do with taxes.

[gmac]

Taking personal responsibility sounds all very well (leaving discussion of the impossibility of meaningful free will for another occasion), but private health insurance is a special kind of stupid. For example, some people are born with diseases or disabilities that we can say with certainty will cost millions in care over their lifetimes. Those people are obviously uninsurable. So health systems that don't leave people to die must involve an element of the collectivisation of risk.

[xrange]

>Those people are obviously uninsurable.

...if they were born to parents who had insurance they would have been covered.

>So health systems that don't leave people to die must involve an element of the collectivisation of risk.

...insurance is all about collectivisation of risk, is it not? You are paying in, hoping to never collect, and the money you pay in is used to cover those who did need it.

[colechristensen]

This is very explicitly incorrect.

In America as of 2014 you cannot be denied coverage, charged more, or denied treatment based on health status.

There is no longer an "uninsurable" American citizen.

[Wintamute]

Brit here. I like to take personal responsibility for choices like career path, holidays, hobbies, where to put down roots, whether to have a family, who to love, who to have sex with, how much to drink, what books to read, what religion to follow or not follow, what to have for dinner. As for how I subsist when I'm too old or sick to work, or when I wake up in hospital after an accident ... those sorts of choices I'm more than happy for the government to make, in general they do a great job all things considered.

[fargolime]

Your health insurance doesn't cover non-covered expenses.

That retirement plans aren't a mystery doesn't negate needing 8+% returns to comfortably retire.

[Spooky23]

Investment return is always a problem. Pension funds don't magically create money!

[fargolime]

The EU countries don't need 8+% returns to provide their citizens with comfortable retirements. One major reason is that in the US you need to save for living to an age much greater than the average life expectancy.

[Spooky23]

That's only as sustainable as demographic trends and economic success allows.

In New York State, the pubic employee fund is arguably fully funded, and most employees are eligible to retire at 55 with 2/3 of their salary as a pension. That fund requires a 7% annual return to avoid additional employer contributions.

[fargolime]

Those EU countries don't need to achieve 7% annual returns because they won't pay as much as 2/3, nor allow retirement as soon as age 55. Their models are much more sustainable.

It's going to get interesting in the US, as an increasing percentage of private sector retirees are scraping by on an average $1K a month whilst public sector retirees are enjoying cruises and taxes are being raised (or services reduced) to fund them.