The right to financial independence needs to be asserted—the right to work, exchange your labor for money, and to control the fruits of your labor. This necessarily includes the right to plan and save for your own retirement, free from coercion or interference.

Financial independence and retirement

The current system is an entitlement program in which everyone gets to claim a retirement pension from the state (that is, from working taxpayers), regardless of whether they’ve been industrious and thrifty. You are not saving for your retirement at all; you are paying for the retirement of others, and hoping that later on someone else will pay for yours and that someone will manage this system efficiently.

Social Security as Entitlement Program

<ul><li>You do not choose whether to participate.</li><li>You have no say in how the money is to be invested. Even modestly performing mutual funds yield higher returns.</li><li>You cannot withdraw in response to poor performance and pursue a highly effective one.</li><li>Government insolvency is a big concern.</li><li>Decrease or removes the need to learn prudential savings and investment habits. The average worker cannot readily afford to pay into both the government and a private retirement plan.</li></ul>

Considerations against a Statist model Retirement plan.

<ul><li>Positive rights entail the duty of others to provide that which is being claimed.</li><li>Negative rights entail the duty of others to abstain from interfering with the pursuit of what is being claimed.</li></ul>

Positive and Negative Rights

<ul><li>The right to save for one’s future is a negative right: Others must refrain from interfering with my accumulating and investing property.</li><li>The Current Model seem to have positive rights to a retirement pension: Someone has a duty to support me in my retirement, even if he does not wish to do so and without regard to whether I’ve been thrifty. </li></ul>

The positive and negative right regarding retirement.

... violate your rights to plan your retirement. Your Social Security taxes pay benefits for today’s recipients, and theoretically, tomorrow’s workers’ taxes will pay for your benefits. That's very different from investing because it doesn’t encourage responsible attitudes toward saving for the future. It is also far less profitable.

The State-run “social security” programs ... 

The right to acquire property is a staple of liberal political theory. But why would anyone bother accumulating property? If my monthly expenses are a thousand dollars, then what use could I possibly have for any monthly income larger than a thousand dollars?

Financial independence and retirement

Similar ideas to Financial independence and retirement

Financial Independence

Attain financial independence earlier than later

Score a Two-Fer Toward Financial Independence