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Bernie Sanders.Really it's not about personality or about disliking the other guy. It's about what America needs. The USA is built on property, it's built on the idea that if you work hard you will get rewarded. Congress won't help, Clinton is in the pocket of big business, Trump and the Republicans will make it worse. I wrote an explanation of why I think that the USA has to remodel its economy so that it works for the majority of its citizens. It's rather long, I'm afraid, and those of you have already read it, please move on! But for those of you interested, I copied the text below.There's a huge gap between everyone having the same amount of wealth and everyone having enough money to live on. The USA was founded on the ideas of John Locke and it's to John Locke that we must look to in order to answer the question 'what is wrong with the top 1% hoarding so much wealth?' Many people seem to think that there are only two options --the current status quo or Communism. Such an observation is the product of a facile mind; there is of course, much latitude between these two extremes and where one finds latitude one can also find an equilibrium.So just because the Soviet attempt to create economic equality was not successful we should not assume that an attempt to create absolute inequality would fare any better. In fact, we have reason to believe --and indeed have historical examples that clearly demonstrate it-- that absolute inequality is far less workable than any attempt to distribute more evenly.So let's imagine an America where just one person has all the wealth. How would that look?Firstly, people have to be granted the opportunity to earn an honest buck to begin with. America, now barely clinging on to the title Richest Country in the World has taken itself from a workers' paradise to a middle class sweatshop in just a few decades.There will always be people who make more money than others; there will always be those who are luckier, more talented, smarter or whatever, but in order for a society to be stable there has to be enough to go around. If one person in America controlled 100% of the wealth, then society would cease to function. Everyone else would starve to death (actually they would not, because there would be a revolution, as both Goldman's stress indicators and Karl Marx's theory of class struggle predict.)We are, after all, only a few meals away from throwing bricks at shop windows and stuffing our trousers full of Hostess fruit pies, Twinkies and whatever the hell is in those cans of sprayable cheese. So we're off to a good start. One person can't own everything and that probably means that two people can't either. We can carry on moving through some really small numbers --ten people can't, 100 people can't and so on, until we reach the next logical conclusion: everyone needs something so the only percentage of people who can own 100% of the wealth is... 100% of the people.The rate of a nation's income inequality is called the Gini Coefficient and it's measured as a percentage of one (1). That is to say, in the above example the Gini Coefficient would be given a score of one --maximum inequality, with one person owning everything. Not even reverse-panda-eyed Donald Trump could think that a Gini Coefficient of 1 is acceptable or even workable, so we go back to our prior logical conclusion.Oh, look! America isn't doing very well. You'd think Americans would get tired of always being at the bottom of graphs like these.The ideal Gini Coefficient of a nation has to be significantly less than one since otherwise you have something of a French revolution on your hands.As I already noted, we can trace the genesis of such an idea back, through political philosophy, to John Locke. His proviso stated that you can take what you want from nature as long as you leave as much and as good for everyone else. This Lockean proviso is quite tricky since it seems to be advocating a Gini Coefficient of zero. It is not advocating that at all, but now is not the time for an in depth discussion on Lockean provisos; suffice to say that we find ourselves facing a question. If not one and if not zero then what number is both fair and economically desirable?That's a damn good question and sadly, the answer is not a number (which is one reason why politics needs to be studied instead of simply being applied via the ramblings of deluded amateurs like Ben 'Y'all know-I-Can't-Do-This Carson.) To leave as much and as good for everyone else really means that we must ensure that productive people can provide for themselves a reasonable standard of living. Work hard, get paid, have a roof over your head, food in your belly, regular haircuts, the occasional trip to an aquarium and take-away meals if not quite as regularly as the guys from the Big Bang theory, then at least a fair approximation of it.Furthermore, the 'as good' bit has to take into account socioeconomic realities. It's not enough to say that as long as Americans have enough to eat and can pay their mortgages (which incidentally a lot don't have and can't) then all other luxuries can be ignored. It doesn't work like that. In a country as rich as the USA, citizens have to be able to live a life free from debt and financial worry, though not necessarily be so filthy rich that they, like Trump, could afford to hire the now grown-up kids from Hanson to sell their blonde locks to Trump for his weekly hair transplant sessions.So now we have part of an answer. It's OK for the top 1% to own more than the bottom 95% so long as the bottom 95% are doing just fine. That is to say, as long as there is enough and as good to go around it doesn't matter how many pieces of furniture Trump decides to have dipped in molten gold.Look at it another way. Imagine an island where the only thing that grows is the potato. Imagine that a million potatoes grow every day and that there are just ten people. It's OK for nine of those people to share 500,000 potatoes and one person to have the other half but not OK for one person to have 1,000,0000 potatoes. He hasn't left as much and as good for the other islanders, who will get hungry and eventually beat him to death with a potato and/or tool fashioned out of a potato.Potatoes aside, this graph sort of cuts off in 2009 but it still helps us to understand what went wrong. See that big spike to the left? That's the Wall Street crash right there. I'm not going to get into that here because this is going to be a long answer as it is. Suffice to say that it's not such a great idea to have such income disparity. Inequality drops off dramatically during the Great Depression because so many investors lost all their money. The inter-war years show a healthy income proportionality, though there were still plenty of rich people about. But such a healthy diagnosis was not to last; Reagan systematically destroyed it and did so on purpose. At the height of the Cold War, even with Cold War money saving plans such as SALT I and SALT II Reagan knew that he couldn't really afford to give the super rich the tax breaks he did but he also knew that he could make it somebody else's problem. So he borrowed money like a second-rate out-of-work actor desperate for a pack of smokes..But never mind that; it was only future generations that he was screwing over and it wasn't like the 80's were going to end or anything.Take a look at that graph again.The red line certainly climbed dramatically under Reagan/Bush but take a look at that cliff around 1991. That's the end of the Cold War and, as we'll see later, it's not a coincidence that the line's climb coincided with that great geopolitical shock. It's also quite significant, so keep it in mind.But before that, let's look at some more graphs. Quite a few, in fact, because I want you to digest some information before we press on.Here we can see that something has gone a bit wrong in America. If you are in the bottom 80% --and, let's face it, most of you are-- then you are in a bit of a bind. Whilst the USA is rich, it's not so rich that it can afford to have 43% of its total wealth owned by some 3.5 million people. To make things worse 17.5 million Americans control 72% of all financial wealth. There is still such a thing as a middle class but it's being squeezed out of existence. It's being squeezed so hard that many hard working Americans work absurdly long hours, get no holiday pay, no state health cover, no paid maternity leave and so on and yet still cannot afford to pay their bills. There simply isn't enough money to go round. The USA's Gini Coefficient of 41.1 is really, really bad for a developed country as the USA, which is ranking 119th in the world and 29th out of 34 among the OECD countries in the coefficient. This isn't even close to matching the Lockean proviso.Allow me to digress for a second. Take a look at this graph:Here's a view of some happier times. See what happens to that graph in the mid nineties? Ah, just watch those property prices climb: it's beautiful! Alas, graphs that look like the north face of Mount Everest are usually worse news than actually being on the north face of Everest and realizing you forgot to wear thermal undies. But we'll get back to this.Meanwhile, let's look at income over time.This is a very nice graph. It shows a position in 1979 where after tax income (but not wealth) was pretty darn the same for almost everybody. Then something happened around 1980: Reagan took office and things started diverging as he initiated tax cuts for the super rich. Around 1990 everyone sort of said 'fuck it' and our long approach towards a massively unfair Gini Coefficient began. And in case you're wondering about wealth as opposed to income, well, here you go.The 80's and 90's in particular show that the poor just kept getting poorer but, more significantly, that only the truly super rich were making any headway at all. Even those in the top 10% --what is supposed to be the elite of the nation-- weren't doing so well. The USA decided to sort of lump its middle class with all the others in the bottom 90% and then maul them so badly that they weren't really a middle class anymore. I don't even know what to call them. At any rate, 42.4% of Americans earn less than Sanders' proposed $15 an hour and yes, that includes people who don't get paid by the hour. Maths is not my strong point but we can crunch some numbers here.Official Poverty statistics place poverty in the USA at 15%. We know that unemployment is rated at 5% so we have at least 10% of the population who are working and yet who are in poverty. That's 45 million Americans and it also means that the USA has, according to UNICEF, the second highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world.Map: How 35 countries compare on child poverty (the U.S. is ranked 34th)UNICEF Report: U.S. Child Poverty Second HighestHow did it come to this? Are we looking back with rose-tinted glasses? Weren't the poor always poor? Wasn't there a time when there was no Middle Class?Sure there were, as we can see in this shot of Russian Peasants circa 1900. I mean, come on, who really needs shoes? But in the post war years, we sort of got our act together and cleaned stuff up. We suddenly realised that, actually, everyone should have shoes, especially Russian peasants in the winter! We decided this was a maxim that society should observe and it was so. Nobody should suffer illness without the care of a doctor, we decided, and again it was so. And here are the really, really important things to take from all this thus far. Our act of liberation had nothing to do with recessions, it had nothing to do with booms or busts. The change was categorically not economic; it was political.How so? Well, check this out.Now, I'm not a Communist and, in all probability, neither are you. But we can agree perhaps on one thing. This is a picture of a happy life. The fat capitalist is taking it easy on a couch made of money and cannons and the poor worker seems to only have two quarters to his name and, to make things worse, is being forced to wear dungarees. Meanwhile, our Soviet friend has a nice coat, a warm hat, rosy cheeks and so many bags of produce that he's had to attach one parcel to his coat button. (Since the button is not coming off we can only assume that the box contains Turkish delight, which is good because I love Turkish Delight.) In the background we can also see that production rates are soaring.Lovely, no?Actually, no, because it's a big fat Soviet lie, but that's not the point. The Soviet Union was the political equivalent of ageing celebrities selling anti-ageing cream in adverts that have been airbrushed to high fucksy.However, since people both know about airbrushing and at the same time are more than prepared to buy anti ageing cream, it stands to reason that many people were taken in by Soviet promises.Karl Marx's contribution to the world was not the worker's paradise because the Soviet Union was, for want of a better word, shit. No, he helped create something else: the somewhat ironic Capitalist Paradise! No matter how rabidly anti-Communist you might be you have to admit that they were offering something that at least sounded pretty sweet. Full employment, good food, social housing, free medicine, free education. Forget about the Gulag and all that for a moment... I'm not saying that the USSR was great, just that what it promised was seductive. And seduced people were.Chances are you've never been on a starvation walk but in 1930's Britain such things were common. To those of you who haven't read George Orwell's Road To Wigan Pier I can highly recommend it; if nothing else it will help you to understand what unchecked capitalism looks like. Miners, for example, would mine coal for 14 hours a day, dig up a ton of coal each and then return home to a cold house since they didn't get paid enough to actually buy any coal.It's not really that surprising that these conditions radicalized politics: in Russia they went left, in Germany they went right. But post WWII things were very different. The far right had been utterly discredited by the legacy of Nazi Germany. The far left, however, looked rosier than ever before --victorious, powerful, righteous. Yes, I know Stalin was a monster but a lot of people did not know, or else turned a blind eye because the ideological promise of Communism was so seductive. Many post-war countries began to turn towards Communism and the US Marshall plan was conceived at least in part to make sure that Europe didn't become so dirt-poor that it went 'Red'.And what was good for Europe was good for the US, now a really, really rich place. The antidote to the Red Menace was not really missiles and tanks. It was capitalism with a smile. More like a grin, actually.Ordinary workers would be given a lifestyle they could only dream of before the war. Nice housing, new cars, domestic products of all kinds, holidays, great health care and on and on. The USA, far richer than the Soviet Union and without a border to 'protect', switched strategic emphasis to a nuclear defense and sat back and waited. Whilst the Americans sat back and watched I love Lucy, Soviet citizens, if they had a TV, got to watch their's explode...Seriously, they blew up a lot. Even the kid on the TV looks nervous.Ludwig Von Mises was correct about the Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth problem: the Soviet Union was unable to create a worker's paradise. The West looked and was far more attractive; we certainly never had to build walls to stop our citizens from trying to get East!Oh, there were still rich people in the West, of course, but they just had a lot of wealth --not 'almost all of the wealth'-- and so it was under control. More or less. For the most part it was commensurate with the relative rise of the USA's economy. The blue line gently curved up and the red line did the same, though it was a little bit more erratic.Then the Soviet Union collapsed and with it went the other system, the bad seductive system that promised so much more than blunt capitalism ever could. Not only that, it really had delivered more too. A soviet worker in 1965 was a hell of a lot better off than a British citizen in 1935. However, what Marx had failed to anticipate was that his ideas would scare the hell out of capitalists so much that they would massively tone down the exploitation of their workers.No, the Soviet system failed in comparison to a Western form of Capitalism that was actively trying to out-compete it. Such a notion is important to understand; the political intelligentsia in the West made a concerted effort to ensure that they had a happy healthy well-fed middle class; and they succeeded because it is very, very easy to create such a society. However, after the Soviet collapse, with nothing to prove anymore, the lie that Capitalism was all sunshine and lollipops was promulgated with great vigor. Look, they cried we won! And do you know what would make things even better? If we just sort of unleash Capitalism in all its fury, wouldn't that be great? What could possibly go wrong? I mean: it's not like human nature is inherently fucked up or anything. People will show an appropriate amount of restraint. Right?Uh. Wrong. Human nature is fucked up, that's why we need governments.We didn't see the Soviet collapse coming but we did see what was going to happen to Middle America. If Communism had remained a viable alternative we might have already addressed this issue. But it didn't, and its collapse coincided, more or less, with the end of the road for Middle America.Let's look at that graph again. The blue line is pretty flat actually and you might be forgiven for thinking that everything is OK. After all, if the median income stayed more or less the same, who cares if some other guys were buying second homes in Malibu? The reds have more potatoes than they can ever eat but the blues still have plenty of potatoes!Well, that would be OK if it wasn't for the fact that the line only really stayed straight because Americans adopted a number of strategies in order to keep their standards of living more or less static. There is only so much money to go round and as the rich soaked up more and more of America's wealth it became harder and harder for Americans to make ends meet. But they had options or rather they used to have options.Their strategy was as follows.A) Let's both work, honey!Now --yes I know-- there was more to women entering the workplace than simple economics. I mean no disrespect to the women's liberation movement and I'm glad that they have achieved so much. But cultural movements have origin points and there is little question that women initially entered the employment market en masse for economic reasons and more specifically in order to maintain living standards.B) Work yourself to death!Ah, there we go. Problem solved.And it's not just hours worked either. Productivity has steadily increased over time. You work harder, your wage stays the same. Trump gets all the money, Trump uses the money to build a 300 foot tall abstract sculpture of his ego made out of solid platinum.By the 90's both halves of a couple were working and were working as many hours as possible. What next? Living standards continued to be squeezed and those bills kept piling up! People took second jobs. People stayed late at the office, all in the name of productivity. The right vilified the poor so much that Americans, convinced they would never be 'poor', helped to systematically remove the social safety net. Americans live in terror of losing their job in an economic downturn since there was and is very little to prevent them from plunging into a poverty trap. So they began working themselves ragged and made fun of the Germans and the French with their paid vacations and paid maternity leave and free health care and... oh, and their much higher standards of living than US citizens despite the fact that the USA is wealthier than both countries combined.(See my answer here if you want to know why Germans are twice as well of as Americans.)Ian Jackson's answer to Are Germans content to earn 19% less than Americans in 2014?And when Americans couldn't work any longer hours, no matter how scared of getting 'canned' they were, they turned to solution number three.3) Borrow.Poor Canada.You might notice that the USA Income Debt ratio kind of peaked at around 2007/2008. It looks like things are getting better but I'm afraid that's not the case. Remember that graph of housing prices from earlier? The one that peaked in the mid 2000's?I told you: that graphs aren't supposed to look like that. Easy credit was withdrawn in 2008. Millions of Americans lost their homes and hit a debt ceiling. Look at that graph again. It's in the millions.And here we are today.No more hours to work.Polygamy is still illegal so couples are limited to two; cluster marriages are out.We can't really borrow much more money.Apple keep releasing I-phones every year.The problem is that there seems to be no limit to the greed of the top 1% who, despite being the first to crow about how patriotic they are, don't really seem to want anything from their country other than a constant reduction of their own contributions.There's a serious question here: Why the hell are there any tax cuts at all? I mean, America is in something of a crisis!Check out the debt clock. As I'm writing this at 02/12/2015 it stands at 18.773.013, 489U.S. National Debt Clock : Real TimeThat's 18 trillion dollars and in the time it took me to write this paragraph it's jumped up by about a million dollars. And as people might note from all my typos, I tend to write very quickly.And it's no good just blaming the Republicans for all this:What about the evil corporations?Yeah, they suck too. Big surprise.Corporations won't pay, the rich won't pay and the poor can't pay. Every graph, every figure you look at shows that the USA, still the richest country in the world, has turned political ignorance to new levels. In order to get elected in the USA you have to pander to the very wealthy. Obama is no savior, he's more like a less odious Republican on heavy sedatives. To make things worse, as the government tries to squeeze more and more money out of the hard working middle class opportunities to stay in the middle and not get demoted are becoming increasingly difficult.THE WAGE FREEZEIncrease in real value of the minimum wage since 1990: 21%Increase in cost of living since 1990: 67%One year's earnings at the minimum wage: $15,080Income required for a single worker to have real economic security: $30,000And we can go on painting a crappy picture, because Americans fight so so hard to make sure that the USA is not what it should be. You know the word they use: Socialism.Republicans and Democrats join together to condemn Unions because...Median yearly earnings of:Union workers: $47,684Non-union workers: $37,284Unionized workers get paid more.They growl at the idea of paid leave and vacations because...They know that if you get this, then the top 1% won't be able to buy that third private jet they have been yearning for. They will always say the same thing. They will always state that if Americans are given any of these rights, if women are given equal pay, if the minimum wage is raised it will 'cost jobs'. Look at those countries in dark blue. It's no sea of Soviet-like states, it's not a map of crumbling economies. Germany, Japan, Russia, Norway; prosperous, rich countries filled with an actually middle class. No, these states aren't paradises but I'll say one thing: you sure as hell don't lose your house in Germany regardless of how hard you are working.The above map is of a world where all of these things can be afforded because somebody let the Gini Coefficient out of the bottle.At the top, taxes have been cut way, way too much and the American people have lapped it up. We can already see many, many corporations in America paying 0% tax and it won't be long before some Republican candidate stops sipping Mock-Turtle Soup from fine china long enough to tell the American people that if the rich don't have to pay any tax at all it will help 'create wealth'.They all say taxes are too high and they are lying. Not wrong; lying. They know --and most undergraduate politics students know-- that the gap between the rich and the poor is reaching a breaking point. Maybe a repeat of 1776's legitimate outrage is still way off but it seems to me that Americans are beginning to wake up to the idea that income inequality is a serious issue. There are only two ways of dealing with a deficit --cuts and taxes. What the hell is there left to cut in the USA? Citizens get basically nothing as it is. Taxes are the only options and there is only one group in America who can still afford to pay. That untapped pool of money can be re-distributed; let the government pay your health insurance, let them offer subsidies to low paid jobs so that small business can thrive without almost killing their staff. Lower taxes for Middle America so they can spend more, save more and, in doing so, actually start putting their own money into the economy. Raise the minimum wage, cap tuition fees for college... I mean: you have to educate your population so making education affordable --not free, just affordable-- just seems... logical.The USA doesn't need Socialism and it doesn't need Communism; all it needs is a capitalistic system that is politically restrained. The politicians should always have one hand wrapped around the balls of industry, ready to give a tight squeeze whenever they get out of line. Do that and problems are solved, not overnight, but a more equitable society is nevertheless the key. There's really no stopping an America that has had this kind of political cold shower.But how to do this?Well, I can think of a few things.1) Support Bernie Sanders if you can. He's the only political candidate I know of who would at least attempt to address the Gini Coefficient.2) A Lobbying Bill. I know the right to petition is important but here's the thing. Make it illegal for any institution with assets in excess of a fixed sum to lobby Congress. Make it a Federal offence for any individual citizen to lobby Congress on behalf of those same institutions.3) Cap spending on elections. That's right: make it so you don't need to be super rich to run for office and make it so you don't have real-life Dark Lords of the Sith like Rupert Murdoch reaching into the corporate coffers in order to buy candidates.4) Make a political education mandatory. Yes, I know, politics is boring, but if everyone received a political education then there would be no way US labour laws and earnings could have got this bad. I mean, seriously: how many Americans reading this genuinely feel like they live in the richest country in the world?5) Having achieved those things, make it a priority to increase pay for ordinary Americans. Raise the minimum wage, pass bills guaranteeing mandatory paid vacations, maternity leave and so on. Put money in American pockets. You're a consumer society, so: consume! This is true wealth creation.So, yes, it is wrong for the top to have so much, but only because they have left the rest so little.Nothing I can think of could be worse than a Donald Trump Victory.You can follow me daily at Liberalamerica.orgFor general musings or indeed if you want to contact me/ yell at me or ask for my phone number, you can contact me via twitter.Disclosure: This answer links back to an article I wrote.

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Thanks for the A2A.Well, I am still about 15 years from retirement so I do not have first-hand experience with pension payments and I am a nationalized Swiss citizen, not native, but I will try to answer it as best I can. (Any corrections by a “true” Swiss would be welcome.)The short answer is “Yes, your pension pays you until you die.”However, if you are married, then it is possible that your pension payments will be payed out to your spouse/dependent(s) after you die as well.Like life insurance policies, your pension is calculated based on a prediction about how long you will live and how much money will have to be paid out up to the last day of your life (PLUS payments to your surviving spouse). If you live longer than that, then I imagine that the insurance/government must draw money away from other sources, such as the leftover funds of people who died earlier than expected.Pensions in Switzerland involve three parts: government pension/employer contributions/your personal pension fund (“dritte Säule, or “third column”).The dritte Säule, or your personal pension fund, is a pension plan that you set up for yourself and you are allowed a maximum contribution of 6,768.00 CHF (Swiss francs) per year, but it can be deducted from your taxes at the end of the year. (If you are self-employed then the maximum contribution is 33,840.00 per year.)The reason for this maximum amount, I think, is so the non-taxable contributions are not misused by the wealthy who could contribute far more per year than regular citizens. The maximum amount of these contributions is calculated based on average income and life expectancy in Switzerland and it is adjusted every few years based on current cost of living increases, population predictions, and many other things.Edit: I can no longer find the comment made by a Quoran, but he pointed out that you can also receive your pension in a lump sum rather than monthly payments. Thanks for that!