Our Truly Regressive Tax: Social Security

A reader asked me a good question last week, after reading my jumbled rant on systemic problems, and the individual tactics that aren't going to solve them. What, short of running for public office, can we citizens do to encourage systemic solutions?

I have to admit that stumped me a bit. Thinking about changes to the system is nice. Actually coming up with plans to do so is harder.

Executing them? Who even knows how to do that?

So let's give that a try today. Let's talk about the system we use to fund most Americans' retirement: Social Security, one of the few truly regressive taxes out there.

Systemic Problems, Individual Solutions

I've always been a bit of an asshole. While I try my best to be nice, to get along, sooner or later people realize that I'm actually kind of mean.

One of the biggest issues I deal with is being fairly intolerant of others' ideas.

Specifically, I'm really bad at accepting when other people have a different solution to a problem than I think is best. Because, you know, I like my idea.

So let's talk about that a bit today. Let's dig into systemic problems, and talk about the jagoffs who think individual tactics are the right approach to solving them.

Thinking in Bets about FIRE

Annie Duke was always one of my favorite poker players. Like everyone else who watched Rounders in the late nineties, I was immediately hooked on Texas Hold'em and the new ESPN shows devoted to the game. 

Unlike many of the personalities being promoted in WSOP tournaments, Duke wasn't brash or petty or argumentative. Her game was calmly, ruthlessly aggressive: no need to ham it up for the cameras. Duke finished in tenth place (out of 512 players) at the 2000 World Series Championship, while nine months pregnant. 

In the first year of the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, an invitation only event where ten of the world's top players competed for $2M, she faced the best, including her brother, Howard Lederer, and beat them all. Take a look at the final segment of the tournament, where she schools Phil Helmuth heads up. After she beats him, he spends the rest of his time on camera complaining what a long shot she was to even be in the tournament. He can't believe he lost to a woman.