Star Trek (TAS): The Counter-Clock Incident

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

in theory, that's what social security is for.

And yet Republicans keep treating it as a piggy bank.

Gotta say, using footage from the Red Dwarf episode instead of the Star Trek TAS episode was a real power move and one of Chuck's more clever uses of the format

The government treats it as piggy bank because that is how it was always set up as. That is how it was supposed to work. The "Trust fund" was always the government giving itself IOUs. FDR was one of the greatest con men of the last century.

I thought the whole point of social security was for people to pay into it when they were working so that they could get the money back when they retire?

[TGLS]

OK, social security works like this. People pay into it, and the retirees draw on it for pensions (plus interest from bonds). When more is paid in than out, the surplus is converted to government bonds and the government spends the money it was lent. These days, there's an increasing deficit, which gets paid for by drawing on the interest gained by the bonds and perhaps one day, by drawing on the bonds themselves.

[Fianna]

A lot of people seem to think that, when you pay money into social security, that money's held in some sort of account for you when you retire. How it actually works is that the social security taxes being paid right now are used to give money to people who are currently retired, and when you retire, it will be the people who are working and paying taxes then who will be funding your social security.

However, social security (in the United States, at least) is only meant to cover about half of your living expenses after you retire; it still requires a whole heapload of savings.

[G-Man]

Whenever this "reverse aging" stuff comes up I can't help but wonder how the people involved actually, you know, give birth. It seems like something that could be a bit of a problem if they're starting out full grown.

Do these people age in reverse in their own universe, or is it only people who are in the wrong universe that age in reverse?

[CrypticMirror]

This is the absolute worst episode of TAS for me. It is so bad I'm not even going to watch the review of it, sorry Chuck, because even if Chuck hated it there would still be no joy in him doing a Night in Sickbay or even a Shades of Grey on it. It is so bad I just want to pretend it never existed. There are other episodes of Trek I want to pretend never existed (like that TNG episode with Worf's brother and the holodeck rescue) but I'll watch reviews of those okay, but this? It is literally the worst Trek ever made; worse than anything else with the Trek brand on it. Worse even than the pocketbooks novels with the Mary Sue lead character. Worse even than all the Mary Sue fanfic. The absolute nadir of all things Trek.

May I ask why? I haven't seen the episode myself besides Chuck's review of it but what did it do to so piss you off?

It existed. I don't know, I've seen it twice and for some reason just really loathed it both times. I can't even point to a specific part, although boomers selfishly justifying trying to get out of moving on and letting other people's career progress doesn't really help matters, I just really disliked it to the point that I just do not want to be reminded of its existence. Sometimes things like that just happen.