Social Security and Medicare are destroying America

[DinoDoc]

The comments against my entire generation are a bit misplaced in my opinion.

Given the hysterics your generation goes into whenever a pol makes an attempt to reform entitlements, why the hell shouldn't we bad mouth your generation for demanding your children and the American political system kiss your ass? Passing this off onto politicians when the problem was their cowardice in standing up to you people is a bit much.

[kentonio]

Hysterical for trying to safeguard the promises the country made to them during their lives? How dare they..

[DinoDoc]

Hysterical for trying to safeguard the promises the country made to them during their lives? How dare they..

Yes, it's insipid and ill-informed rhetoric like this that is used to demagogue people any time reform proposals are put on the table to reform these programs to ensure they don't collapse.

[Felch]

His ire should be to the politicians that were lining their pockets, not to all of us that kept their promise to the previous generation and made sure they were taken care of in their older age.

Even if politicians were truly and enthusiastically depraved in their theft, they couldn't possibly take as big a chunk of the budget as entitlement programs do. The difference between millions and trillions is more than just a couple letters.

[rah]

How is it insipid and ill-informed when it's true. Do you believe that all those statements we received and used for planning purposes were a deliberate attempt to deceive us?

[MRT144]

Social Security and Medicare are quite obviously designed to transfer wealth to the old. They would be means tested if they were merely safety nets meant to prevent the old from suffering and dying in poverty.

Well nobody who makes a load of money and pays in actually believes they should be deprived of their due. Ever. For anything.

[MRT144]

Hysterical for trying to safeguard the promises the country made to them during their lives? How dare they..

You know what is a huge ****-you to my generation and younger is that no promise is being made and yet we still pay for promises made to our parents.

[Aeson]

I don't see how younger generations are doing any better. If among the 18-45 demographic there was a mass movement towards a third party that wasn't bat**** insane then maybe we'd have something to complain about. But we'll just keep on voting for the same two parties that ****ed things up in the first place, who keep running on the same ****ed up platforms, and have shown no willingness to un**** things up.

There's about 79 million boomers. 163 million registered voters. So even if every boomer is registered and voting there's still plenty of blame to go around.

[Kuciwalker]

Social Security should only affect aggregate investment to the degree that Ricardian equivalence is false. But to the degree RE is false individual behavior is a poor measure of the socially optimal quantity of investment anyway. If you think the government should have an activist policy to target the national savings rate, it can adjust the policy lever to offset any effects of Social Security.

[Fake Boris]

What bank should the government deposit a trillion dollars into? What happens if the bank fails? Should the government bail out its own trillion dollar deposit?

The government can manage its own fund. Some countries already do it.

[Fake Boris]

Wouldn't have covered the program's unfunded liabilities.

Do you know the amount of the "hole"? (I don't, honestly asking).

[DinoDoc]

As of June, 2011 there was an ~$21.4 trillion unfunded liability in the SS program representing the difference between all taxes that will be paid and all benefits received over the lifetimes of everyone in the system now — workers and beneficiaries alike.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-06-06-us-debt-chart-medicare-social-security_n.htm

[Fake Boris]

1) Then I'm sure that if you compound the price of the Iraq invasion at ~5%, you would be close to the difference. (Your link estimates the current hole at $1.8T.)

2) Regularize Mexican illegals. They're young.

[Felch]

The government can manage its own fund. Some countries already do it.

No country would be operating a fund on the same scale as the United States. Compound interest isn't magical, it requires worthwhile investment opportunities. Pump 2.5 trillion dollars into the market, have it administered by a bunch of GS-14s who have no incentive to outperform the market, and you'll wind up with a lot of waste, a lot of rich people getting richer, and a broke ass fund.

There's simply no excuse to impose a regressive tax that funds a boondoggle, when you could just let people invest their own money.

[rah]

Unfortunately most people wouldn't invest wisely.

Has anyone see the number that the liability would be reduced by just removing the cap on contributions? (just the personal side, not necessarily the employer matching)
That would seem to be a no brainer.