While I think we need to pay attention to the bad fiscal forecast, your argument about old age entitlements always seems confused to me.
Elderly people have higher wealth on average because most of them have been saving for retirement. They need entitlements on top of that because some of them haven't saved, and (due to short term bias and planning that takes entitlements for granted) almost none of them have saved enough to maintain their standard of living in retirement.
Since old people's labor is not very productive, wealth plus entitlements is their sole source of consumption. So they are mostly in a worse position when it comes to real spending power than younger people.
While I think we need to pay attention to the bad fiscal forecast, your argument about old age entitlements always seems confused to me.
Elderly people have higher wealth on average because most of them have been saving for retirement. They need entitlements on top of that because some of them haven't saved, and (due to short term bias and planning that takes entitlements for granted) almost none of them have saved enough to maintain their standard of living in retirement.
Since old people's labor is not very productive, wealth plus entitlements is their sole source of consumption. So they are mostly in a worse position when it comes to real spending power than younger people.
Did you mean Derek Thompson? (wrote Thomas)
Yes thanks