I like the general thrust of this article but i think it misses an important element: everyone gets old and most people have parents and grandparents. so if you do old people austerity, who ends up taking care of them? Yea the young people. And taking care of old people is a huge time and financial drain. Many people want to shunt mom and dad into a home, have the government pay, and not have to deal with that.
and lots of people don’t have kids and even if they do don’t want to rely on them. So being for old age entitlements is more rational for the young than it might look like at first glance.
Raising the retirement age could bypass this problem, given that we know people are living longer, healthier lives than they were when it was fixed at 65.
Good points. I think it's as simple as everyone is afraid of getting old and helpless.
On a personal level, the prospect of ageing into despair seems to be a horror with no end but death, that still might await us all. But the struggles of the young feel temporary, something we all got past.
This was my immediate thought too. Is the alternative to all of these subsidies that every younger person becomes a full-time caregiver? I'm already seeing this happen with some members of my family as my grandparents become too old to care for themselves, and it's a scary prospect without good answers.
I think Richard's answer here would be (unironically) to encourage more voluntary euthanasia. As someone who doesn't want to get old, I'm more sympathetic to that view than some, but I do think it's worth noting that most of the options here are very bad.
Old people starving in the streets and young people being conscripted as caregivers seem like your other options, and both are very bad! A social safety net that massively privileges the old might be the best of a set of bad choices, even for the young. If we don't pay for the nursing home with taxes, then the next thing that happens is grandma moves in with you and your life becomes about taking care of her. I think many people would prefer to pay the taxes.
I would focus on Medicare more than Social Security. Social Security has only just barely higher than a 1:1 payout ratio to average liifetime taxes paid ratio. So seniors can reasonably claim that they "paid for" their Social Security benefits. Medicare, on the other hand, is out of control with a greater than 3:1 ratio.
It is totally unfair that cash-strapped young and healthy adults have to pay exorbitant private insurance and provider rates while Boomers in six bedroom McMansions get Medicare. Medicare should be dissolved entirely. Seniors should be moved onto the private insurance market like everyone else. If they are genuinely poor (based on assets, not solely based on income) then give them a subsidy. But if they have a $2 million house, stock portfolio, or large pension then they should have to pay full freight. They can liquidate their large house (which is good for the economy by freeing up large homes for the families with several children who really need them) and downsize to a townhouse and pay for their health care with the proceeds of the sale.
Agreed. Medicare also has massive inherent waste because it's a payment in kind rather than a cash payment. Programs like that can and do give people health benefits that cost far more than they're worth to the beneficiary, driving up overall healthcare prices and wasting our collective resources. Giving people cash as the advantage of ensuring that it will be spent on something that they subjectively value.
But it has the disadvantage that people have short-term bias and will waste cash benefits in the short term when their interests would be better served by saving or insuring themselves. That might very well outweigh the waste you're talking about.
Perhaps, but it requires a pretty dim and paternalistic view to think that people are more wasteful with their own money than Medicare benefits. As evidence I would point to the markedly elevated prices of drugs in this country. People with incurable cancers are choosing drugs that cost $300k per year when a $10k per year option is available which would reduce their expected lifespan by a few weeks. No non-wealthy person would make that choice if it was their own money.
The high US drug prices are basically a disguised subsidy for pharma research. The expected value for the Medicare insurer (US government) isn't just the three weeks, it's also the resulting incentive for incremental progress toward even better treatments.
That isn't to say the whole system is Pareto optimal or anything. But when research costs are taken into account, the overseas prices are artificially low, and historically the public benefits of this kind of research have far outweighed the costs.
I don't disagree that this subsidizes drug research. I don't see how that makes it less wasteful. It sounds like you're saying some of the value of the drug price is R&D for future drugs, but this is just infinite regress. If due to these subsidies it's profitable to develop a drug that barely works and costs a fortune, the makers can stay profitable while destroying social value indefinitely. Why do we expect their next drug to be more useful than the last one?
In principle this makes sense, but the difficulty with your proposal is the same as the difficulty with a wealth tax: how do you get an accurate enough metric of wealth to apply the subsidy properly?
But you're absolutely right about SS. It was meant to be social insurance, basically an annuity that people were required to pay into. They did so, but the government was a poor steward of the trust fund and now that is coming home to roost.
Is it really that hard to get a decent idea? Most people’s wealth is highly concentrated in their primary residence and retirement accounts. The IRS cares about subsidized retirement accounts already because you’re required to take minimum distributions at a certain age, and it’s quite easy to figure out the value of someone’s private residence, so this doesn’t seem too bad. The difficulty of calculation for a wealth tax aimed mainly at the very rich is much more serious, but this policy is aimed mainly at separating the genuinely needy elderly from those with sufficient savings, and that seems quite doable.
Profoundly tempting policy. My Boomer parents rattling around in their McMansion would say they can’t afford to downsize because there aren’t many townhomes nearby so they’re overpriced for their size—and voila, NIMBYism solved! Or, of course, they’re more than welcome to go in with me on a multi-unit property so I’m not stuck raising a baby in a one-bedroom apartment with no relatives within a thousand miles…It would also make health insurance extremely cheap for healthy young people. I would still lean towards at least a public option, but full privatization with generous subsidies for the poor seems better than the status quo.
One of the things that drives me insane is the attitude that things like assisted living expenses shouldn't draw down your estate. "Grandma is having to sell her house to pay the exorbitant costs of the assisted living home! That's outrageous!" What?? When you are saving assets for retirement, you're saving for ...retirement, right?
Yeah everyone should pay higher taxes so we can make sure to keep the trust fund baby demographic going. Society doesn't need to support an expectation of inheritance.
It may be a little bit too nuanced for people to understand, but an important part of this is the fact that Medicare in particular is a lose-lose program. Imagine you have enough money to afford a drug that cost $1,000 a month, but you would only be willing to pay $200 a month for it (at higher prices, you would do without or choose cheaper alternatives). If the subsidized price to you is $100 a month and Medicare pays the rest, you're going to take the drug, wasting $800 of society's money. In short, the program costs far more than the benefits are worth, and so cutting it won't harm beneficiaries nearly as much as it will benefit taxpayers.
I think contrary to popular belief and media propaganda a lot of young people love their parents and grandparents and also don't want the responsibility of having to pay for them in old age. Also anyone over above 30 realizes they'll get old eventually and figures if you cut Social Security and Medicare there'll be *nothing* there for them when they get there.
I also think the general precariousness of middle-class and below life these days means people are going to want more supports. The catch with having too many poor people is they support illiberal programs to relieve their misery, whether it's Mamdani or mustache man.
As for prejudice against immigrants and the rich...I mean, actual socialism is a proven failure many times over but when inequality gets to a certain level the rich can buy influence in ways that don't benefit everyone else. (The whole tax-prep scheme, for instance--there have been attempts to simplify taxpaying and Intuit has squashed it every time.) This is what both left-wingers screaming about rich white male billionaires and right-wingers screaming about Jewish billionaires are alluding to in different ways.
I think there's probably a limit to how much dynamism and 'creative disruption' a society can support...it's why Milei's libertarianism is good in Argentina (they're way too far toward the socialist, low-growth end) but both of our parties are moving in a populist direction.
Immigrants, well, when you get to a certain foreign-born percentage of the population people start feeling they're being replaced, it's just one of those human biases, people like to be around people who look and talk like them. I figure you can just shut down immigration for a few decades and then start it up again later once everyone's assimilated like we did in the 20th century. It's not as simple as 'immigration good or bad'--there's a healthy level of it.
>”I think contrary to popular belief and media propaganda a lot of young people love their parents and grandparents and also don't want the responsibility of having to pay for them in old age. “
I also love a lot of things that I would prefer not to pay for. This is not a coherent political ideology
I commend you for your commitment to touch every political third rail. Can you do veterans next?
People in my state keep voting more and more expensive benefits to veterans, including a property tax exemption with no cap. We've got a bunch of service disabled veterans who "own" (nominally) small business government contractors, win contracts thru quotas, and live in mansions tax-free.
And "service disabled" ain't what it used to be. The VA is giving out more, and higher, disability ratings than ever before. Just about anyone exiting service can make a disability rating happen if they're interested in it. Some statistics here for a start:
I'm 67 years old. I was checking out local gyms to join; one was offering a "Senior Discount" membership. I thought, why should I get a senior discount when I'm probably better off than the 20 to 40 year olds who want to join? So, I agree: let's shift resource allocation to the young and promising. But it would be great if can it could be done without "demagoguery" -don't promote hating grandpa and grandma!
Agree. However "senior discounts" are generally not part of a social effort to help needy seniors. It's just that particular business looking for a way to pull in customers. I'm not sure it always makes sense, but often it does.
The best solution to Medicare and social security is to give every person a sign up choice. Either slightly later retirement age or slightly higher premiums. Those that are younger could choose whichever, but gain in dependable funding for themselves. Those near retirement would obviously choose higher premiums for a few years. Those in retirement would only benefit from more dependability/security of benefits.
This could be supplemented with the elimination of income caps, and if needed, slightly higher employer contributions (which people don’t see and therefore ignore psychologically).
I believe these three changes could solve the problem permanently and be politically possible.
The GW Bush proposed reforms were a missed opportunity. Despite the promises that current and near recipients would not be impacted, AARP and others apparently didn't believe it and mobilized against the plan. My understanding is that in retrospect, if the plan had been implemented, benefit levels would probably not have changed very much but solvency would have significantly improved.
Btw, I think a main feature of that program was that it was less about the "cut benefits vs raise taxes" debate and more about risk transfer. As structured the taxpayers absorb the risk of social security based retirement saving. Bush's plan shifted that risk back on the individual (they would have to manage their investment, 401 style). That approach didn't sell well for whatever reason. Maybe now that young people are so convinced that they won't receive any benefits at all, they would be open to that kind of change. Of course, the population is older now so you don't get nearly the same bang-for-the-buck we would have back in the GWB admin. Nevertheless, it could help sell a package that included other revisions.
The challenge with demogoguing the old is that you need their votes to enact any reforms. That's why there needs to be a parallel effort to enlist *some* boomers to champion reform on behalf of younger generations.
I think a naive way to reason why a voter might prefer policies helping the elderly over children is that everyone expects to become old, so they are near certain that a policy that helps the elderly will help them, but no voters are children, and many voters probably don't expect to be in a position where a policy that helps the elderly will help them (because their kids are grown already, or they don't plan to have kids).
I'm pretty sure that a majority of people support giving benefits to the old because the liberal leaning half of the voters support it because they support giving out benefits generally, and the hypocrite conservative elderly and soon-to-be elderly support benefits for just themselves.
On another note, the only other thinker/personality I've seen talk about gerontocracy with any gusto is Scott Galloway. For me personally I would love to collect Social Security benefits when I turn 62 in about 15 years. But I'm uncertain whether these benefits will actually exist in 2040 or whether they'll be so diluted by inflation and/or cuts to be irrelevant to me economically.
So in other words, I've come around to supporting the idea of SS reform; which could include:
1. The retirement age going up to 70.
2. Ending disability benefits for non-debilitating psychological disorders (don't get me started on how easy it is to get diagnosed with PTSD).
3. Means testing retirement benefits (this would probably affect me, but if it makes the program solvent then I'll just have to suck it up).
4. Abolishing the medical scam called Medicare and replacing with the ACA/Medicaid.
But these things will never happen because of political realities.
I see several flaws or omissions in your analysis right off the top. Be sure to read my last paragraph, though!
(1) "Overall, 76% of the public believes the federal government spends too much, compared to 8% who say it spends too little. Yet the only area where more people want to cut rather than increase spending is foreign aid, a tiny fraction of the budget.... And now you see why you should have contempt for the political views of most people. It doesn’t mean most people are bad, but only that you should not expect them to have sensible political opinions...."
Obviously (to me at least), the people answered the simple questions exactly as they were asked. They weren't asked to do any sort of analysis as to how much their proposals would help the budget, nor were they asked to, nor were they provided with any information that would have allowed them to do so — or at least, I didn't see mention of it. If, for each category (say, Social Security and Foreign aid), the fraction or amount of the entire budget spent on the category had been shown, the results might have been different. Certainly, you don't expect people responding in a general poll to know those numbers offhand, do you?
(2) Shift in age group having the highest net worth. The two groups are about 40 years apart, and 40 years ago (1980s) was a time of great concentration and accumulation of wealth. It seems likely that cause of the shift is that the wealthy old farts today are precisely the wealthy young Turks who accumulated wealth in the '80s.
(3) I didn't see anything mentioned about the age distribution of the polled population or about differences in judgement across ages in the sample population. Perhaps pollees who were older wanted more Social Security and perhaps that demographic dominated the polled population.
--
I didn't read every word ("true confession"), so it's possible that some of those considerations appeared but I overlooked them. If so, please point them out and accept my apology in advance.
In some sense perhaps it's an advantage for China that their leaders can fairly openly have a "deep contempt for public opinion". That doesn't quite seem right, though - maybe it's a bad idea to depend on median public opinion, but also a bad idea to ignore all opinions outside the Politburo. I feel like the epistemic practics of the Chinese leadership are going to prove worse than the admittedly-flawed democratic ones in the end. Like you do need some sense that public opinion can generate some good ideas and thus it's bad to ignore it entirely.
Very thought provoking. Social Security has always been a wonderful Ponzi scheme. I'm 62 and would favor delaying that eligibility, but remember we all paid into it. There shouldn't be a FICA cap. Easiest solution? Embrace immigration!
Medicare is a different story. I'm desperate for it, and I'm healthy! Self employed and looking at skipping insurance next year, which is scary in your 60s. Universal Medicare, which would replace Medicaid, should be an option for any age. Why should you healthcare be a function of your employer? If I had children I never could have started my own business. There would be a lot of efficiencies to be gained. Insurance companies would still be around as they are now for Medicare. Think about why so many young people stay on their parents policies until 26? Why does a Senator, with a healthy paycheck, get stellar benefits while a home health aid gets nothing? We need to decouple Healthcare policy from generational debates.
What are your opinions on contemporary property tax cuts being proposed and passed largely to the benefit of boomer homeowners and to the detriment of public school funding?
I like the general thrust of this article but i think it misses an important element: everyone gets old and most people have parents and grandparents. so if you do old people austerity, who ends up taking care of them? Yea the young people. And taking care of old people is a huge time and financial drain. Many people want to shunt mom and dad into a home, have the government pay, and not have to deal with that.
and lots of people don’t have kids and even if they do don’t want to rely on them. So being for old age entitlements is more rational for the young than it might look like at first glance.
Raising the retirement age could bypass this problem, given that we know people are living longer, healthier lives than they were when it was fixed at 65.
Good points. I think it's as simple as everyone is afraid of getting old and helpless.
On a personal level, the prospect of ageing into despair seems to be a horror with no end but death, that still might await us all. But the struggles of the young feel temporary, something we all got past.
This was my immediate thought too. Is the alternative to all of these subsidies that every younger person becomes a full-time caregiver? I'm already seeing this happen with some members of my family as my grandparents become too old to care for themselves, and it's a scary prospect without good answers.
I think Richard's answer here would be (unironically) to encourage more voluntary euthanasia. As someone who doesn't want to get old, I'm more sympathetic to that view than some, but I do think it's worth noting that most of the options here are very bad.
Old people starving in the streets and young people being conscripted as caregivers seem like your other options, and both are very bad! A social safety net that massively privileges the old might be the best of a set of bad choices, even for the young. If we don't pay for the nursing home with taxes, then the next thing that happens is grandma moves in with you and your life becomes about taking care of her. I think many people would prefer to pay the taxes.
I would focus on Medicare more than Social Security. Social Security has only just barely higher than a 1:1 payout ratio to average liifetime taxes paid ratio. So seniors can reasonably claim that they "paid for" their Social Security benefits. Medicare, on the other hand, is out of control with a greater than 3:1 ratio.
It is totally unfair that cash-strapped young and healthy adults have to pay exorbitant private insurance and provider rates while Boomers in six bedroom McMansions get Medicare. Medicare should be dissolved entirely. Seniors should be moved onto the private insurance market like everyone else. If they are genuinely poor (based on assets, not solely based on income) then give them a subsidy. But if they have a $2 million house, stock portfolio, or large pension then they should have to pay full freight. They can liquidate their large house (which is good for the economy by freeing up large homes for the families with several children who really need them) and downsize to a townhouse and pay for their health care with the proceeds of the sale.
Agreed. Medicare also has massive inherent waste because it's a payment in kind rather than a cash payment. Programs like that can and do give people health benefits that cost far more than they're worth to the beneficiary, driving up overall healthcare prices and wasting our collective resources. Giving people cash as the advantage of ensuring that it will be spent on something that they subjectively value.
But it has the disadvantage that people have short-term bias and will waste cash benefits in the short term when their interests would be better served by saving or insuring themselves. That might very well outweigh the waste you're talking about.
Perhaps, but it requires a pretty dim and paternalistic view to think that people are more wasteful with their own money than Medicare benefits. As evidence I would point to the markedly elevated prices of drugs in this country. People with incurable cancers are choosing drugs that cost $300k per year when a $10k per year option is available which would reduce their expected lifespan by a few weeks. No non-wealthy person would make that choice if it was their own money.
The high US drug prices are basically a disguised subsidy for pharma research. The expected value for the Medicare insurer (US government) isn't just the three weeks, it's also the resulting incentive for incremental progress toward even better treatments.
That isn't to say the whole system is Pareto optimal or anything. But when research costs are taken into account, the overseas prices are artificially low, and historically the public benefits of this kind of research have far outweighed the costs.
I don't disagree that this subsidizes drug research. I don't see how that makes it less wasteful. It sounds like you're saying some of the value of the drug price is R&D for future drugs, but this is just infinite regress. If due to these subsidies it's profitable to develop a drug that barely works and costs a fortune, the makers can stay profitable while destroying social value indefinitely. Why do we expect their next drug to be more useful than the last one?
In principle this makes sense, but the difficulty with your proposal is the same as the difficulty with a wealth tax: how do you get an accurate enough metric of wealth to apply the subsidy properly?
But you're absolutely right about SS. It was meant to be social insurance, basically an annuity that people were required to pay into. They did so, but the government was a poor steward of the trust fund and now that is coming home to roost.
Is it really that hard to get a decent idea? Most people’s wealth is highly concentrated in their primary residence and retirement accounts. The IRS cares about subsidized retirement accounts already because you’re required to take minimum distributions at a certain age, and it’s quite easy to figure out the value of someone’s private residence, so this doesn’t seem too bad. The difficulty of calculation for a wealth tax aimed mainly at the very rich is much more serious, but this policy is aimed mainly at separating the genuinely needy elderly from those with sufficient savings, and that seems quite doable.
Profoundly tempting policy. My Boomer parents rattling around in their McMansion would say they can’t afford to downsize because there aren’t many townhomes nearby so they’re overpriced for their size—and voila, NIMBYism solved! Or, of course, they’re more than welcome to go in with me on a multi-unit property so I’m not stuck raising a baby in a one-bedroom apartment with no relatives within a thousand miles…It would also make health insurance extremely cheap for healthy young people. I would still lean towards at least a public option, but full privatization with generous subsidies for the poor seems better than the status quo.
*1:1 payout to average lifetime taxes paid ratio* Apologies for the typo
You're able to just edit the post.
One of the things that drives me insane is the attitude that things like assisted living expenses shouldn't draw down your estate. "Grandma is having to sell her house to pay the exorbitant costs of the assisted living home! That's outrageous!" What?? When you are saving assets for retirement, you're saving for ...retirement, right?
well if you expect to inherit the home that's rather disappointing
Yeah everyone should pay higher taxes so we can make sure to keep the trust fund baby demographic going. Society doesn't need to support an expectation of inheritance.
It may be a little bit too nuanced for people to understand, but an important part of this is the fact that Medicare in particular is a lose-lose program. Imagine you have enough money to afford a drug that cost $1,000 a month, but you would only be willing to pay $200 a month for it (at higher prices, you would do without or choose cheaper alternatives). If the subsidized price to you is $100 a month and Medicare pays the rest, you're going to take the drug, wasting $800 of society's money. In short, the program costs far more than the benefits are worth, and so cutting it won't harm beneficiaries nearly as much as it will benefit taxpayers.
I think contrary to popular belief and media propaganda a lot of young people love their parents and grandparents and also don't want the responsibility of having to pay for them in old age. Also anyone over above 30 realizes they'll get old eventually and figures if you cut Social Security and Medicare there'll be *nothing* there for them when they get there.
I also think the general precariousness of middle-class and below life these days means people are going to want more supports. The catch with having too many poor people is they support illiberal programs to relieve their misery, whether it's Mamdani or mustache man.
As for prejudice against immigrants and the rich...I mean, actual socialism is a proven failure many times over but when inequality gets to a certain level the rich can buy influence in ways that don't benefit everyone else. (The whole tax-prep scheme, for instance--there have been attempts to simplify taxpaying and Intuit has squashed it every time.) This is what both left-wingers screaming about rich white male billionaires and right-wingers screaming about Jewish billionaires are alluding to in different ways.
I think there's probably a limit to how much dynamism and 'creative disruption' a society can support...it's why Milei's libertarianism is good in Argentina (they're way too far toward the socialist, low-growth end) but both of our parties are moving in a populist direction.
Immigrants, well, when you get to a certain foreign-born percentage of the population people start feeling they're being replaced, it's just one of those human biases, people like to be around people who look and talk like them. I figure you can just shut down immigration for a few decades and then start it up again later once everyone's assimilated like we did in the 20th century. It's not as simple as 'immigration good or bad'--there's a healthy level of it.
>”I think contrary to popular belief and media propaganda a lot of young people love their parents and grandparents and also don't want the responsibility of having to pay for them in old age. “
I also love a lot of things that I would prefer not to pay for. This is not a coherent political ideology
I commend you for your commitment to touch every political third rail. Can you do veterans next?
People in my state keep voting more and more expensive benefits to veterans, including a property tax exemption with no cap. We've got a bunch of service disabled veterans who "own" (nominally) small business government contractors, win contracts thru quotas, and live in mansions tax-free.
And "service disabled" ain't what it used to be. The VA is giving out more, and higher, disability ratings than ever before. Just about anyone exiting service can make a disability rating happen if they're interested in it. Some statistics here for a start:
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-money-does-the-federal-government-spend-to-support-disabled-veterans/
I'm 67 years old. I was checking out local gyms to join; one was offering a "Senior Discount" membership. I thought, why should I get a senior discount when I'm probably better off than the 20 to 40 year olds who want to join? So, I agree: let's shift resource allocation to the young and promising. But it would be great if can it could be done without "demagoguery" -don't promote hating grandpa and grandma!
Agree. However "senior discounts" are generally not part of a social effort to help needy seniors. It's just that particular business looking for a way to pull in customers. I'm not sure it always makes sense, but often it does.
The best solution to Medicare and social security is to give every person a sign up choice. Either slightly later retirement age or slightly higher premiums. Those that are younger could choose whichever, but gain in dependable funding for themselves. Those near retirement would obviously choose higher premiums for a few years. Those in retirement would only benefit from more dependability/security of benefits.
This could be supplemented with the elimination of income caps, and if needed, slightly higher employer contributions (which people don’t see and therefore ignore psychologically).
I believe these three changes could solve the problem permanently and be politically possible.
The GW Bush proposed reforms were a missed opportunity. Despite the promises that current and near recipients would not be impacted, AARP and others apparently didn't believe it and mobilized against the plan. My understanding is that in retrospect, if the plan had been implemented, benefit levels would probably not have changed very much but solvency would have significantly improved.
Btw, I think a main feature of that program was that it was less about the "cut benefits vs raise taxes" debate and more about risk transfer. As structured the taxpayers absorb the risk of social security based retirement saving. Bush's plan shifted that risk back on the individual (they would have to manage their investment, 401 style). That approach didn't sell well for whatever reason. Maybe now that young people are so convinced that they won't receive any benefits at all, they would be open to that kind of change. Of course, the population is older now so you don't get nearly the same bang-for-the-buck we would have back in the GWB admin. Nevertheless, it could help sell a package that included other revisions.
The challenge with demogoguing the old is that you need their votes to enact any reforms. That's why there needs to be a parallel effort to enlist *some* boomers to champion reform on behalf of younger generations.
I think a naive way to reason why a voter might prefer policies helping the elderly over children is that everyone expects to become old, so they are near certain that a policy that helps the elderly will help them, but no voters are children, and many voters probably don't expect to be in a position where a policy that helps the elderly will help them (because their kids are grown already, or they don't plan to have kids).
I'm pretty sure that a majority of people support giving benefits to the old because the liberal leaning half of the voters support it because they support giving out benefits generally, and the hypocrite conservative elderly and soon-to-be elderly support benefits for just themselves.
On another note, the only other thinker/personality I've seen talk about gerontocracy with any gusto is Scott Galloway. For me personally I would love to collect Social Security benefits when I turn 62 in about 15 years. But I'm uncertain whether these benefits will actually exist in 2040 or whether they'll be so diluted by inflation and/or cuts to be irrelevant to me economically.
So in other words, I've come around to supporting the idea of SS reform; which could include:
1. The retirement age going up to 70.
2. Ending disability benefits for non-debilitating psychological disorders (don't get me started on how easy it is to get diagnosed with PTSD).
3. Means testing retirement benefits (this would probably affect me, but if it makes the program solvent then I'll just have to suck it up).
4. Abolishing the medical scam called Medicare and replacing with the ACA/Medicaid.
But these things will never happen because of political realities.
I see several flaws or omissions in your analysis right off the top. Be sure to read my last paragraph, though!
(1) "Overall, 76% of the public believes the federal government spends too much, compared to 8% who say it spends too little. Yet the only area where more people want to cut rather than increase spending is foreign aid, a tiny fraction of the budget.... And now you see why you should have contempt for the political views of most people. It doesn’t mean most people are bad, but only that you should not expect them to have sensible political opinions...."
Obviously (to me at least), the people answered the simple questions exactly as they were asked. They weren't asked to do any sort of analysis as to how much their proposals would help the budget, nor were they asked to, nor were they provided with any information that would have allowed them to do so — or at least, I didn't see mention of it. If, for each category (say, Social Security and Foreign aid), the fraction or amount of the entire budget spent on the category had been shown, the results might have been different. Certainly, you don't expect people responding in a general poll to know those numbers offhand, do you?
(2) Shift in age group having the highest net worth. The two groups are about 40 years apart, and 40 years ago (1980s) was a time of great concentration and accumulation of wealth. It seems likely that cause of the shift is that the wealthy old farts today are precisely the wealthy young Turks who accumulated wealth in the '80s.
(3) I didn't see anything mentioned about the age distribution of the polled population or about differences in judgement across ages in the sample population. Perhaps pollees who were older wanted more Social Security and perhaps that demographic dominated the polled population.
--
I didn't read every word ("true confession"), so it's possible that some of those considerations appeared but I overlooked them. If so, please point them out and accept my apology in advance.
In some sense perhaps it's an advantage for China that their leaders can fairly openly have a "deep contempt for public opinion". That doesn't quite seem right, though - maybe it's a bad idea to depend on median public opinion, but also a bad idea to ignore all opinions outside the Politburo. I feel like the epistemic practics of the Chinese leadership are going to prove worse than the admittedly-flawed democratic ones in the end. Like you do need some sense that public opinion can generate some good ideas and thus it's bad to ignore it entirely.
Very thought provoking. Social Security has always been a wonderful Ponzi scheme. I'm 62 and would favor delaying that eligibility, but remember we all paid into it. There shouldn't be a FICA cap. Easiest solution? Embrace immigration!
Medicare is a different story. I'm desperate for it, and I'm healthy! Self employed and looking at skipping insurance next year, which is scary in your 60s. Universal Medicare, which would replace Medicaid, should be an option for any age. Why should you healthcare be a function of your employer? If I had children I never could have started my own business. There would be a lot of efficiencies to be gained. Insurance companies would still be around as they are now for Medicare. Think about why so many young people stay on their parents policies until 26? Why does a Senator, with a healthy paycheck, get stellar benefits while a home health aid gets nothing? We need to decouple Healthcare policy from generational debates.
What are your opinions on contemporary property tax cuts being proposed and passed largely to the benefit of boomer homeowners and to the detriment of public school funding?