Excellent points Dean ...

And ...

By going to Medicare for All now we could re-capitalize business (especially manufacturing), school districts, local and state government, individuals now paying for their own health insurance and the uninsured for less in GDP than we are now paying.

Medicare for All would be the best way of getting massive amounts of money into the economy in the most efficient and fair way possible while saving hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The folks who argue so forcefully against Social Security rarely offer options for an aging workforce of 50 millions now and probably 70 millions a decade or two off. What do they propose ? The median wages in the US is less than $40,000.00 a year. Who can save a retirement nestegg on that income ? Probably no one.
So what options are they offering instead? Perhaps a humane painless poison pill or injection ? Tidy up your personal affairs upon reaching retirement age, write your will, than go to the local Social Security office, lay down on a comfortable table and zip, a clerk sticks a needle into your arm. Solves everybody problem.
Come on, folks, get real. No one is going to let the government do away with Social Security, nor Medicare either, for that matter. So get used to the idea that we will pay and that's all there is to that !

Thank you Dean for pointing out one of the reasons why I don't read the Economist. I can't deal with their tripe.

Read the SOCIAL SECURITY ACT, as long as SOMEONE collects the TAX each day, nothing is wrong. ANYTHING else in the matter IS strictly a negotiation between Congress and recipient on a day by day basis.

IF someone DOES NOT come by to collect YOUR Social Security Contribution, wait a few days before calling, he may just be delayed in traffic, then SOMRTHING is terribly, terribly wrong with Social Security.

Dean

I agree with you, but at least as far as Medicare is concerned the Trustees call for a 12% of payroll cost in 2085 or so, when real incomes will be 230% of what they are today.

This is a lot of money, but even after you pay for your Medicare and Social Security, you will have twice as money to take home as you do today. Not what I would call a crisis, or a burden, or much of a problem.

It's not a choice between medical care and a trip to Vegas. It's a choice between medical care and a SECOND trip to Vegas. Every year.

I think it's important to understand exactly what The Economist is saying by using the 2017 date. (This of course is the date when the trust fund must begin chipping in to maintain benefit levels.) Given the large number of times I've seen this 2017 date used in this same fashion, there is clearly an effort on the part of some to say the Trust Fund does not exist.

This is debatable; the Fund is after all merely an accounting entry. What is not debatable however is that if the Fund does not exist, the US will have defaulted on its financial obligations. And a selective default at that, where obligations to US workers are ignored while obligations to foreign parties are met.

I'd like to meet the politician who thinks he can get away with that.

Benedict, it is not just an accounting entry. It is the law.

You could just as well say that the global financial system is 'just an accounting entry', which we both agree would be a truly simple-minded understanding of the world.

Dean is absolutely right, there is no reason to single out 2017, other than political. The gap between SS receipts and outlays will shrink continuously as the boomers retire... as predicted for at least 3 decades.

Social Security is in better shape than any other program. It's paying it's bills. All the other programs are out of control because they live within their means. In fact, they are borrowing from SS in order to pay their bills. Targeting systems and pills don't come cheap.

But isn't the problem not Social Security per se, it's that the 2017 date is when they've projected that Social Security will have to start to pay out more than it collects. In this the problem is that it will have to collect on the IOUs left in the trust fund and not only will congress no longer have the surplus that they can borrow against, but they will have to start to pay back what they have borrowed.

Isn't saying this exists a bit like saying you have tons of equity in your house when you've already borrowed against it? It basically exists so far as you have the ability to start paying back what you've borrowed against it.

>With equal validity, we can say that White House lawn maintenance, together with Medicare and Medicaid will be starting to bankrupt the country.

Now we know where costs of the Iraq War are being coded on the balance sheet