New at Reason
Jacob Sullum could use a prozac after a look at the ballooning projected costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill.
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We're going to be stuck with this mess for a while. The main beneficiaries all have more political clout than we do. Come to think of it, everyone has more political clout than we do.
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There is no stopping the AARP. They don't like this, but they want something more instead. They wield more power than any voting bloc in history. I hate to say it, but we are in a race between their natural deaths and the poor house for the rest of us.
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Jason, if you're right, then there may be only one solution: Soylent Green.
(I keed! I keed!) -
Sorry Jason but "the rest of us" figure on being future AARP members.
War, war, war, farm, drug, highway, and throw New Orleans on top. Can our fiscal future be other than dismal? I remember reading that Greenspan strong-armed Clinton into fiscal discipline by threatening to raise interest rates. Why did Bush get the free ride, is the Fed getting a kickback? -
Im sorry, but I dont think that Julian Sanchez has a medical degree, and as we all know, only doctors are qualified to determine whether or not prozac is the right medicine for any particular patient.
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We members of Generation X are utterly screwed; Baby Boomers and their entitlements will bankrupt the country and cause Americans to have a huge contempt for elderly people just in time for us Xers to join the "old fart" demographic.
Lovely. -
If you save enough, it won't matter. I'm counting on not getting a red cent out of social security.
And, really, who doesn't already have contempt for old people? -
I don't expect to get anything out of Social Security, either. But saving for my future would be a lot easier if the government didn't take a big chunk out of my paycheck to make Social Security payments to a retiree who owns multiple properties and only uses Social Security to pay for luxuries.
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<offtopic-and-pedantic>
In the links in "Reason Online Headlines" on the left side of the screen, two of them are incorrect. Jacob Sullum's article has an extra "sullum" in it, and yesterdays Reason Express has an extra quotation mark. That quotation mark has been appearing quite frequently lately.
I know--those links will eventually be pushed off, but whoever it is that is putting them in should be double checking their work. It's really sad when simple stuff like that isn't correct.
</offtopic-and-pedantic> -
Jennifer
Boomers may be the most insufferable self-absorbed generation ever, but it was "The Greatest Generation" who have benefited most from the system. They built an unsustainable benefit structure (in both the public and private sphere) from the 40s through the 60s (when boomers like me were still children). They milked it for all it was worth and left future generations with a staggering debt load that will continue to grow thanks to the miracle of compound interest alone not to mention the fact that pols can't resist further vote-buying with deficit spending. No generation will ever enjoy the kind of benefits that that "The Greatest Generation" did.
The people who are exerting the most political pull at this point are those already collecting benefits. It will be ten years before any significant number of boomers is on SS. But every time any reform is suggested, no matter how much it is stressed that no current beneficiaries will be affected The Association of Aged Rich People mobilizes its troops to defeat it.
To blame people who believed the crap that they were promised throughout their childhood is slightly unfair. Outside of the crackpots on this site practically everyone fully supports and has unlimited faith in "the sytem" and believes he is entitled to a comfortable retitirement financed by it. In fact there's bound to be a few who will show up here to tell us that we libertoids questioning SS just want to throw poor old Aunt Maude out into the snow to be eaten by the wolves.
As for collecting nothing from SS, don't worry, you'll collect at least what you've been promised no matter how much of a burden the pols have to place on the next generation. You'll just be one of the hated Seniors in the eyes of the younger folks who will bitch but have absolutely no voice. The danger is not you losing your benefits, it is that the wider economy will eventually begin to suffer from the burden that high taxes on young people places on it.
The question everyone needs to be asking is not "why will Social Security taxes be so high in the future?" it's "why are Social Security taxes be so high now?" -
Another slightly off-topic comment: I know that a lot of seniors asked for and got $2K from FEMA in the wake of Rita, even though they had very little damage done to their homes and property. They saw it as free money so they took it.
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Oh, by the way, nothing in my previous post should be interpretted as a defense of the SS system, which is one of the biggest frauds ever foisted on the American people.
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As for collecting nothing from SS, don't worry, you'll collect at least what you've been promised no matter how much of a burden the pols have to place on the next generation.
The political situation could change, and there could be a revolt against the SS fraud, which could result in a mitigation or cessation of payments.
But even if that doesn't happen; those doing the collecting will see the benefits of the payments diminished as the productivity of the whole economy will be increasingly throttled by the burden.
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...those doing the collecting will see the benefits of the payments diminished as the productivity of the whole economy will be increasingly throttled by the burden.
Hence my - The danger is not you losing your benefits, it is that the wider economy will eventually begin to suffer from the burden that high taxes on young people places on it.
This is one of the things that bothers me about the various accusations against libertarians. ...we libertoids questioning SS just want to throw poor old Aunt Maude out into the snow to be eaten by the wolves. So many of those "advocates for the poor" miss the point of how heavily the burden of their programs weighs upon the poor.
But, yes, you are quite right about "...those doing the collecting will see the benefits of the payments diminished". First there will likely be more "reforms" like raising the retirement age, which is in effect a reduction in benefits. Another thing to consider is the erosion of a fixed benefit by price inflation made worse by the burdens of debt and high levels of public spending. -
"why are taxes so high now"
Exactly.
The solution to most of this mess is probably to default on all or a large part of the federal government's debt. It's owned mostly by non-voters anyway. That should free up plenty of cash to pay benefits and it will be a nice brake on deficit spending for a good, long while. -
The political situation could change, and there could be a revolt against the SS fraud, which could result in a mitigation or cessation of payments.
I don't see that happening. There are simply too many people who want the gimme-gimme welfare state and see themselves on the receiving end of the gimme.
I wish I was wrong. -
>They wield more power than any voting bloc in history.
I'm not so sure about that. The public-employee unions seem at least as powerful; look what they did to Arnold in California. All increases in the bureaucracy, like the aforementioned Medicare bill, accrues to their powerbase. -
Jacob's article is one of the most depressing things that I've read here. It's only rivaled by the threads that covered our government getting into torture paid for by tax dollars.
Last February the centers estimated the cost during the first decade when drug coverage is really up and running?i.e., beginning now?will be $724 billion, more than 80 percent over the advertised price.
During its second decade the drug benefit's cost could hit $2 trillion.
We need to take the message to other blogs, talk radio, letters to the editor, what ever. This monster has to be eliminated or, at least, largely reduced or it will destroy our productivity and wealth.
The solution to high drug prices is a free market in drugs.