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[McTraveller]

It's not just a generational shift in politics - it's a generational shift in everything.  Age distribution has a massive impact on absolutely everything.

[EnigmaticHat]

'Current deficit is under a trillion', I think you mean the yearly deficit right?

Vox discussion with an author on why most baby boomers have wrecked America. The final message is pretty much "if we don't have massive turnover in politics, we're screwed". Edit: Or possibly a massive lurch to the left, as we've been seeing more and more with millenials.

This is about as credible as any of the "millennials have ruined America!!1!" articles out there. People simply love to hate on other generations, it seems.

No, its not.  Boomers fucked up both America and the world.

To provide just one of many examples: social security.  Boomers are one of the only large groups of people on planet Earth that are categorically opposed to welfare.  They are also unusually predisposed against raising taxes in all its forms.

Because of the boomer's political influence, the formation of a functioning healthcare system in the US has been delayed by decades.  As has a tax structure that would function to promote movement of money and reduction of wealth inequality.

Yet, that same influence protects social security on absolute terms.  Social security, which is a tax on the young that only benefits the old.  Social security, which is blatantly a form of welfare to protect the old.  Social security, which costs the nation more than our bloated military.  If the baby boomers held to their own principles, we would essentially not have a deficit. (this isn't an exaggeration, the current deficit is a little under a trillion IIRC, if we dropped social security but kept up the taxes that supported it, almost all of that trillion would be gone)

I object to that characterization of social security because it helps the poor and I don't see how it's a tax on the young, and it also helps the disabled. I'm a bit surprised at your characterization of it actually. Of course it benefits the old now because of the baby boomer generation getting old, but seriously, it helps the disabled and also the poor.

BTW, those very same baby boomers are looking into cutting social security, among other things.

-snip-

There's definetly an upcoming generational shift in politics, no question about that.

Yearly deficit, yeah.  Technically the amount we owe overall isn't the deficit, its the national debt.  Everyone just calls both the deficit so you're right, I should have been more specific.

To be clear, my complaint with SS isn't that its worse than nothing (because its far superior to nothing).  Basically, my view is that its a flat tax which makes it disproportionately effect the poor.  And it disproportionately hurts young people because they're on average poorer (see: flat tax) and also because the younger you are the further you are from ever benefiting.

I think social security made sense back when people were primarily married, with only the husband working, and pensions were more common.  But now, what happens is that most people work and are close to the red, so they pawn their parents and their grandparents off to nursing homes as a sort of holding tank for the elderly.  Because they have no other practical choice in some cases.  I believe that being in a home accelerates physical and mental degeneration, particularly the onset of Alzheimers, and it should be a last resort.  Even people with no extended family should go to some kind of assisted living home before they go to a nursing home.  By pushing 30-50 year olds closer to the line moneywise, SS (mildly) discourages them from personally caring for their parents.  It also denies them economic choice as to where they live, making it harder for them to live close to their parents.  That's not the main problem I have with SS but it is a problem; economic hard times hurt everyone and SS contributes to that.

My other problem with SS is that it results in an inefficient distribution of medical care.  Everyone ages and everyone dies.  Eventually, people hit a point where they know what's going to kill them.  Usually cancer, bone weakness, dementia, something like that.  What our existing medical care system usually does at this point is either flood the person's body with drugs, give them chemo, or both.  The thing is, that when you take an old person who already has a serious medical condition, and you put them through treatment that would be harsh on even a young person's body, it kills them.  The trade off the doctor is making is for a more certain time of death; the person isn't going to die immediately, they probably aren't going to live more than 2-3 years either.  And in exchange for that certainty, they've traded away the patient's quality of life and mental/physical strength, plus a lot of medication and doctor man-hours that could have been directed elsewhere.

Simply put, its treating the elderly as profit centers.  They're going to die anyway and they can't communicate well with the doctor, so just throw as much expensive treatment on as possible.  In the same way that Walmart is in the business of cashing welfare checks from the poor, nursing homes and doctors are in the business of cashing social security checks from the elderly.  We've flooded the elderly with money but removed them from the family members that could make sound medical choices on their behalf.  This also has the side effect that a lot of medical research is directed towards conditions that are common among the elderly and difficult to cure, because that's where the money is.  Which is fine that we're researching that but like, there are some other areas where that money could be doing wayyyy more good.

Basically what I want the same thing that I always want, universal healthcare.  SS was very noble for its time but in this day and age it sucks.  The elderly should benefit from the same social safety nets as the young (although obviously on average they should get a bigger piece of that pie, since on average they need more).  With a more modern healthcare system, treatments that are not necessary for the elderly, or that are very brutal and expensive like chemo, would simply be denied by the government or the heavily regulated private insurance.  Baring any magic cure for aging or post scarcity utopia, at a certain point what people need isn't medication.  They need a calm clean environment, frequent social contact with friends and family.  And if they're going to get medication it should be pain killers or recreational drugs, since those are pretty easy to make and if you're on the way out the side effects are minor.

If that sounds like I'm calling for more hospice care and less keeping people alive, well, I am.  And if that seems callous its not.  You probably could guess this, but I've got an elderly family member and I'm very mad about the type of care they're getting.  So that's the perspective I'm coming from.  I'm also mad about my own payments into SS, because again.  Flat taxes are dumb.  Tax pools that limit who pays in and who benefits are stupid.  Within a government (local or federal), everyone votes, every pays into ONE tax pool and that tax pool gets split up by the people they elected, that's how it should be.  None of this social security and school district bullshit.

Edit: I got a bit distracted there.  My complaint with SS in regards to the boomers isn't that they want to be taken care of in their old age.  Its that they specifically don't want high taxes, inefficient/unfair government spending, redistribution of wealth, welfare, or socialized medicine.  When in reality they are both benefiting from and fiercely protecting something that is all of those things.  Its hypocritical to the point of cartoonishness.  Usual disclaimers that I'm talking about a large group of people and not all Boomers think the things I'm saying, just on average they're vastly more likely to think them.

[smjjames]

I don't see how Social Security is a tax on the young, I thought there isn't a tax to support Social Security.

Also, it sounds like you're conflating Social Security with Medicare because Social Security has nothing to do with healthcare.

Sounds like you have a misperception of Social Security because I'm young AND I benefit from it.

[wierd]

SS is funded pyramid scheme style from a mandated income withholding.

By pyramid scheme, I mean "designed to have more paying in than receiving. "  the many issues with SS not meeting its needs (and needing more funding from other channels) stems from the boomer generation being larger than subsequent generations, combined with longer expected lifespans due to better medicine.  Many problems with SS will self resolve when the boomers die off in large numbers. Until that time, they pose a significant problem to that system by consuming far disproportionately compared to what they paid in.

[smjjames]

And that 'dying off in large numbers' isn't going to happen for at least another 30 years at minimum. It's not a viable strategy by any stretch.

Looks like the GOP is having trouble passing a clean continuing resolution. Which is what they decided to do after ditching their previous plan.

A bit further on that (the article has the window/tab title wrong for some bizarre reason, so, ignore that)

This is what they get for leaving it until effectively the last minute....

[hector13]

Hey man, selling the tax code to the corporations is important shit.

Clearly more important than making sure the government can pay its bills.

[smjjames]

They also haven't made an actual budget in years and keep making a drama of the funding cutoff, every. fucking. time. Primarily by not doing it until the last minute, but other reasons too.

[EnigmaticHat]

I don't see how Social Security is a tax on the young, I thought there isn't a tax to support Social Security.

Also, it sounds like you're conflating Social Security with Medicare because Social Security has nothing to do with healthcare.

Sounds like you have a misperception of Social Security because I'm young AND I benefit from it.

From social security .gov

The current Social Security system works like this: when
you work, you pay taxes into Social Security. We use the
tax money to pay benefits to:
• People who have already retired;
• People who are disabled;
• Survivors of workers who have died; and
• Dependents of beneficiaries.

Social Security helps older Americans, workers who
become disabled, and families in which a spouse or
parent dies. Today, about 167 million people work and
pay Social Security taxes and about 59 million people
receive monthly Social Security benefits.
Most of our beneficiaries are retirees and their families —
about 42 million people.
But Social Security was never meant to be the only
source of income for people when they retire. Social
Security replaces about 40 percent of an average
wage earner’s income after retiring

I was not actually aware it benefited the disabled, so that's fair.  And yeah, I guess I was conflating it with medicare somewhat, since technically SS isn't a healthcare program (although it effectively is, considering who they're giving the money to).  But it most definitely has taxes paid into it.  Comes out of every paycheck. 

[Chevaleresse]

I don't see how Social Security is a tax on the young, I thought there isn't a tax to support Social Security.

What? Social Security is one of the largest components of taxes in the United States.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52408
That's a preeeetty basic thing to not know.

[EnigmaticHat]

I will defend smjjames (and anyone else who didn't know that) in that almost every graph of US spending bundles social security with other things (like welfare) while conveniently leaving out that SS is like 70+% of the bundle.  Thus implying its a much smaller deal than it actually is (apparently according to your chart, last year it was near twice the yearly deficit).  Also I've never heard anyone in news or politics refer to SS as a tax.  I imagine that most politicians live in mortal fear of the AARP.

Edit: Actually its not twice the deficit, since about .2 trillion out of that 1.1 trillion seems to have been medicare with the rest as SS.  But still, my point stands.  Both are welfare that benefits the people who vote against welfare for everyone else.

[wierd]

There is no good solution to the SS problem.  Cutting off people is essentially condemning them to die of hunger and disease. That they live longer than estimated is a different problem entirely, and morally, you cant just cut them off.

On the flip side of that, there *IS* fat to trim on SS;  Many things are charged to SS that should not be, such as mobility scooters that are actually golf carts. (No, really. There's a pretty big difference between something designed to help you because you cannot walk, and something that you have to leave parked in the driveway.) There are also shenanigans with medical procedures and testing that is simply unnecessary except to run up bills, which get charged to SS.  There is plenty of room for fat trimming, but doing so is "unthinkable." (And naturally, whole industrial sectors in geriatric care/medicine have cropped up to exploit this "unthinkability.")

I would be totally down with a REASONABLE* (*As in, does not sacrifice actual needed care, does not throw people on the street, and does not pose significant barriers to people seeking needed care) reforms to what can be charged to SS, as long as it goes hand in hand with reforms of military/defense spending as well. (Good luck with that ever happening though.)

In my opinion, what *Actually* needs to happen is that the tax code needs to be adjusted to make "Legal tax avoidance" no longer a thing at all. Not just for the US economy, but also for other world economies. (Money in a mattress does not promote economic activity!!) "Tax avoidance" should not be possible. Period.  (Also, "Day trading" needs to be made illegal. No, FOR REAL. The switch from old-fashioned long term investing strategies (Talking decades of planning in some cases) to "quarterly planning" at the longest, has prompted the worst behavior from corporations in history. I would give much to see day trading be made illegal world wide.)

 

[Lord Shonus]

A fair bit of that has been dealt with. That's why you don't see ads for the Scooter Store anymore, for example.

[wierd]

No question, progress has been made on that front, but I also remember all the doom and gloom about those reforms causing grandma to have to choose between her pills and her food, and other hyperbole. (Granted, cost of medication is absurdly high, but that has more to do with "charging what the market can bear"-- eg, CAPITALISM-- than it does revision to SS.) The back pressure exerted by the likes of the republicans by leveraging fearmongering via the AARP and pals, was immense. I am quite happy I dont see ads for the scooter store suggesting that it is perfectly OK to charge an unnecessary mobility aid to SS while other people starve, or get denied basic coverage-- However, I am not convinced that the bullshit has been well trimmed.

[EnigmaticHat]

Okay, but we are kicking people out to the streets... just not old people.  Ditto for denying people medical care.  What's the point of giving anyone chemo, while there are still people missing their cancer screenings for lack of money?  Its not about morals, its about efficient use of resources.  Our healthcare is concentrated in areas that produce very little positive outcomes but cost massive amounts of money.  The same basic principle applies for the SS money that goes to shelter and basic life expenses.  The amount of real estate and employee man hours that goes into nursing homes and assisted living homes is staggering.  And like that's fine, but why are we footing the bill for this when so many are living in what are basically slums and still struggling to pay rent?  Likewise, when we have a massive social problem created by people lacking the time and energy to care for their own kids, why are we shifting so much labor into what is effectively a servant profession*?  It just doesn't make sense from a social perspective.  The effect of SS is to hog huge amounts of buying power and resources for the boomers.  This is one of the main things people mean when they say "plundering the younger generation."

Want to improve SS?  Fund it literally any other way.  Nearly a third of our tax revenue should not be a flat tax on people under the age of 60.  Hell, SS is worse than a flat tax; there are limits so you can't pay in more than you'd get out.  Think of it like this: money was always going to be put aside to help retirees.  The SS tax frees up normal tax revenues to go to other sources... meaning that its a fallacy to say that your SS tax isn't going to next generation fighter jets.  Cause if there was no SS tax, some of the fighter jet money would go to retirees instead.

Like let's pretend for a second that social security just doesn't exist.  If I came up to you and was like, hey, you know what would be a good idea?  Let's make a second bracketed income tax, with except unlike the first one, this one only has two brackets.  And the upper bracket, for the people with more income, is a 0% rate.  Also, the primary beneficiaries are explicitly exempt from paying in.  And they'll receive their benefits regardless of whether they need them or not.  This tax will result in an overall ~40% increased tax rate, and about an 80% increase to income tax.  Would you like that?  Would either party like that?  No.  Because its stupid.  Pretending that the money people put in is the same money they get out is borderline magical thinking.  Its just not what happens.  To say nothing of the fact that, super ballpark, at least half of the population will never see their full buy-in back, and something like a third will never see any at all.

I mean its an intentional feature of modern SS that you can gamble on your own lifespan, with real money.  This is an actual thing codified into US law.  On purpose.  Does that sound like reasonable governing to anyone here?

*not in terms lifestyle or social status, but in terms of shifting labor.  In the Victorian age the poor would care for the houses and kids of the rich, while neglecting their own children and homes.  Now, the general population neglects their kids, while taking care of other people's parents and grandparents.  Not just in nursing homes and the like; there's a whole workforce built up around doing old people's shopping for them and driving them around to various locations.  In most countries worldwide, care work like that is done not by employees, but by extended family members.  We want to talk about how people have begun to view time as a commodity, maybe we should talk about where that time is going.

[wierd]

You are forgetting the reason why SS was created in the first place.

After the great depression, there simply was no capital. People were dead ass broke, and people were starving in the streets, and committing suicide all over, because they just did not have the money, or in many cases, a roof over their heads to be ABLE to live properly.  Since people had either had their savings literally plundered by banks, or had to spend it to stay alive during the 30s, there was no reserved money, and no way to care for a whole generation of people.  (Compare, we are primed for a resurgence of this exact kind of problem with the millenial generation; Strapped with oppressive student loans, widespread underemployment, lack of pensions or other reasonable retirement, and one financial calamity away from massive poverty nation wide.)

Enter social security.

It worked great when people treated it with the respect it deserves; You DONT just plunder social security. THAT money is needed for people who desperately need it to stay alive. (This was the mainstream view of society, because the mainstream of society had experienced rock bottom, and knew first hand what it was like to have existential hunger, and to be homeless, even former industrialists.)

These days?  I remind you--- FUCKING GOLF-CARTS.

The problem is not the existence of Social Security. The problem is the way people view it, and abuse it.