Two quibbles: Social security _used_ to have a slush fund to cover variation in employment and income in any given year. That got sucked down to pay for other things, having that fund back would be a very good thing. (The majority of the money worked exactly as you described though).
If the number of people drawing out, is larger then the number paying in, the house of cards collapses. This is why there is something to 'fix': there are more boomers retiring then there are of us to pay in, as a result the little remaining in that fund will be gone very quickly. The only way a pyramid scheme likes SS works is for the base level of payers to keep increasing. Our generation should do fine in terms of collecting SS, the problem is how we will pay for our grandparents SS bill.
Fixing medicare is easy: either ax the whole fucking thing, and make people pay for their own damned bills; or simply pay for any medically necessary procedure (yes. I mean anything from an ingrown toenail to triple by-pass to pre-natal care to putting your dieing Grandma on a vent to keep her corpse breathing for another year)for anyone who shows up at the hospital. Either one of these will be cheaper by any measure then the clusterfuck we have now.
Social security _used_ to have a slush fund to cover variation in employment and income in any given year. That got sucked down to pay for other things, having that fund back would be a very good thing. (The majority of the money worked exactly as you described though).
If the number of people drawing out, is larger then the number paying in, the house of cards collapses. This is why there is something to 'fix': there are more boomers retiring then there are of us to pay in, as a result the little remaining in that fund will be gone very quickly. The only way a pyramid scheme likes SS works is for the base level of payers to keep increasing. Our generation should do fine in terms of collecting SS, the problem is how we will pay for our grandparents SS bill.
Fixing medicare is easy: either ax the whole fucking thing, and make people pay for their own damned bills; or simply pay for any medically necessary procedure (yes. I mean anything from an ingrown toenail to triple by-pass to pre-natal care to putting your dieing Grandma on a vent to keep her corpse breathing for another year)for anyone who shows up at the hospital. Either one of these will be cheaper by any measure then the clusterfuck we have now.
AE
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