It’s been a tremendously fun summer if you love watching the following activities: brinksmanship, showmanship, talk show host meltdowns and screaming. If you like accomplishing big tasks or being honest with people, you might not have enjoyed yourself so much.
In case you missed it, President Obama and his Democratic colleagues managed to get outflanked on at least two separate occasions by a rookie Speaker of the House and his gang of somewhat functional Congressmen.
We didn’t get a grand bargain; we got a few months and walked the alarmists back from the edge.
We’ll see what the Super Committee – the 12 person bipartisan joint Congressional Committee tasked with crafting a plan for deficit reduction – comes up with to rein in a government that is spending too much and taking in too little, but it’s probably fair to say that most people are expecting something akin to putting a tourniquet on a serious wound. It might stop the bleeding, but it won’t save the limb.
So, I’d like to take this opportunity to propose a completely serious and rather radical solution to our long term budget deficit. Let’s blow up Social Security and Medicare.
Those two programs make up about one-third of the President’s 2011 Budget Proposal according to the New York Times. It might fluctuate based on who you ask and what budget you’re working from, but those two entitlements make up around $1.2 trillion of the $3.7 trillion government expenditures this past year.
They are also widely out of date. Social Security was born in the 1930s and Medicare in the 1960s. Things have changed dramatically since then, but the programs have only been nipped and tucked.
Both are sacred cows. Third rails. You can’t touch either one because you’ll have millions of voting seniors marching on Washington at a frighteningly slow pace.
But we have to touch them. Even if you trim discretionary spending and defense spending and raise taxes on people making over $250,000 or $1 million, we still haven’t solved the long term problem. We should cut back on all of these things, but alone these changes won’t save the limb, they’ll only stop the bleeding.
I’m not proposing we stop sending checks to seniors. They’ve paid their share and they are quite literally entitled. I’m not even suggesting we end Social Security and Medicare for Baby Boomers, although it is their fault we got this far without a solution.
I’m talking about the rest of us. Those of us 40 and younger. Let’s call a spade a spade and admit that Social Security and Medicare as we know them are never going to survive another 25 or 45 years. Why should we try to save something that doesn’t work anymore at the expense of
everything else?
In 1945, there were 42 workers for every Social Security recipient. In 2010, there were less than 3 for every recipient. That is according to the Social Security Administration, not a right-wing blog.
Is there anybody that can look at that ratio and think we’re heading in a good direction? People live longer today — life expectancy is almost 20 years longer than it was in 1935.
Even if you account for infant mortality rates, you’re still looking at an increase of around 10 years according to the SSA and World Bank.
Yet the retirement age hasn’t budged significantly. Baby Boomers are retiring and everyone is living longer, plus we stopped having children at the post-war rate. We’re about to find out what it feels like to be at the bottom of a Ponzi Scheme.
Let’s not let it get that far. Let’s radically reshape the nature of entitlements so people under 40 retire much later and get much less. Not nearly as many of us are working physically taxing jobs we can’t do when we’re 70, so we have time to invest.
We can pay the current seniors what they’re owed, but let’s all admit this can’t last forever. We can save the limb. Let’s raise the retirement age to 75 and cut benefits in half for those of us entering the workforce.
We have time to plan accordingly. The world is different than it was 75 years ago, we should have a different retirement plan. Let’s take the leap and do our part.
Let’s take one for the team. I started an IRA at 20. I’ll work until I’m 75. Spend my Social Security benefits on better schools and better roads because I’m not expecting the check to come anyway.
Don’t hold the system hostage because you’re afraid to touch the third rail. Grab onto it because that’s where all the power is.
