[outside1234]

I'll probably be unpopular, but it should be 100% of households.

We are in denial that we can have all of the benefits we want and not raise taxes. The choices we have is:

A) Cutting Medicare B) Cutting Social Security C) Cutting National Defense D) Raising Taxes

Everything else is noise. Choose some combination of A-D.

My choice is a 35% cut in C and D to cover the rest.

[abduhl]

Cutting national defense entirely while raising taxes to 100% on the entire population would still mean a budget deficit by the middle of the 2030s due to the rate of growth of our social programs.

[onezeno]

Do you have a source for that?

[smsm42]

You did look at how fast Medicare and Social Security grows? If yes and you're still thinking they can be sustained with current growth patterns by defense cuts and non-confiscatory taxation levels, you probably have some private math where 1+1 can equal one trillion if you believe hard enough.

[Steko]

Here's an interactive Social Security reformer, it's a year and a half old but the basic math still holds:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230418640457639...

Anyone who thinks Social Security is in crisis is misinformed. It's easily fixable for the foreseeable future without touching benefits. Remove the cap for high earners but keep the current benefit limits.

[smsm42]

Since the benefits are capped, Social Security can be fixed by raising taxes, of course. This would mean abandoning all pretense that Social Security is some kind of self-paying insurance/pension program but it is pretty much done by now anyway. Medicare is much worse - it is projected to grow to almost 20% GDP next 70 years, which means to pay for it you'd need to double the taxes - which is what I mean by confiscatory taxation levels.

[Steko]

"Medicare is much worse - it is projected to grow to almost 20% GDP next 70 years"

Besides the fact that 70 year projections are basically exercises in futility, this statement is not accurate.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html

Under current law, projected Medicare cost rises to 5.7 percent of GDP by 2035, largely due to the growth in the number of beneficiaries, and then to 6.7 percent in 2086

[smsm42]

CBO here: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/93xx... has very different picture. I think the figures you have do not include the raise in medical costs per individual.

[Steko]

The trustee report assumes benefits will stop being paid when the trust fund runs out of money and cost will either be made to conform or services rationed appropriately. The CBO just draws a trend line on health care costs and assumes they go up forever and we'll always pay them. I think it's somewhat possible that the US will look more like the rest of the world in terms of costs as time passes. It's also very possible that we may end up paying radically more for senior care than we do now in 70 years but that's something democracies continue to decide for themselves. There's no blank check being written today about health care in 2083.

[jug6ernaut]

Medicare and Social Security are broken systems. Until you fix the problem you are only making it worse.

[rednukleus]

How do you propose to "fix" Social Security?

[yummyfajitas]

Index it to inflation rather than wages. Choose a fixed basket of goods, compute their price in the future, adjust SS accordingly.

I.e., cause SS to provide a fixed standard of living, rather than an increasing one. Seniors will always live as well in the future as they do today, they just won't live as well as future wage earners.

[anonymoushn]

Clamping the rate of growth of the spending to the rate of growth of the revenue is not a fix if the spending is already much higher than the revenue.

[yummyfajitas]

If wages grow faster than inflation [1], then the revenue will rise faster than spending.

[1] Note that I chose a true inflation measure rather than chained CPI.

[malyk]

Also remove the cap at which you no longer collect SS from payrolls. It's something around $105,000. You don't get taxed for SS on any income past that amount. The SS tax structure is one of the most regressive taxes we have.

[IgorPartola]

Social Security is the easier to fix (IMHO). The nice thing about it is that it's a service for which there are a lot of examples. The basic premise that you put away money for your retirement and that money grows over time is pretty simple and sound. You could streamline it a bit to reduce overhead. Yes, the way it works now is somewhat broken (e.g.: I am not "saving" currently, but paying for people who are now retired, hoping that my grandchildren will pay for me), but in principle it needs only minor adjustments.

Medicare on the other hand is growing very rapidly and the broken healthcare system will only speed up its growth. I don't see a way to fix it without dismantling it and starting over. Not that I am in the Ryan camp: I am not advocating leaving seniors out in the cold. I am just saying that Medicare will require more than minor adjustments.

[anonymoushn]

In current law it is already fixed. When it runs out of bonds in the "trust fund," it will automatically decrease its payouts to become revenue neutral.

[outside1234]

i have a bridge to sell you - interested?

[anonymoushn]

I'm not sure what I've said to suggest that I'd like to buy a bridge (presumably contained in a dry region of a landlocked state). The discussion is about fixes to a perceived problem, but the problem will fix itself if the legislature does precisely nothing. I expect it is easier to get it to accomplish nothing than to accomplish any particular other solution.

[kilroy123]

Maybe we should just do away with SS all together? Just pick a date 20-30 years from now, and cancel the program at that time.

I'm young (under 30) and I just assume it won't be around by the time I'm 65.

[Steko]

Social Security isn't hard to keep going at all. The idea that SS is in some sort of crisis is a complete myth.

"cancel the program at that time."

Yeah ummm, no. This program exists for a reason and it isn't going anywhere. If anything it needs to be strengthened.

[pinko]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/opinion/krugman-that-terri...