[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.