End the Debt Draft

The Ayn Rand Institute ^ | 3-13-14 | Dot Watkins

[RWB Patriot]

Forty thousand dollars. That’s roughly your share of the U.S. national debt. That’s bad, but it’s nothing compared to the debt the government’s going to be racking up in the years ahead thanks mainly to America’s old-age welfare programs.

As the Baby Boomers retire, the bill for Social Security and Medicare will grow fast, setting off a debt tsunami. Economists can estimate the difference between how much government is on track to spend and how much it will raise from taxes. They call this “the fiscal gap.” That number is astronomical: $205 trillion dollars, or more than half a million dollars per person.[i]

Today you and millions of other young Americans are being drafted into debt. Like the military draft, the Debt Draft treats the lives of young people as the property of the state. You have been conscripted to finance other people’s retirement and health care needs, regardless of what impact this will have on your life. Your duty is to set aside your own happiness in order to serve the needs of the old.

[Vaquero]

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
Vladimir Lenin (and most assuredly zer0bama)

[grania]

There's a principle in Economics that money spent in the economy has a tripling effect as it gets spent down the line. Those collecting pensions mostly spend all of the money they are given, a lot of it in the local economy. I would think that the best way to get money into the economy is for seniors to have money to spend. It's being spent on activities and services (staying in the US) with less than to any other group being spent on clothes and other goods manufactured overseas.

I would argue that one of the problems with local economies is that because of low interest rates on savings, seniors have less money to spend than they'd planned on.

[GeronL]

Govt taking your money and giving it to someone else to spend instead of you spending it does not help the economy one bit plus we have to subtract the high cost of government too

[ex-snook]

"As the Baby Boomers retire, the bill for Social Security and Medicare will grow fast, setting off a debt tsunami

People have paid for their social security. Now that jobs that were done in America have been exported, SS is underfunded. Employees in foreign lands do not pay into SS, nor does their employer. Either MAKE IN USA or charge a SS import tariff on incoming tax tree products. If SS is a problem, it's because we don't want to fix it.

[grania]

government taking your money and giving it to someone else

If the gov would balance the budget and had saved money paid into SocSec, it would be pensioners getting back what they paid in plus reasonable increase for investment. Instead, they're giving it for food stamps, overseas misadventures, enabling people who could work, propping up failed industries and banks....and enriching the wealthy. What I'm saying is that if the money went to retirees, it would be about 100% spent, and spent locally, having a terrific multiplier effect on the economy.

As far as interest on savings that seniors would spend? It was brought down to zero for the financial crisis, and it still sits there while the stock market heads towar irrational.

[BfloGuy]

There's a principle in Economics that money spent in the economy has a tripling effect as it gets spent down the line.

Unfortunately, that principle is false.

Spending doesn't create prosperity -- investing in production does. Now, don't take that as advocating for the end of Social Security -- we've come too far to just dump it.

But social welfare spending benefits the individuals who receive it, it does not grow the economy.