It should be noted that that a significant part of the reason for the existence of this demographic imbalance is the very existences of theses programs, and their effect on our population.
I don’t simply mean the way someone tends to consume more when there is less(or no) consequences to conception. I’m talking about an offend overlooked failing. The failure to provide for your future by means of children.
You see in any kind of retirement no matter how you work out the math, your basically drawing upon the then existing resources being produced by the then existing population.
That means you have to store up resources, or credits for resources to redeem them later on. Children are not simply an investment in your family and genetic survival, historically they were a direct and practical investment in your future retirement. AS a result one of the main reasons people had large family was to provide them with an inflation proof future way to retire.
When Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid came on the seen naturally that incentive to have a family went away. Of course there are other factors that are contributing as much or more to the destruction of the American family. Abortion, Women in the work force, devaluation of marriage, ect..
The point is we can’t simply close our eyes and pretend that this problem is going to go away with more taxes. Theses programs are effecting our couture and choices in a negative direction that is progressively worsting our situation.
Insolently even if we wanted to tax more then 19% we couldn’t. So revenue is basically dead on arrival, not because we are unwilling to tax more, but because the Federal Government has historically been UNABLE to extract more.
Absolutely correct. Demographics were the flag that the Soviet Union was going to collapse, with Japan and Eastern Europe next, Western Europe soon, the U.S. a few years down the road, China a few years after that (although China will have a nasty depression this decade, possibly worse than the 1930s in the U.S.) and countries like Canada and Australia alive for another generation only because of large resource to population ratios.
In the U.S., we will need doctors, nurses, and nursing home/home health workers, and many will come from overseas because our universities/med schools cost too much. U.S. trained doctors need about $100,000 per year to retire a G.P. debt, over $130,000 per year to retire specialist training.
In any event, we needed the U.S. government to have been running a surplus of about $2 trillion per year over the last 12 years to (partially) fund these programs. Didn’t get that, so benefits will either begin late (raising the age for Medicare, cutting way back on Medicaid) or end early - death panels. The cold equations don’t care what politicians promise, what the people vote for, wishful thinking, self-deceit, any of that.
The best (only) way to mitigate this is to drastically cut regulations, so businesses can operate and expand in the U.S. and quickly let the U.S. be a surplus country again. But we have, at a minimum, 30 years of tough times ahead. This won’t be changed by 4 years of a conservative government, but a frugal government is necessary, lest we go the way of Zimbabwe. And some developed countries are likely to end up that way. Greece, for example, is at grave risk.