[MontaniSemperLiberi]

Social Security + Medicare is $1.29 Trillion in the FY2012 budget. The taxes which people pay to cover those programs come to $862 billion. Of the two, Medicare is ridiculously short. It pays out $468 billion on taxes which amount to $202 billion. Social Security is not nearly as bad, though it is certainly already in arrears. It pays out $761 billion while bringing in $660 billion in taxes.
This does not include either medicaid, or the disabled portion of social security. This is just the stuff for retirees.

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Cold hard numbers. Good post. Cash flow is simple arithmetic. Anyone who wants to understand can understand. The issue is "wants to". PS - Where did you find the 2012 numbers?

[drbuzzard]

The numbers are from the budget office. I got it from a basic googling.

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy12/index.html

there’s a bunch of pdf documents containing it.