Medicare: Go Ahead and Smoke...

[ChipWrecked]

...because we can't afford for you to retire

The educated and fit suck up the bennies, while the working class dies off?

[BCPVP]

Abolish Medicare and SS?

[cdxx]

raise the retirement age. you have to do it. you cannot sustain social security and medicare if people are retiring too early. it would be possible with smaller population, and more specifically low or zero population growth, which exists in some european countries. but since each generation is greater than the last, the retiree population is simply growing too fast.

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
raise the retirement age. you have to do it. you cannot sustain social security and medicare if people are retiring too early.

[/ QUOTE ]
You don't have to do this if you get rid of ss and medicare in the first place...

[Boris]

We've known this for a long time. Smokers pay so much money in taxes and die so young that they are really great for the government. This is true even if you take into account the negligible negative externality from second hand smoke.

[cdxx]

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You don't have to do this if you get rid of ss and medicare in the first place...

[/ QUOTE ]

are you arguing that the government should pocket the contributions it collected and benefits it promised, leaving the largest retiree population in history to care for themselves?

[BCPVP]

Pretty close. Pay off the obligations for those retiring or just about to retire. Abolish the ponzi scheme called Social Security.

[cdxx]

wow, your plan would be THE biggest pyramid scheme in history. even worse than the ponzi scheme you mention.

[BCPVP]

Please elaborate how ending a ponzi scheme would make it "bigger" than it already is.

[[censored]]

[ QUOTE ]
Abolish Medicare and SS?

[/ QUOTE ]

or completely privatize both so they act as targeted savings accounts.