Are young people (under 30) happy with the Obama's economy the last 4 years?

[stegosaurus]

No, but the alternative is to vote for the party whose policies would funnel trillions of dollars more from the young to the old.

If anything, it's the Democratic party that wishes to preserve programs that funnel billions upon billions of dollars from the young to the old (Medicare and Social Security).

[stegosaurus]

No, but the alternative is to vote for the party whose policies would funnel trillions of dollars more from the young to the old.

If anything, it's the Democratic party that wishes to preserve programs that funnel billions upon billions of dollars from the young to the old (Medicare and Social Security).

No, because everyone will get old. What the Republicans are trying to do with the Ryan plan is exempt everyone older than 55 from cuts, while anyone under that age has to bear the burden. Either the cuts should be effective immediately (only exempting those already on traditional medicare), or payroll taxes should be cut for those under age 55. I have no desire to subsidize people in their highest earning years just so Romney can win a goddamn election.

a) The average life expectancy is only 78.2 years (38th in the world I learned today). This would imply that there is a sizeable portion of the population who doesn't make it to 65 for one reason or another. In short, not everybody gets "old" (for the purposes of this topic).

b) Regardless of how many people "get old" or not, that doesn't answer the question of why we have two massive programs (so massive that we've created an irreparable dependency on them)  that redistribute resources from the young to old, by design.

FWIW, I agree with you on the fine points of the Romney/Ryan plan, especially regarding the Payroll Tax (which I would prefer to be dramatically reformed).

[stegosaurus]

No, but the alternative is to vote for the party whose policies would funnel trillions of dollars more from the young to the old.

If anything, it's the Democratic party that wishes to preserve programs that funnel billions upon billions of dollars from the young to the old (Medicare and Social Security).

No, because everyone will get old. What the Republicans are trying to do with the Ryan plan is exempt everyone older than 55 from cuts, while anyone under that age has to bear the burden. Either the cuts should be effective immediately (only exempting those already on traditional medicare), or payroll taxes should be cut for those under age 55. I have no desire to subsidize people in their highest earning years just so Romney can win a goddamn election.

a) The average life expectancy is only 78.2 years (38th in the world I learned today). This would imply that there is a sizeable portion of the population who doesn't make it to 65 for one reason or another. In short, not everybody gets "old" (for the purposes of this topic).

b) Regardless of how many people "get old" or not, that doesn't answer the question of why we have two massive programs (so massive that we've created an irreparable dependency on them)  that redistribute resources from the young to old, by design.

FWIW, I agree with you on the fine points of the Romney/Ryan plan, especially regarding the Payroll Tax (which I would prefer to be dramatically reformed).

Ok fine, not everyone will get old. But generally most of us will live to be more than 65 years old, and in many cases much more than that. The reason we have these programs is because old people cannot work, and so the rest of us must support them. I support social security and it's not really the one causing our problems, it's medicare.

I think we need to switch to a national health insurance service for all with means tested subsidies. Perhaps a bismarck model with 4 or 5 competing not for profit institutions trying to provide services at the lowest cost. This will also allow much more pressure on providers to lower cost. Something we also need to go towards is paying providers based on outcomes rather than services provided. So they get paid for taking care of x numbers of patients from different populations, and their payment would be based on that. Right now there is no reason for doctors not to order endless tests. Also institute tort reform of course.

I don't subscribe to the idea that non-retired Americans should be automatically responsible for the well being of retired Americans simply because they are both Americans. I would argue that this responsibility should ultimately fall on the individual, or their family if need be. For that reason, I would support allowing the children of elderly parents to add them to their insurance and earn tax credit for doing so.

Your plan is interesting, but I would be wary of nationalizing health insurance. You are essentially talking about Medicare for all, and thus talking about dragging the entire country into the crisis in a way far more disruptive than poorly conceived payroll taxes. We agree on outcome based payments, however.