You don't have to strangle the youth to feed the elderly. IT is always a false dichotomy to think that you need the poor to provide for the poor. Here are numb

You don't have to strangle the youth to feed the elderly. IT is always a false dichotomy to think that you need the poor to provide for the poor. Here are numbers to consider. Per capita real GDP in 2015 in the US was $51,143. Fourty years ago it was $24,693. We have more than doubled our per-person wealth, and are continuing to increase at 2%, roughly twice the rate of inflation. We are absolutely wealthy as a country. Beyond measure. At some point, it should be reasonable to say some things about how advanced your society should be now. In the past, there have been many points where people and leaders together agreed we were advanced and prosperous enough to invest in our own country. Just in the US, some examples would be: * Public education. Spending money to make sure no matter your means you have access to a generalized curriculum of schooling. * Transportation infrastructure. Be it rail, canals, trollies, roads - even the old dirt roads dug out for carriages, airports, subways, bike paths, or sidewalks. * Clean water. * Sewage * Electricity * Twisted pair * Coaxial * Fiber? * Welfare that tries to insure people do not starve, or sleep in the streets. * Prisons to remove from society those who cannot participate (and for some reason people who like smoking plants). * Guaranteed access to healthcare. Oh wait, only first world countries do that. All of these are expenses, that we pay for in taxes and rationalize as being worth the cost, because our economy can bear the cost. And it has done more than weather these costs, it has exploded even with them upon it, and often because of these expenses - these investments - we are more productive as a result. Peace of mind in retirement may not be as obviously beneficial to the econonmy as having an interstate highway system, but the benefits now should be apparent in how we can easily see that when children are not burdened to care for their ailing parents they prosper. So the question is not if the young are suffering for the rich, because social security has existed for going on five generations since the 40s and has had provable economic benefit in the intervening years. It is important to distinguish the benefits of the expense (social security) from the means to pay for it. This of course ties back into growing wealth inequality, but it is important to separate why it is good to do something and why you might be getting the money to do it the wrong way.