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You missed the part about people under 21, that should cut off another ~25% from your estimate. Medicare + Medicaid + Social Security is well over 2 billion, so

You missed the part about people under 21, that should cut off another ~25% from your estimate. Medicare + Medicaid + Social Security is well over 2 billion, so I think it's pretty close.

mac01021 10y ago
I tried to get rid of people under 21 by reducing the population from 320M to 300M, but I guess I should look and see what the actual numbers are.
- ericd 10y ago
  "People under 21 years of age made up over a quarter of the U.S. population (27.1%)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...) So the population over 21 is about 230M.
  - mac01021 10y ago
    Hmm... That's a higher fraction than I expected. It could be much lower 20 years from now.
    - ericd 10y ago
      Yeah, very well could be if the birth rate drops or life expectancy keeps rising.