>>Medicare and Social Security are just a tax. Calling things by different names changes nothing. The generic point is that an ever increasing group of people

>>Medicare and Social Security are just a tax. Calling things by different names changes nothing. The generic point is that an ever increasing group of people call upon contributions from a shrinking set of people to get paid(Pensions, SS, Medicare etc). Note this is not an investment. It's not like the older people invested in better schools, colleges and healthcare, that the people passing out will spin new methods of making more money with less people. Once you arrive here. You can even call it tax or whatever and it changes nothing in terms of basic math. The only reason something like SS/pensions has not collapsed yet is because they use increasing percentage of taxes to pay for it, than spend it on college or infrastructure or something else. Its not very surprising that people are in awe of Chinese infrastructure or the British healthcare or German education system. You get what you invest in. The US invests in elderly people.