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Any budget proposal that cuts Medicare or social security is dead in the water and it's ridiculous for any group to even consider it. Not only would it be polit

by voxl 1y ago

Any budget proposal that cuts Medicare or social security is dead in the water and it's ridiculous for any group to even consider it. Not only would it be political suicide but it would also literally kill people.

mullingitover 1y ago
Social security lives in a parallel universe to the budget, so they could cancel the program entirely and it wouldn't affect the deficit. Mixing it up with the regular budget is a way to confuse people into being open to killing it, a long-term goal of the cadre of financial geniuses who brought us The Great Depression. Medicare is another story, and until the US has a come to Jesus moment on single payer healthcare and confronting the regulatory capture in healthcare it will only get worse.
- walkabout 1y ago
  > Social security lives in a parallel universe to the budget, so they could cancel the program entirely and it wouldn't affect the deficit. 100% true, if you're operating in sane-world where anything makes sense. Here in insane world, my pet theory is that, given another year (maybe two, they might wait until after the midterms, assuming they hold on to congress) we're going to see an attempt to nullify the government debt owned by Social Security by converting it into some convoluted scheme involving crypto-backed-by-the-stock-market or something. Ta-da, debt reduced, deficit reduced (by the amount of interest on the debt owned by the trust fund)! Plus sooooo many opportunities to steal. This'll kill the program stone-dead, but it'll take a little while. Kinda like how they already killed Obamacare by removing the individual mandate, and they're just waiting for the death-spiral to hit bottom so they can declare the program a failure and proof that we should never try to fix healthcare in any kind of actually-decent way again.
- Herring 1y ago
  > come to Jesus moment Haha. Last time it took the great depression and intense economic pain for americans to snap out of it and actually build a slightly better world (New Deal). I wouldn't expect it to take anything less this time around. Europe required 2 world wars and over 100M dead.
- drdec 1y ago
  > they could cancel the [social security] program entirely and it wouldn't affect the deficit I don't think this is true. During the surplus years the savings vehicle was US bonds. So social security lent the US government money. Now that we are not in a surplus situation, we are using money from those bonds to pay benefits (we are also using SS revenue of course, only part of the payouts come from the bonds). So if the program were cancelled, the bonds could revert back to the US government - in other words a bunch of debt would be forgiven and would not need to be paid out. Deficit (and debt) reduced.
  - mullingitover 1y ago
    > So if the program were cancelled, the bonds could revert back to the US government - in other words a bunch of debt would be forgiven That seems like a passive-voice way of saying "We could steal from millions of people, pocketing the retirement savings they worked for their entire lives." Also, there's nothing stopping Social Security from upping the cap and thus returning to surplus, aside from the group of people who would absolutely love to steal from the fund.
    - rileymat2 1y ago
      > That seems like a passive-voice way of saying "We could steal from millions of people, pocketing the retirement savings they worked for their entire lives." For a lot of younger people the view is they promised themselves something unsustainable and expect young people to cover it.
      - mullingitover 1y ago
        Is it? Is that a thing that has been shown to motivate young voters? If anything I would believe that younger voters would be in favor of more social safety net. Many would be comfortable with the government outright nationalizing most industries.
        collingreen 1y ago
nitwit005 1y ago
Our health system already kills people, and people seem essentially okay with that. But, I agree about the political suicide. I unfortunately don't believe anyone is even going to attempt reform after how successful the Republican party's attacks on Obamacare were. People will just conclude there's no reward for trying.
InTheArena 1y ago
A couple of points: 1) The deficit applies to discretionary budget. Medicare and Social Security are not discretionary. 2) Really. You can't cut anything out of medicare and social security (both of which are the most expensive program of the kind compared to any other first world equivalent) without killing people? There is not a cent of waste in these programs?

by voxl 1y ago

mullingitover 1y ago

Social security lives in a parallel universe to the budget, so they could cancel the program entirely and it wouldn't affect the deficit. Mixing it up with the regular budget is a way to confuse people into being open to killing it, a long-term goal of the cadre of financial geniuses who brought us The Great Depression. Medicare is another story, and until the US has a come to Jesus moment on single payer healthcare and confronting the regulatory capture in healthcare it will only get worse.

walkabout 1y ago
> Social security lives in a parallel universe to the budget, so they could cancel the program entirely and it wouldn't affect the deficit. 100% true, if you're operating in sane-world where anything makes sense. Here in insane world, my pet theory is that, given another year (maybe two, they might wait until after the midterms, assuming they hold on to congress) we're going to see an attempt to nullify the government debt owned by Social Security by converting it into some convoluted scheme involving crypto-backed-by-the-stock-market or something. Ta-da, debt reduced, deficit reduced (by the amount of interest on the debt owned by the trust fund)! Plus sooooo many opportunities to steal. This'll kill the program stone-dead, but it'll take a little while. Kinda like how they already killed Obamacare by removing the individual mandate, and they're just waiting for the death-spiral to hit bottom so they can declare the program a failure and proof that we should never try to fix healthcare in any kind of actually-decent way again.
Herring 1y ago
> come to Jesus moment Haha. Last time it took the great depression and intense economic pain for americans to snap out of it and actually build a slightly better world (New Deal). I wouldn't expect it to take anything less this time around. Europe required 2 world wars and over 100M dead.
drdec 1y ago
> they could cancel the [social security] program entirely and it wouldn't affect the deficit I don't think this is true. During the surplus years the savings vehicle was US bonds. So social security lent the US government money. Now that we are not in a surplus situation, we are using money from those bonds to pay benefits (we are also using SS revenue of course, only part of the payouts come from the bonds). So if the program were cancelled, the bonds could revert back to the US government - in other words a bunch of debt would be forgiven and would not need to be paid out. Deficit (and debt) reduced.
- mullingitover 1y ago
  > So if the program were cancelled, the bonds could revert back to the US government - in other words a bunch of debt would be forgiven That seems like a passive-voice way of saying "We could steal from millions of people, pocketing the retirement savings they worked for their entire lives." Also, there's nothing stopping Social Security from upping the cap and thus returning to surplus, aside from the group of people who would absolutely love to steal from the fund.
  - rileymat2 1y ago
    > That seems like a passive-voice way of saying "We could steal from millions of people, pocketing the retirement savings they worked for their entire lives." For a lot of younger people the view is they promised themselves something unsustainable and expect young people to cover it.
    - mullingitover 1y ago
      Is it? Is that a thing that has been shown to motivate young voters? If anything I would believe that younger voters would be in favor of more social safety net. Many would be comfortable with the government outright nationalizing most industries.
      - collingreen 1y ago

nitwit005 1y ago

Our health system already kills people, and people seem essentially okay with that. But, I agree about the political suicide. I unfortunately don't believe anyone is even going to attempt reform after how successful the Republican party's attacks on Obamacare were. People will just conclude there's no reward for trying.

InTheArena 1y ago

A couple of points: 1) The deficit applies to discretionary budget. Medicare and Social Security are not discretionary. 2) Really. You can't cut anything out of medicare and social security (both of which are the most expensive program of the kind compared to any other first world equivalent) without killing people? There is not a cent of waste in these programs?