Jeremiah

Congress changed Social Security in the 1970s to have ever-increasing benefits, going up with average wage growth, not merely with CPI, where they don't have to vote each year on the benefits.

Medicare was never self-funding.

As the number of retirees have grown and there are ever fewer number of workers to pay into the Ponzi-like scheme that is social security, people correctly fear that the boomers will get all of theirs, then the Ponzi scheme will likely end.

Medicare is actually in far worse shape than social security, which could still be saved by eliminating that increase by average wage growth provision.

Would address 80% of the problem.

End quote.

Scott writes, This is a good point, but it also frames the problem a little too lucidly for its own good.

The problem with the boomers is that they selfishly refuse to collapse the social security Ponzi scheme on themselves, because they selfishly feel like just because they paid into it, they should get benefits.

Why is it so bad that the boomers won't collapse the Ponzi?

Because then we, the millennials and zoomers, will soon be in the unfair position of having paid into it, but not receiving benefits.

5.

What are we even doing here?

Darwin writes, quote, Looking at some wealth by generation over time, Graffs, I have an intuition that there's a stable and repeating pattern in the US of the elderly accumulating all the wealth and power while the young are struggling and disenfranchised.

and that this creates a legitimate and perpetual intergenerational conflict, where the old people really are hurting the young by keeping wealth away from them and passing policies that benefit themselves and their preferences.

Plus, probably the gerontocracy generally slows down progress and improvement by resisting new ideas and paradigm shifts for as long as physically possible.

And yes, I'm saying this despite material conditions improving over time in general.

This is a separate point about relative positions and interests at a given time point.

Assume that pattern is true.

You could look at each generation noticing this dynamic with their parents' or grandparents' generation, blaming that older generation is particularly bad, and failing to notice and address the repeating pattern and the structural factors that cause it, and say they are being foolish and unfair and mistaken.

And you wouldn't exactly be wrong, but I still have two basic objections to this take.