I DO understand your point about means testing for social security recipients. I think it is an interesting idea. You could not means test based on the value of primary residences, however. These would have to be exempt from the equation, since the elderly have to live in them. Since statistically the largest portion of wealth of social security recipients is due to the value of primary residences, I do not think you are going to get the windfall you would expect by means testing. And I think that if you had any kind of requirement that primary residences be reverse-mortgaged to be sold upon death to pay back benefits you would hear a cacophony of complaint from the children and grandchildren who are complaining about being overtaxed, because the orderly transfer of wealth from one generation to the next would be compromised.
A primary reason it feels like the young are being taxed into oblivion to pay for the elderly is because there are not so many young people being born right now. This is a statistical blip that will eventually pass. Thank goodness there are lots of Latino immigrants coming in, because they have a lot more children, per family, than established white folk do!
What I particularly disagree with is this statement of yours:
<<What kind of sick society puts their kids in a position that they have little or no chance of having a better standard of living than their parents?>>
Based on a global perspective, our American standard of living is already obscenely high. We have something like 8% of population, and are responsible for 25% of global environmental degradation. How much more stuff do we really need? A SUV for every citizen, and ten TVs per household? Since the beginning of time, there has been no expectation that each generation would have a radically better standard of living than their parents, and it seems unnatural to expect that ours can keep soaring the way it is. And compared to western European first world countries with reasonable benefits for their populations, our tax rate is extremely low. |
