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Comment by anonym29 | Hacker News Reader

>Both are required to get us out of this mess.

Disagree on multiple counts.

First - you don't need both - if you cut Social Security and Medicaid altogether, and use the surplus to start paying down debt, that solves 100% of the deficit and starts chipping away at the debt, while this would actually reduce taxes rather than raising them. I'm not asserting that the political will exists to do this (it doesn't), but the idea that you can't balance the budget without raising taxes is obviously false - taxes are nonzero, but you could reduce spending to zero.

Second - you don't actually need either - if you hyperinflate the currency, the value of the existing debt becomes negligible. To wit, I fundamentally agree with the message of the remainder of your post.

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> if you cut Social Security and Medicaid altogether, and use the surplus to start paying down debt

How is making me and almost everyone over 60 homeless going to result in a surplus? There would be all the dead lawmakers to bury, and so much security to try to protect the rest.

That's a "let them eat cake" level of breaking the social contract you're considering

I already noted that this is a political impossibility, we're talking about strict hypotheticals from a budget analysis perspective, not serious proposals.

I'm sympathetic to your struggles if OASI is the difference between you being homeless and not 60+ years into your life. Just know that your benefits are slated to be reduced by a minimum of 21%, automatically starting in 2033 when the trust fund is depleted, per laws already on the books.

Social Security and Medicare are, fundamentally, classic pyramid schemes. They rely on an infinitely increasing number of people to remain fiscally viable. We're at the end of that road now though, U.S. TFR is down ~1.6. These programs are going to crack soon, and anyone under the age of 40 today will never see a penny from either of these programs despite paying in for their entire lives.

I understand that ripping away benefits you already paid for is unfair to your generation, but being forced to fund benefits we'll never receive is also unfair to my generation, to say nothing of all the generations after mine.

We could fund both of them easily with no strain by removing the contribution cap at 250K of income and not raiding the fund for extra change every time the government is pressed for money. The US is not in a demographic situation where Medicare and Social Security are untenable, but removing these programs would impact young people by making them responsible for their elders. It's easier to bear the burden when everyone pays in than everyone having to consider how they're going to afford to support their parents, etc and how they'll afford their definitely sky high private insurance. These two programs are the lesser of evils for the problem of elders.

>I already noted that this is a political impossibility,

Considering your argument is based on your belief 21% equals 100%, I should hope so!

I don't believe I've posed the arguement that 21% and 100% are the same thing, just that an automatic 21% reduction is where we are headed if nothing changes, as the way the program is currently structured and funded is unsustainable and is going to deplete the trust fund by 2033, which is a projection from the SSA themselves.

I'm sure you actually understand reduction of 21% does not mean you will "not see a penny" (i.e. a 100% reduction) yet that's what you wrote, so here we are.

The people who are expecting benefits in 2033 and the people under 40 are two entirely separate generations. The latter will not inherit a Social Security system that is more fiscally stable than the former, only worse.

The whole point of "getting out of this mess" is so that you don't hyperinflate the currency, with all the economic and political damage that causes. "Don't bother doing either, just hyperinflate" is therefore not doing anything at all, just resigning yourself (and the country) to your fate.

Hyperinflation is a different mess from unsustainable debt. I took "getting out of this mess" literally, rather than meaning "getting out of this mess while avoiding getting into any other messes in the process".

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