President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I'm not a boomer, and for the record, I'd get rid of everything you mentioned. ...

That said, Boomers aren't gobbling up subsidized health care. There are less than 10 million people nationwide getting subsidized healthcare from Obamacare in total. I don't know the exact numbers, but I am sure only a fraction of those people are boomers. I think the more typical Boomer experiece is that people have seen their health care costs rise dramatically. The typical person, Boomer or otherwise, isn't being subsidized. They are just paying more -- to subsidize Medicare (which is the biggest drag, by far), medicaid recipients and those being subsidized by Obamacare.

In terms of Social Security, you are correct, but because of the fallacy of SS, the typical person nearing retirement sees it as, "I paid all of this money in, now I deserve it back for my retirement." Try explaining that it wasn't actually a savings program, but it was more akin to a poorly conceived ponzi scheme.

As for student loans, I don't see why I should have to bear the costs for a decision that someone else made.

I say that as someone who saw the shitshow we created coming, and was against the rhetoric in the 90s (under Clinton) about how we needed to make it so that everyone went to college. People like me were shouted down then, and now we are reaping what we sowed. They expanded the Federal loan progam mess that already existed with subsidized Stafford loans and Federal guarantees (completely eradicating the private loan market that was market based), and it distorted things further -- because this was the evolution of a mess they had begun in the 60s, like a lot of things we have screwed up. It gave a by-the-numbers demonstration of moral hazzard and its negative effects. It has effectively turned a college degree into what a much cheaper high school degree used to be, putting a generation of people into tens of thousands of dollars of debt by the time they are in their early 20s. It has driven people into colleges, whether that is a good decision or not, because people feel they need to go to just have a leg in the job market. Those people weren't making the same risk/reward decisions they would have had to, because they have borne a reduced portion of the financial risk involved with that decision. At the same time, it hsa driven up the cost of college an insane amount, because the Federal government essentially told colleges that they would be there to provide money to people (subsidized and guaranteed) no matter what, creating a distorted demand curve. It has created the most negative loop possible, enticing people to spend a lot of money on something many wouldn't have if they bore the cost in a direct way, and because of all of the money it pushed into that market, it drove costs through the roof. It's not entirely dissimilar from the mess we have made of our health care system since the 1960s, by destroying that market. To me, the answer isn't to say, "Well, the partial subsidization that fucked things up isn't good, so now we have to forgive all of the debt. ... and worse (as some advocated), subsidize it 100 percent." That is a formula for just making it worse.

 

Good point. I wasn't thinking about Boomers as being that old, and was focused just on Obamacare subsidies.

Yeah, Medicare is the big drag. It likely just gets more onerous as we move forward. There is no way to subsidize that cohort and not drive costs for younger people even further through the roof. It's simple math. The bulk of health care spending comes in those last few years of life, and as with education, Medicare itself has driven up costs by a ton. And we now have more and more (with a lot of expensive) ways to try to keep people alive longer.

It's untenable, particularly any BS populist program that tells people it can somehow subsidize those costs AND take care of younger people's needs AND cover non-catastrophic things AND things like prexisting conditions, etc. But people are seduced by nonsense promises. ... Reason be damned.