The result of boomer cultural and capital domination. Millenials need to grow up and yank power from them, first starting with massive government handouts given to olds
Should I take it that you support privatizing Social Security and eliminating Medicare? That probably won't be a winning political platform with any generation.
As a first step I'd prefer to see both of them dramatically more means tested. There's no reason that someone with millions of dollars of assets should be receiving thousands of dollars a month from the state. I think this position is politically tenable with the looming cuts that will happen automatically over the next decade
Means testing SS would result in elderly people transferring their assets to other people, much as already happens so they can get free nursing home care. Medicare isn’t means treating but Medicaid is, so we can see exactly what happens.
Means testing will also make paying into these programs even less popular. Upper middle class people will ask why, exactly, they’re expected to pay more into a retirement program they will get less out of. That’s a recipe for political change from a party who promises not to do that.
That's not going to happen so you can forget about it. Means testing entitlement programs has been tried before and never got much political support from any generation or political party. It's unwise to create incentives for old people to be poor because then workers will be less likely to also save for retirement in their own separate private accounts.
How is that an incentive? It's a fallback. You're not gonna love comfortably off SS payments alone in this day and age.
Treating this mentality of "taking money out that you put in" as "taking handouts" is the exact reductive mentality being used to try and have the government steal the money you earned from under your nose.
Land owners and old people are single biggest recipients of government benefits. Specifically, Social Security and Medicare, and the legal/police apparatus for ensuring protection of property.
Also, traveling and routing utilities and police and ambulances and all of society around a larger plot of land costs (in time and energy and materials) at least a power of 2 more than a smaller plot of land.
Not only are there are no marginal tax rates for land value tax, but there are tax breaks for elderly, caps on tax increases the longer the land is owned, and tax deferrals (such as 1031 exchange).
I will leave it to the reader to figure out which “tribe” is most represented amongst land owners. And old people receiving Social Security and Medicare.
I find tribe to be a more accurate word than “race”, which is some ever changing confluence of skin tone, ancestry, and other difficult to pin down characteristics.
