A Calming Tonic for Deficit Hysteria

Fight back against attacks on Social Security and Medicare with the followig from Crooks and Liars.

1) Social Security, at current rates, is not expected to run short of money before 2037.

2)The simplest way to "fix" Social Security, if you're worried about a "problem" 27 years in the future, is simply to remove the contribution limit. End of problem. Period. Social Security is not in crisis.

3) The reason politicians want to "fix" Social Security is to increase the SS surplus, so they can use it for other things.

4) Medicare has more serious issues. However the simplest way to fix healthcare in the US is to move single payer, which would reduce healthcare per person by one-third. It has worked for every other country in the history of the world that has done it. It will work for the US. Since we've admitted now that everyone deserves health care, and since it's cheaper, and better, why not use the next round of healthcare to fix Medicare by fixing health care?

The unspoken entitlement is the US military. The US spends about half the entire world's military budget. There is, actually, no one in the world who can invade or seriously threaten the US in any fashion. (Is Canada going to invade? Mexico?) You can easily slash the military budget in half and still be so far ahead of any possible combination of enemies that it isn't even close.

Read the whole thing.