The elephant in the room everyone is ignoring

Take a moment to consider this little snapshot of where we are:

The federal government spent a record $3,727,014,000,000 in the first ten months of fiscal 2019 (October through July), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.

While spending that record $3,727,014,000,000, the government ran a deficit of $866,812,000,000.

And, no, tax cuts are not to blame. This is:

. . . two-thirds of the entire increase in spending is due to just other three items in the budget: health care spending (Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare), Social Security, and interest payments on the debt.

In other words, it’s entitlement spending – and more specifically, health care spending  – that is driving up the deficit, not tax cuts.

This scenario makes it obvious we are not sending our most mature and principled citizens to Congress or the White House.

At some point, the federal government's power to tax and to print money and to jack around with interest rates is not going to be enough to stave off the reckoning.

And the cattle-masses don't want a reckoning anyway. They've come to see redistribution as some kind of essentially American virtue. They're scared to death of considering what it would look like to take charge of their own destinies rather than foist that duty off onto a federal government that was not designed for such things.

The economic illiteracy of the Very Stable Genius - today's edition

The first exhibit has already become an Internet and cable-news snicker. I'm sure cartoon depictions of Tariff Man are already starting to crop up:

....I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN

The all-caps extolling of being rich as his perception of one of the country's primary virtues is a nice touch. But this tweet-length blurt is also rich with other glimpses of the VSG worldview: the notion that open trade is a "raiding" of America's economic abundance, the provocative "I-want-them-to-pay" phrasing, implicit in which is that he can later sit down with leaders of countries to which it is aimed and expect them to shrug it off as "just business," with no ruffled feathers.

And, of course, his ignorance of the obvious point about tariffs: They are taxes. Consumers of end products and, in fact, entities up and down the supply chain pay for this needless increase in prices.

Exhibit Two:

Since the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s aides and advisers have tried to convince him of the importance of tackling the national debt.

Sources close to the president say he has repeatedly shrugged it off, implying that he doesn’t have to worry about the money owed to America’s creditors—currently about $21 trillion—because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it becomes even more untenable.

The friction came to a head in early 2017 when senior officials offered Trump charts and graphics laying out the numbers and showing a “hockey stick” spike in the national debt in the not-too-distant future. In response, Trump noted that the data suggested the debt would reach a critical mass only after his possible second term in office. 

“Yeah, but I won’t be here,” the president bluntly said, according to a source who was in the room when Trump made this comment during discussions on the debt.
The episode illustrates the extent of the president’s ambivalence toward tackling an issue that has previously animated the Republican Party from the days of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of Barack Obama.

But for those who have worked with Trump, it was par for the course. Several people close to the president, both within and outside his administration, confirmed that the national debt has never bothered him in a truly meaningful way, despite his public lip service. “I never once heard him talk about the debt,” one former senior White House official attested.

Marc Short, who until recently worked for Trump as his legislative affairs director, said he believed the president recognized “the threat that debt poses” and he pointed to Trump’s concern “about rising interest rates” as evidence of his concern for the matter. 

“But there’s no doubt this administration and this Congress need to address spending because we have out-of-control entitlement programs,” Short said, adding, “it’s fair to say that... the president would be skeptical of anyone who claims that they would know exactly when a [debt] crisis really comes home to roost.”

Again, along with his economic illiteracy, other traits of his come through in this report. Really let "I won't be here" sink in. This is beyond narcissism; it's solipsism. And he's such a bonehead he has no qualms about putting it on full display. So much for the deep love of country his shills always tell us about.

Why is he so unwilling to look squarely at the cause of the problem (entitlements)? Because it doesn't make him look like a winner. He wants to be seen as the take-care-of-everybody president. He's not about to convey hard truths to the American people.

No, he bought into the grow-our-way-out-of-it school, and apparently so has Stephen Moore. What a guy with a sound mind like Moore is doing swallowing that Kool-Aid is mystifying. Well, maybe not. He's held the VSG in an unwarranted degree of regard since the VSG entered the presidential fray.

Stephen Moore, a conservative economist at the Heritage Foundation and an economic adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, recalled making visual presentations to Trump in mid-2016 that showed him the severity of the debt problem. But Moore told The Daily Beast that he personally assured candidate Trump that it could be dealt with by focusing on economic growth.

“That was why, when he was confronted with these nightmare scenarios on the debt, I think he rejected them, because if you grow the economy… you don’t have a debt problem,” Moore continued. “I know a few times when people would bring up the enormous debt, he would say, ‘We’re gonna grow our way out of it.’”

Moore has since championed this approach to tackling the debt as a key part of “Trumponomics,” and has co-authored a book supporting it.

As Moore recalled, a belief that robust economic growth would solve all problems was the way Trump—starting in 2016—justified the cost of his ambitious proposals to slash taxes, pursue big infrastructure projects, and simply avoid massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Since then, the president has continued to show indifference over the national debt, to the consternation of more traditionally conservative associates.

This person nails it:

“He understands the messaging of it,” the former senior White House official told The Daily Beast. “But he isn’t a doctrinaire conservative who deeply cares about the national debt, especially not on his watch… It’s not actually a top priority for him… He understands the political nature of the debt but it’s clearly not, frankly, something he sees as crucial to his legacy.”

And that legacy, not the long-term stability of the nation he presides over, is what matters to him.

This doesn't go over well with anybody beyond the VSG's base. Either somebody has to really go upside his head and say, "Get a clue, Mr. President," or the GOP has to part ways with him. Otherwise, we're faced with the third scenario, and Wayne Allen Root and Sean Hannity ain't gonna like that one at all.

Dealing with the entitlement crisis is a prime example of why populism must not overshadow conservatism

LITD recently liked to a bracing and unflinching Manhattan Institute proposal for a federal budget that once and for all stems the tide of increasing government indebtedness.

Michael R. Strain at the American Enterprise Institute offers another important contribution to the conversation. He examines the political and ideological angle. In fact, the title of his piece at Bloomberg is, "If Republicans Won't Confront Entitlements, Who Will?"

He reviews the recent lack of Republican spine from ostensible conservatives, which mainly has appeared during election cycles when the likes of Mitt Romney and, more unfortunately, Paul Ryan, felt the need to couch their intentions in terms of "protecting" Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from those who would cut spending on them.

But now we have layered upon that customary fecklessness this new populism that swept over the nation's political scene with the advent of the Very Stable Genius:

President Donald Trump’s position on Medicare and Social Security has carried over from campaign season and is outside the Republican norm.

He has repeatedly stated that he will not cut spending on Medicare and Social Security. The president's will about this appears to be strong. For example, he resisted his budget director’s attempt last fall to advocate for changes in Medicare and Social Security that would reduce their future spending along with the national debt.

For his part, House Speaker Ryan has still presented the typical GOP view. “Good reforms can mean that we can better perform the mission of these important programs, health and retirement security, without bankrupting the country,” he said last month. The speaker expressed optimism that if Republicans keep the House and expand their majority in the Senate following next month’s midterm elections, then such reforms could occur.

Count me as skeptical. Congressional Republicans have been quite happy to go where the president is pointing on entitlements and on much else. If anything, Democrats are moving toward expanding spending on these programs.

If Congressional conservatives don't grow spines and forthrightly address this, their principles will be hopelessly muddied, and there will be real-life implications:

Entitlement reform is more than an accounting exercise. At stake is the health care and retirement security for future generations. The sooner we act, the better we will be able to protect those who will be affected by the change. Conservatism has seen this issue as an exercise in advancing the common good.

The GOP’s turn away from reducing future entitlement spending is bad for conservatism, which has prided itself on promoting the common good and possessing a serious governing vision based on objective reality and prudent judgment.  

Populism is polluting this vision. President Trump knows who elected him, and many of his supporters think they would be hurt by changes to Medicare and Social Security. The GOP’s abandonment of entitlement reform is another example of putting the good of the whole aside in favor of what’s good for the tribe. 

Relying on the Very Stable Genius to have a "very good brain" and have a plan to "take care of everybody" is a pretty poor substitute for looking squarely at what we're facing and putting on the big-boy pants and dealing with it.

We'e here because about a hundred years ago, this nation became enamored of the notion that government ought to address the two givens of the human condition: getting sick and growing old. It was a bad idea, but that's water under the bridge. We now have to do what's necessary to avert the country being submerged in debt we can't ever repay.

Saturday roundup

While here at LITD we are wont to keep the Three Pillars at the ready when discussing the nature of conservatism, it's important to remember that as a worldview it is the distillation of various strands of thought. And we must admit that some of our forebears had some funny ways about them. Richard M. Weaver's notions that medieval Europe and the antebellum South were as close to model societies as humankind has seen, that jazz was barbaric and devoid of musical principles, and that war could be conducted according to a chivalric code are thorny. Midge Decter had to call out Russell Kirk for remarks that smacked of an anti-Israel stance. Bill Buckley had to pry the fingers of the Objectivists and Birchers from National Review.

All this came to mind earlier today as I digested two nature-of-conservatism pieces I ran across: Matthew Continetti's Washington Free Beacon essay entitled "There's No Escaping Trump" and Andrew Sullivan's New York Magazine piece "America Desperately Needs a Healthy Conservatism."   Continetti is of the face-it-Trump's-impact-on-the-Republican-variety-is-also-leaving-a-permanent-mark-on-conservatism-as-an-ideology variety. Sullivan was inspired to write his piece by having just read Conservatism: An Introduction to the Great Tradition by Roger Scruton. I'm not so sure I buy his assertion that conservatism is, by nature of being a product of a particular place and time (the West over the last two-plus centuries) exclusive to certain peoples. Seems to me the Three Pillars will rock any society in which it's tried. He also veers off into a "conservative" argument for an environmentalism predicated on the global climate being in some kind of trouble. Talk about kinky! But they are both worth a rub of the chin. I may explore the train of thought they've engendered when time permits.

Here's what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore to a photo shoot with a construction crew:

Ocasio-Cortez was pictured wearing a $3,500 outfit as she posed with construction workers.​ She was decked out in a Gabriela Hearst blazer ($1,990), Gabriela Hearst pants ($890), and some Monolo Blahnik shoes ($625).

Secretary of State Pompeo on Global-Test's end-run regarding Iran:

"What Secretary Kerry has done is unseemly and unprecedented. This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world's largest state sponsor of terror and, according to him... he was talking to them, he was telling them to wait out this administration."

[snip]

"You can't find precedent for this in U.S. history and Secretary Kerry ought not to engage in that kind of behavior," he said. "It's inconsistent with what the foreign policy of the United States is as directed by this president, and it is beyond inappropriate."
Pompeo  pointed out that he saw Kerry at the Munich Security Conference in February with former Obama Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Obama Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, calling them "the troika."

"I'm confident that they met with their troika counterparts," Pompeo continued. "I wasn't in the meeting, but I am reasonably confident that he was not there in support of U.S. policy with respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran -- who this week, fired Katyusha rockets toward the United States embassy in Baghdad and took action against our consulate in Basra." 

He added: "Actively undermining U.S. policy as a former secretary of state is literally unheard of."

Great Heidi Munson piece at The Resurgent entitled, "Do You Ever Feel Abandoned By God? Emotions Aren't Always Our Best Guide."  Any given moment in our lives, however dire, is a mere snapshot, and we never have all the facts and context. Plus, God is in charge and loves us infinitely.

Great Daren Jonescu essay entitled "Turning Sadness Into Sentimentality":

I almost called this little essay “Turning Tragedy Into Tripe.” For I am thinking of the inevitable September 11th anniversary “memorials.” There are ways to remember life- or world-changing moments without turning them into emotional pablum. The modern world, however, has lost those ways, just as it has lost its way in general with regard to the meaning of history, the lessons of experience, and the adult imperative of rising above that manipulative sentimentality and cloying “social feeling” which, in the name of “never forgetting,” serve only to infantilize and diminish the souls of men.

If you were personally involved in the 9/11 attacks, or lost close friends or beloved family members that day, you will naturally experience some echo of the old pain as the calendar reminds you of your suffering. But for everyone else, the pretense of deep feeling — whether of the patriotic “USA, USA” sort or the self-centered “Oh, dear me” sort — is something that must be dredged up, much like the popular outpouring of feeling that one witnesses after the death of a celebrity, from Princess Diana to Robin Williams to John McCain. Everyone wishes to be a part of the “event,” and to act out a level of intimate engagement that is not grounded in any personal reality, but rather in a desire to belong, i.e., to share in a great communal feeling through the sort of self-annihilation that late progressive man mistakes for self-expression.

We all know what has to be faced in order for this looming grimness to be reversed:

The federal government collected a record $1,521,589,000,000 in individual income taxes through the first eleven months of fiscal 2018 (October 2017 through August 2018), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.

However, the federal government also ran a deficit of $898,112,000,000 for those eleven months, according to the statement.

Check out the video of the Weather Channel guy waxing dramatic in the Florence wind, leaning into it, while in the background a couple of people stroll by in normal fashion. But, hey, if you're going to perpetuate the meme that weather is getting worse due to human advancement, a little theatricality is useful tool.

The impossible costs of putting government in the business of caring for our health

Here's some front-page news for you:

Medicare will not be able to cover the cost of in-patient care beginning in 2026, three years earlier than initially predicted.

The Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund, or HI, will only be able to cover 91 percent of costs in 2026, according to a trustee report released on Tuesday. This would leave the trust fund $1.4 billion in debt. That number will increase to $58.7 billion the next year, according to the report.

The HI trust fund was previously expected to become insolvent in 2023, according to the Congressional Research Service. (RELATED: Medicare Part D Costs Increased Despite Less Drugs Being Prescribed)

The HI trust fund, or Medicare Part A, “helps pay for hospital, home health services following hospital stays, skilled nursing facility, and hospice care for the aged and disabled.” Medicare Part A paid $293.3 billion in benefits in 2017.

And nothing will be done about it. Once government assumes the role of Santa Claus, it's political suicide for anyone to suggest that it's abad idea.

Sunday roundup

Stephen Hayes at The Weekly Standard says that just because DJT has bellowed that no changes will be made to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and thus given the more timid Pubs in Congress cover, the problem hasn't gone away:

The math isn’t complicated. If the federal government doesn't reform entitlements soon, the country will face a debt crisis. There is no disputing this. It's inevitable. The only unknown is timing. And the stubborn determination of some leaders in both political parties to ignore runaway entitlement growth—the most urgent domestic challenge facing the United States—means the crisis will come sooner rather than later.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2008 federal debt was 39 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). In the summer of 2016, it was 75 percent of GDP. Without changes, it's projected to be 86 percent of GDP in 2026, and 20 years after that, in 2046, it will be 141 percent of GDP—an all-time high. That is a disastrous trajectory with potentially devastating consequences. In the anodyne jargon of the CBO: "The prospect of such a large debt poses substantial risks for the nation and presents policymakers with significant challenges."

Hayes points out that Paul Ryan is the only person in the conversation who is willing to talk about taking action right away, but that even he presents a problem. His pony-in-here-somewhere sunniness puts way too much stock in bringing Squirrel-Hair along:

Paul Ryan doesn't see the gulf between congressional Republicans and Trump that seems clear to us. Ryan said last week that he believes Trump will support some entitlement reform, despite the president's many promises to protect the current system. "[In] all my conversations with the president, he says, 'I don't want to change Medicare benefits for people in or near retirement,' and we agree with that," Ryan said.

We suspect this is better seen as evidence of Ryan's undying optimism than a real possibility of entitlement reform under President Trump. But if the president truly wants to fix Washington and address the expanding debt, as he often claims, he can turn to Ryan for solutions.

As the president said in his address to Congress: "The time for small thinking is over." 

David E. Sanger and William J. Broad at the New York Times look extensively at the full scope of the North Korean nuclear missile threat.  The argument can be made that they tell us more than we really should know, but there it is: the previous administration had a program of ramping up cyberattacks against North Korea's missile tests. Now that that cat is out of the bag, it is useful to know that the program had limited success, and now the scenario comes down to this:

[President Trump] could order the escalation of the Pentagon’s cyber and electronic warfare effort, but that carries no guarantees. He could open negotiations with the North to freeze its nuclear and missile programs, but that would leave a looming threat in place. He could prepare for direct missile strikes on the launch sites, which Mr. Obama also considered, but there is little chance of hitting every target. He could press the Chinese to cut off trade and support, but Beijing has always stopped short of steps that could lead to the regime’s collapse.

In two meetings of Mr. Trump’s national security deputies in the Situation Room, the most recent on Tuesday, all those options were discussed, along with the possibility of reintroducing nuclear weapons to South Korea as a dramatic warning. Administration officials say those issues will soon go to Mr. Trump and his top national security aides.

They point out, toward the end of the article, that DJT tweeting "It won't happen" with regard to North Korea acquiring intercontinental missiles does nothing to enhance his range of options. As we saw a few short years ago in the Syrian situation, red lines causally tossed out by US presidents can have unsavory consequences.

While we're on the theme of Squirrel-Hair running his mouth and thereby upping the chaos level in our country, we see the latest evidence that Ben Sasse is the kind of principled and level-headed political figure we need more of in post-America. He released a statement laying out the stakes of tweeting that Obama tapped phones in Trump Tower without immediately substantiating such a claim:

Claims are one thing, but we need to deal in actual proof. If the president of the United State is to offer up the idea that wiretapping did occur, he should be ready with evidence to back it up. Otherwise, it looks like an attempt to distract from something else.

Politicians in D.C. should take note and model themselves after Ben Sasse.

“We are in the midst of a civilization-warping crisis of public trust, and the President’s allegations today demand the thorough and dispassionate attention of serious patriots. A quest for the full truth, rather than knee-jerk partisanship, must be our guide if we are going to rebuild civic trust and health.”

Wiretapping is a serious claim. If it occurred, it needs to be dealt with, regardless of political party. If not, alleging such things should result in swift rebuke.

Identity politics doesn't play Peoria nearly as well as the jackboots assume:

ABC can’t be accused of underplaying When We Rise, its eight-hour drama miniseries chronicling the struggles and setbacks of LGBT activists in the 20th century.

Some thought the show, created by award-winning gay activist Dustin Lance Black and aired on four nights this week, goes out of its way to portray middle America as intolerant homophobes. When We Rise received saturation ad coverage during the Oscars ahead of its premiere this week, to the extent that one Twitter commentator joked that if he drunk alcohol every time he saw an advert for the show, he’d be dead by the end of the Academy Awards broadcast.

But part one of When We Rise flopped on Monday. As a result, ABC rescheduled Modern Family to run just before the second installment to boost ratings. However, viewership of the second part fell almost 1 million viewers from its premiere, netting an audience of only 2.05 million on Wednesday, which is pathetic for prime-time slot on a commercial TV network.

The final part of the miniseries is Friday night. (President Trump’s address to congress on Tuesday delayed the show’s transmission by a day.)

Doubtless there will be devotees of the show who will blame the president for interrupting the flow of When We Rise, which stars Guy Pearce, Mary Louise Parker and Whoopi Goldberg.

But its failure more likely stems from the fact that viewers don’t respond well to ‘virtue scheduling’ on TV. When We Rise at times resembled an infomercial for GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders). Even the New York Timesdidn’t give the show a rave—when the Grey Lady sniffs that a starry gay-rights drama “plays like a high-minded, dutiful educational video,” you know the show is in trouble.

The marketing was also disastrous, with Lance Black coming across as vocal and passionate about his series but never seeming to make up his mind whether he wanted to appeal to Trump voters or take them on with his new creation.

Good on ya, Elaine! The new Transportation Secretary halts funding for California's bullet train.

Medicare explained

Unworkable by design:

The federal government is set to cut Medicare spending on older Americans and also to extract more Medicare taxes from younger Americans who can’t get any benefit from the program.

“Medicare is totally flying under the radar,” Dr. Lee Vliet, a preventive medicine physician with practices in Arizona and Texas, tells Breitbart News.

“Medicare is a single payer system in that funding comes from the taxpayers, but it is like Obamacare in preserving a lucrative role for private cronies, who receive the government money and disburse it,” Vliet explains. “When Medicare was enacted there was immediate trouble with an explosion in costs, resulting in an almost immediate violation of the original legislative promise of no interference with physician decision-making, or with their compensation.”

Older Americans on Medicare have faced big out-of-pocket costs that are about to get even bigger. In a report on Obamacare’s sixth year, Heritage Foundation health policy expert Dr. Robert Moffit notes that President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reform would cut $715 billion from Medicare over the next decade to help pay for Obamacare.

“It is logically impossible to cut payments for Medicare services without affecting seniors who depend on those services,” Moffit writes, observing that in their 2015 report, the Medicare Trustees confirmed the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Chief Actuary’s concerns about the severe impact of Medicare healthcare provider payment reductions on older Americans’ access to healthcare.

The CMS Actuary projected that by 2040, most hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies will become unprofitable, leading to a significant reduction in access to healthcare for older Americans.

“Few seniors have complained about the lack of an alternative, or the fact that seniors must enroll in Medicare Part A if they want their Social Security benefits,” Vliet observes. “The question is: Will Medicare be able to continue to provide the care today’s seniors expect? The answer is an unequivocal NO.”

Medicare is a government-run ponzi scheme, enacted by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, which shifts the cost of healthcare for current older Americans on to younger working Americans.

In addition to the problem of increasing restrictions on healthcare for Americans on Medicare, there is the other dilemma of forcing younger, working Americans to pay for current Medicare recipients’ health needs even though the Medicare program will unlikely be there for them when it is their turn to retire. The question remains whether younger Americans should be able to save for their own retirement healthcare rather than be forced to pay taxes into a declining Medicare system.

Americans must sign onto Medicare Part A – which covers hospitalization – when they turn 65, or else forfeit their Social Security benefits. Unelected bureaucrats created this rule in the 1990s during the Clinton administration, even though the actual Social Security or Medicare legislations say nothing about such a requirement. A lawsuit aimed at decoupling the two programs failed in 2012, leaving any remedy of the situation up to Congress.
Physician and Arizona state Sen. Dr. Kelli Ward (R) – who is running a primary challenge against incumbent U.S. Sen. John McCain, tells Breitbart News, “Unelected bureaucrats have no business forcing government-controlled healthcare on Americans who choose other options.”
“Holding hostage a major portion of a worker’s lifetime earnings is not only unethical – a fiduciary dollar is a fiduciary dollar – it is also in this case entirely unconstitutional,” Ward adds. “I enthusiastically agree with Senator Mike Lee that all regulatory burdens proposed by executive branch agencies must be approved by Congress as required by Article I of the Constitution: ‘All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress’ actually means ALL ‘legislative powers.’”

“Why would the government want to force people to take this Medicare benefit?” Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and a specialist in internal medicine, tells Breitbart News. “Soon after Medicare was passed, Johnson wanted to force people into Medicare Part A because he wanted his program to succeed and he expected it wouldn’t if people still had the option to purchase private insurance.” 

She continues:

And so Johnson basically talked all the insurance companies into cancelling policies for everybody over the age of 65. People were thus forced into Medicare. The financing of Medicare from the beginning was designed to fail or to be a ponzi scheme. I don’t think they foresaw the dramatic change in the demographics that have occurred, but nevertheless, in the way it was structured, money was never set aside, it was never invested for the people who were putting their money into it. It was always set up to depend upon new taxpayers.

At the time Medicare was signed into law, the average life expectancy was approximately 69 years. Because of advances in medicine, many seniors in 2016 are living well into their 80s and beyond. 

“Longevity has definitely improved and, in addition, the baby boomers didn’t have enough children,” Orient says. “Now we’re down to two or fewer working people supporting each and every retired person. This is a burden the younger generation cannot sustain.”

The idea of opting out of Medicare, however, often raises objections from both those who believe they are entitled to the government-run health care program because they paid taxes into it while they were working, and those who would simply prefer to have the government “take care” of healthcare for them.

Orient says older Americans who believe they are “entitled” to Medicare because they paid into the system aren’t understanding how the ponzi scheme works. In addition, with Medicare about to be even further restricted, current recipients will be in for a rude awakening as soon as next year when the program will feel even more like a burden to be endured.

“People are in denial, particularly about the fiscal realities of Medicare,” she continues. “Bernie Sanders may say that he wants to put everybody in Medicare, and his program has been estimated to cost from anywhere between $2 trillion to $14 trillion. Where is that money going to come from? The fact is it doesn’t exist! It’s hard to believe anyone would have confidence in such a plan.”

Vliet agrees that some are not understanding the realities about Medicare.

“Some people are looking at Medicare as it has been, not as it will be under the new rules, which don’t even really kick in until 2017,” she explains. “When people see that Medicare will be broke and thus will be restricting many more procedures that they may need, as well as hospital readmissions, etc. – and it will get worse when Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board gets here in 2017 – they will want some other options.”

So make the conscious choice not to be part of the cattle-masses yelling, "Hey, this was promised to me!" while in the remaining human part of your brain you know the program's "sustainability" has long been exhausted.

The impossible cost of regarding government as an agent of amelioration for the impact of sickness and old age

Robert Tracinski at The Federalist succinctly looks at the effects of imbuing government with functions beyond those specific in the Constitution:

In response to my speculation that we’re going to end up reforming Social Security by letting it break, several people told me—disapprovingly, which is good for them—that politicians will just fill the gap the way they always have, by borrowing more money.

Well, here’s the thing about that. They can try borrowing their way out of this, but by the time Social Security breaks down for good, 19 years from now, they might find it a bit difficult.

Why? Because borrowing endless sums of money is how we’re alreadypapering over the fiscal unsustainability of the middle-class welfare state.

It’s middle-class welfare that drives the budget. That’s my answer to people who tell me we can deal with the problem by cutting “corporate welfare” or foreign aid or NASA space missions. Look at the federal budget. Aside from national defense—the only really big federal expenditure that’s actually mandated in the Constitution—federal spending is absolutely dominated by Social Security and Medicare. Even welfare to the poor—like food stamps or Social Security Disability, which has become de facto welfare for the long-term unemployed—is secondary. Everything else is loose change.

Except for one other big expenditure: interest on the national debt, which is becoming bigger and bigger. By the time the next president completes two terms—based on the choice we’re about to make—interest on the national debt will be the third-largest item in the federal budget. Shortly before Social Security uses up all of its nominal reserves in 2035, interest on the debt will be the second-largest expenditure. A few years after that, it becomes the single-largest expenditure. We will be taking the lion’s share of government revenues and using them just to keep up the minimum payments on all the money we’ve borrowed for decades in the past. So don’t think we’ll just be able to go back to that well and borrow even more to save another failing government program.

These projections depend on the assumption that we do nothing to avert the problem. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.

But, of course, at this late date in post-America, rather than face it squarely, a large swath of the cattle-masses are falling for the straw men Squirrel Hair and his disgusting cheerleaders - and Bernie and his slavish devotees
 have set before us:

 

We still want the middle-class welfare state to work. When it doesn’t work, a whole lot of us don’t want to deal with the hard choices or question the basic ideas behind it. We want to find scapegoats like Chinese factories or Mexican immigrants (on the Right), or Wall Street and “billionaires” and the Koch brothers (on the Left).

This is what drives us conservatives up the wall. Our prescription - getting government out of the business of providing services - would work, and immediately. But that would require free individuals taking charge of their destinies.

 

Frances Perkins, call your office

Your gumint overlords, contrary to what you were led to believe, never put all the money you paid in to Social Security in an envelope with your name on it, ready to be doled back out in annual sums after you reached age 65.

Lots of studies had concluded the whole thing would go kabust by 2033, but some new studies yield a more dire scenario:

The Social Security Administration projects that its trust funds will be depleted by 2033—not an optimistic forecast. But it may be even bleaker than that. 

New studies from Harvard and Dartmouth researchers find that the SSA's actuarial forecasts have been consistently overstating the financial health of the program's trust funds since 2000. 

"These biases are getting bigger and they are substantial," said Gary King, co-author of the studies and director of Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science. "[Social Security] is going to be insolvent before everyone thinks."

Why the new take on its shakiness?

Annual trustees' reports up to the year 2000 had been fairly objective, but then something changed:

"After 2000, forecast errors became increasingly biased, and in the same direction. Trustees Reports after 2000 all overestimated the assets in the program and overestimated solvency of the Trust Funds," wrote the researchers, who include Dartmouth professor Samir Soneji and Harvard doctoral candidate Konstantin Kashin. 

So stamping your feet and demanding that Uncle Sam pony up for what 's rightfully yours looks increasingly like an exercise in futility.

Would a private-sector investment-fund manager keen to keep your business be so loosey-goosey with the numbers?  And would you get such a penny-ante rate of return?