Good stuff, no doubt. But it doesn’t have the same impact as a fine university or museum. The foundation does things that interest Bill and Warren. They have de minimus impact on making our society more cohesive, increasing our confidence in the institutions.
And there are some, just not what I’d hoped for. Eli Broad comes to mind.
I can’t help the personal note. Talking to my son today, he said they just closed a bankruptcy where they cancelled $357,000 of student debt.
Pretty extreme circumstances. But, he also said that while Biden’s plans to extend, forgive debt got a lot of publicity, the enforcement of “non-cancellable” eased up without getting noticed.
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It is unusual for a conservative to go off-script and complain about the fed debt when conservatives are in charge.
The woke libs made them do it! Why do you hate America?
US Credit Rating has now been officially downgraded by Moody’s
…and the US federal government investigation into the rating agencies will begin in 3, 2, …
Thats a possibility (they did last time)
But this time around the US is looking at a full blown Sovereign debt crisis.
The numbers simply do not add up if they make the tax cuts permanent.
The tax cuts are immaterial next to the non-discretionary spending. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security need to be brought into realistic spending patterns. The rest is window dressing.
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Defense spending too.
In 2024, those three account for almost $3 trillion of spending. The deficit was $1.8 trillion. If we plan to balance the budget by only cutting these three items, they need to be cut by 60%. Have you seen a plan to do that?
The Federal Budget in Fiscal Year 2024: An Infographic | Congressional Budget Office.
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Seems like the smart move would be to address both sides of the balance sheet. Do better on the spending side, but get realistic on the taxation side. The people want government services. It costs money to provide them.
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I never said only cut those. Also the ratings downgrade isn’t about 2024 numbers, its about projections. The projections for the big 3 are completely unsustainable.
The situation simply cannot be solved while leaving Medicare, Medicaid, and SS as they are. Retirement age will have to go up again, the disability fund is basically empty already, and some sort of rationalization on the medical side is a must. Medicare/aid are expensive and barely better than no care at all. End of Life spending looks like a good place to start. Hugely expensive for very little benefit.
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The difficulty is knowing which medical incident is going to be the last one. One of my grandpa’s was hauled off in an ambulance 5 or 6 times over the last decade of his life. 3 or 4 of the trips were for things that could be fatal.
My dad’s wife was in the ICU twice for an issue last year and had to go in for a dye test this year.
My uncle was 60 when he went into hospital for a brain bleed and ended up dying a month later. A lot of that month was in the ICU trying to stabilize him.for surgery. Do we just not bother to try stabilizing him so he can have surgery to repair the problem because there’s high risk?
My friend’s dad had 3 or 4 critical health events where he could have died over his last 3 years.
It’s easy to say cut back on end of life treatment, but often the situation is pretty nebulous. I get the the 95 year old with dementia likely shouldn’t get life saving surgery and probably the same with a terminal cancer patient who’s got a month or two to go. On the other hand, there are a lot of people between 60 and 110 who will probably go on living for many months or years if their treatment for some acute health incident works. Unfortunately those treatments are often not cheap.
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I get Medicare. I have relatives on Medicaid. I’m quite sure that we all prefer them as compared to no care at all. You are essentially saying that modern medicine is worthless.
The 2024 SS Trustees report projects increasing DI trust fund balances under current law.
How much do Medicare and Medicaid spend on “end of life” services that were clearly “end of life” when they were provided?
Good. What percentage reduction are you looking for in SS, Medicare, and Medicaid?
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Social Security automagically gets cut by roughly 25%, if memory serves (?), in fewer than 10 years unless there’s a change in law or a significant increase in payroll tax revenues.
No. FFS this is an actuarial board, get your facts straight about OASDI at the very least.
May 2024 Trustee’s Report
The projected reserve depletion date for the combined OASDI trust funds is 2035, a year later than in last year’s report.2 Considered on its own, the OASI Trust Fund can pay full benefits until 2033, the same year as projected last year. As in last year’s report, the DI Trust Fund is projected to be able to pay full benefits through the end of the 75-year projection period (2098 in this year’s report).
Actually this is not imperative, even if it makes sense in the long run. Play the Academy’s SS game.
Medicare (and even Medicaid) is actually much better than no coverage at all. Medicare is expensive because old people have lots of health issues. Fish’s post is a good summary, Indy’s too.
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It should be self funded. Why do we publicly fund such few QALYs? We don’t do the same for children. Those dollars could be so better spent on research, food subsidies, etc.
I think we do for poor children. I believe it is called Medicaid.
Not seeing you mention increasing contributions to OASDI. Sometimes you need to need to increase taxes to pay for benefits. That should have happened decades ago but your politicians are gutless.
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Couple of presumptions here that are worth identifying.
First, is the confusion between “the cost” and the financing. The cost is providing goods and services to an elder population. This has been a fact of human existence since day one…long long ago when we hid in caves from predators. Old people are not productive. They consume.
The funding and financing should be adjusted, no doubt. But the. OST isn’t much related to that scheme.
Second, the proposition as stated is that the USA isn’t capable of shouldering that burden. It’s too “poor” or incompetent. No way we can compete with France, Spain, or Australia. They are just so much richer, so much better at management..we just can’t realistically compete. Color me unconvinced here.
Edit: I should note that I agree with the poster’s conclusion. We cannot meet the challenge without some major restructuring of our government policies and tax structures. In that, they are correct.
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