current seniors stealing from future seniors?

[katsung47]

Druckenmiller Sees Storm Worse Than ’08 as Seniors Steal

By Katherine Burton - Mar 1, 2013

Stan Druckenmiller, one of the best- performing hedge fund managers of the past three decades, has a warning for the youth of America: Don’t let your grandparents steal your money.

Druckenmiller, 59, said the mushrooming costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with unfunded liabilities as high as $211 trillion, will bankrupt the nation’s youth and pose a much greater danger than the country’s $16 trillion of debt currently being debated in Congress.

“While everybody is focusing on the here and now, there’s a much, much bigger storm that’s about to hit,” Druckenmiller said in an hour-long interview with Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg Television’s Market Makers. “I am not against seniors. What I am against is current seniors stealing from future seniors.”

Druckenmiller said unsustainable spending will eventually result in a crisis worse than the financial meltdown of 2008, when $29 trillion was erased from global equity markets. What’s particularly troubling, he said, is that government expenditures related to programs for the elderly rocketed in the past two decades, even before the first baby boomers, those born in 1946, started turning 65.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...rupt-kids.html

Does he mean s.s. and medicare will collapse?

[LilSaihah]

Does he mean s.s. and medicare will collapse?

As a very conservative estimate, yes, these programs will need to be cut for any semblance of a respectable budget.

[Puremallace]

211 trillion I assume is some wierd conservative paranoid number derived

maybe ((years living after 65)*(monthly SSI check)*(inflation)*(medicare cost per person))??

Can we get an actual solution? Conservative commentators always point out the obvious..what does he want? raise social security age? reduce SSI checks?? gas old people?? Most people die at like 80 now compared to 65 when SSI was first thought of in 1933.

Try telling people they need to work til 70...good luck with that. Of course SSI is going to go broke. Also not to mention SSI was used as a slush fund by the Bush administration to fund the Iraq war.

[The Riddler]

Well, the data sheets I had seen said the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid were around $165 trillion. However, the gist of what he is saying is clearly that the government - at the behest of the baby boomer generation of voters - has more than over-extended itself with a bunch of promises that it cannot possibly keep. Nothing new here. This is what governments do. But the scale of the Ponzi scheme is staggering, and this guy clearly is not shy about putting some of the blame on the voters who keep asking for these crazy, unrealistic policies.

Conservative commentators always point out the obvious..what does he want?

I can only tell you what I want. I want the Social Security program to be slashed back to what it was when it started... A program that only provides assistance to the widows of war veterans. And I want Medicare/aid to be slashed so it is nothing more than a tiny federal fund that is given to the states directly so they can assist private programs that help only the truly needy on a temporary, emergency basis. These 3 programs currently make up about 60% of the entire US Federal budget. They should actually only make up about 2% between BOTH of them. That's what I want.

Unwinding the current tangled mess is obviously not that easy, but that should be the ultimate goal - to get the government OUT of the business of retirement and medical care.

[Kujako]

As a very conservative estimate, yes, these programs will need to be cut for any semblance of a respectable budget.

They should also go back to not treating SS like a tax that can be spent on other things. Currently the money you pay into SS has no connection to the money that gets taken out. Congress decided a while back that SS should just be a tax applied to people so they could spend the funds on other programs and that payouts should be divorced from incoming funds and treated like any other government spending..

[LilSaihah]

They should also go back to not treating SS like a tax that can be spent on other things. Currently the money you pay into SS has no connection to the money that gets taken out. Congress decided a while back that SS should just be a tax applied to people so they could spend the funds on other programs and that payouts should be divorced from incoming funds and treated like any other government spending..

SS, mainly the retirement portion, just flat out shouldn't exist. Cut the tax and let people manage their own retirement funds.

[emilylopez]

Carrying a heavy debt burden is never enjoyable, although there is the debtor's age. Debt in old age is another matter entirely, however. It's harder to make a dent in huge amounts of debt when an individual lives on a set income. Nobody plans for it to take place, but seniors coping with debt have become increasingly common. Learn more atersonalmoneynetwork about Seniors dealing with Debt.

[Zallex]

SS, mainly the retirement portion, just flat out shouldn't exist. Cut the tax and let people manage their own retirement funds.

Totally agree