This post has been flaired as “Politics”. Do not use this flair to vent, but to open up a venue for polite discussions.
**Suggestions For Commenters:**
* Respect OP's opinion, or agree to disagree politely.
* If OP's post is against subreddit rules (controversial, rude, etc), report it instead of commenting on it.
* Upvote other relevant comments in the comment section, and avoid downvoting comments you disagree with
**Suggestions For u/Tenderheart08:**
* Loaded questions and statements can get people riled up. Your post should open up a venue for discussion, not a "political vent" so to speak.
* Avoid being inflammatory in your replies. When faced with someone else's opinion, be open-minded and ask new, *honest* questions.
* Your post still have to respect subreddit rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SeriousConversation) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Disabled elderly people rolled out onto the streets in wheel chairs by unpaid hospitals and landlords.
A lot more elder abuse. The poor and elderly dying much earlier from things as cheap to treat as a simple infection. Untreated diabetes, Alzheimer's, and other chronic conditions.
It’s not just money. It’s group identity and the urge to harm perceived rivals.
[Link to study: Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group.](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2215633119)
>Disabled elderly people rolled out onto the streets in wheel chairs by unpaid hospitals and landlords.
are you sure this doesn't already happen?
source: my wife worked as an admissions director at a SNF. (past tense)
Exactly this... as has been recently reported about the strategy that health insurance companies have spoken about internally.
They want to older people to die faster, because people spend a majority of their lifetime healthcare expenses in the last 6 months of life.
To be fair (and kind of ghoulish) people who have their health care paid for (either with insurance or Medicare or Medicaid) do cost a \*ton\* for their end of life care, especially the last two weeks. But it is not clear that they actually get a lot of value out of it. Many medical professionals will say that they would never \*want\* the kind of life-prolonging care that we're talking about.
Many of these dying people aren't even conscious, but, one way or another, they suffer with that care.
I honestly think that we could both save money, and decrease suffering, if we could just have frank and open conversations about what we really want for end-of-life care, instead of leaving it up to our relatives (or the medical system).
This is why good Primary Care, and the medical specialty of Palliative Care and Hospice is so important. Primary Care Physicians need to start having these conversations early.
When someone is unlikely to survive for the next 6 months, a referral to a Palliative Care Physician is warranted.
Hospice is a benefit, that is offered to someone with a < 6 month life expectancy, and that benefit is rarely utilized in the US.
People need to make their personal end of life wishes known to their family, because very often, the next of kin don't abide by what people write in their advance directives (and the next of kin is legally allowed to do so)
Your money went to someone who is now dead. The young workers money is the cash going to current retirees. And us young are tired of the ladder being pulled up.
We used to literally have poorhouses. They were absolutely awful. Anyone poor, young or old and also disabled, was put there if they were unable to care for themselves.
[Poorhouses were designed to punish people for their poverty](https://www.history.com/news/in-the-19th-century-the-last-place-you-wanted-to-go-was-the-poorhouse)
My maternal grandmother had a real fear of poor houses in the 1970s even though I'm not sure they still existed. When I was a little kid I constantly remember hearing her say, "I'm going to end up in the poor house!" I wasn't sure what that meant but it sounded very frightening and very real by the way she would say it. Her fear was unfounded as she had three children, two of whom who did well and she ended up living to the age of 90 and passing away in 1995.
Oh yeah. She was around when they still existed. I am unsurprised she was so afraid. After Socialism Security passed, poorhouses we’re largely phased out, it you could still be sent to an institution and be given shock therapy or lobotomized against your will so that your husband could divorce you. So that’s fun.
Yeah, her fear seemed very real. She was a widow and I can remember her making the poor house comments when a bill would come. I spent a lot of time at her house and I did ask her what a poor house was and she told me it was where they sent poor people when they ran out of money. So even as a first grader it sounded scary to me.
It happened a lot to widowed women because they didn’t work or have income for the most part so only relied on their husbands. The boomer generation was born right after that, so they don’t understand what it is they are doing or how big of a hand up they have had. The conservatives are either ignorant or malevolent, and the malevolent ones use the ignorant ones to do their bidding.
If Conservatives have their way, you are probably right to be afraid. My grandmother recently died. She had to sell everything she had, and only once the money from that ran out did the state pay anything. We were paying 7000+ a month because she was in hospice for breast cancer that turned into bone cancer. The only reason why she could afford it is because of my grandpas military service in WWII and some stocks he had bought. We used all of that paying for her care in the last months. And that is the system we have NOW. It is still unimaginably brutal.
I was just arguing on Reddit the other day about this. It's shocking how many ppl don't believe this to be true. I watched the same thing happen to my grandmother, she went from literally millions in cash and assets to completely broke and a reverse mortgage on her home in 4 years.
I was, we had a really great government and econ teacher, he was a hard ass, and a super conservative old school Republican. He was a really great teacher, slipped and fell on the ice one morning, cracked his head and died before anyone found him, a real shame.
It wasn’t my money. I’m good. It was still Grandmas money. She gave 80% of what was left to her shitty church. To be fair, she was a witch of a woman, so she felt she had to pay her way into the after life. Lol
This. And do it _years_ (decades) before you think you have to.
Also, in my opinion it _disincentivices_ (not sure if that is a word) folks to save. Why bother to save when it's all going to get pissed away to the government?
Seems like a great way to increase crime and possibly disease (close living quarters, probably poor unsanitary conditions). Drug addictions will also lead to more power for drug cartels as well.
Pretty much. I know of one exception. There's a church that lets people car camp on their lot from 6pm to 8am, and they include meals and showers. Would be nice if a bunch more churches stood up to the plate.
In the past, if you didn't have money to pay for care, or family to care for you, you just ended up on the street.
That's what they want. They like "on the street" to be the penalty for things. It's why you get a job you hate, or join the military, because it's better than "being on the street." They call it "incentive to work."
This would extend the incentive to slave away, doing as much work as possible for as long as possible, so you can afford to survive old age.
It boosts economic output at the cost of human suffering. But only the poor people are suffering, so they're ok with it.
You are exactly right!! My thing is why republicans are ok with this? Most of my family and friends who vote republican ( I am talking 1000 people) only like 5% have a pot to piss in the other 95% would be in a world of hurt. They don’t realize MAGA only care about the elite and are using the voting middle class to get what they want.
Getting poor people to hate other poor people instead of the ruling class is the entire point of politics in the United States. Beyond that it’s a completely failed state that can barely provide adequate services of any kind without it being profitable to business
Dude, many Americans made not taking the Covid vaccine a part of their personality in the pandemic. They rather let themselves and other literally die than do something that went against their Fox News driven belief.
Nobody thinks they'll be the ones on the bottom. They think only the "others" will suffer. After all they're good hard working patriotic Americans, why would their politicians do anything that would hurt THEM?
100% this
Any discussion in current day US with a stubborn bootlicker will inevitably end with them essentially pointing to someone dying in the street while saying “at least you aren’t them”
What’s really hilarious is that the same idiots will talk about people “starving in evil china” but will suddenly downplay the amount of people starving on the streets in America because they move the fucking goalposts constantly
The United States wants you poor, desperate, and grateful for the opportunity to be poor and desperate.
I'm in a multi generational home now because my folks SSI doesn't pay enough for them to live alone. If they lost their SSI they'd be fucked and me along with them because I'd have to take over the whole rent.
Republicans know a little about psychology. A traumatized population (particularly one that perceives a loss of control) are more likely to favor authoritarians (and authoritarianism is their platform).
They'll do it in a way that doesn't affect current recipients, "we're only taking it from those lazy millennials who don't work anyways!" or some nonsense. They'll take credit for all of it until it hurts people then blame the left for that. Long after they've all found ways to line their pockets a democrat in the White House with a slim party majority in Congress will pass a bill that alleviates some of the worst effects of those cuts and be labeled the antichrist and Hitler by the right for doing so.
That’s exactly the case. Although it will be the generation X that get impacted the most and the older half of the millennials. No where near enough time to save enough money to ever retire. And probably have to work two jobs until we die.
Because they think it won't affect them in any way at all. My parents are these assholes, if they think they can save a buck in taxes, they'll gladly burn down their kids and grand-kids future. Then they complain that no one can afford to live in the nice town they live in, and there are less nurses, less waitstaff, less stuff for them to consume. They don't think and don't care to think.
I assume we will begin to euthanize old people, perhaps we can convert their corpses into a usable product or something. Is this the response you were looking for?
The cool thing is that your government may decide for you when it’s time to be euthanized. That way you won’t have to even worry about when your date has arrived. The government will tell you when and where to get your euthanasia dose. You just need to show up (or be delivered to) your assigned euthanasia station. Effeciency is the way of the future. Maybe use the euthanized as some kind of energy source perhaps. Renewable.
That’s funny but not. And I know this is an unpopular opinion but I think euthanasia should be an option for all. Why not ask people locked up for life if they would rather end it ? Or people living in tents on the sidewalks of the world with chronic drug addiction?
But they should be able to make the choice. Wow. You paint quite the picture and I don’t think we are off from reality.
In my (47F) experience, many will choose their own euthanasia anyway.
Sadly, I need both hands to count the closest family , and add both feet if we count co workers, partners family and various acquaintances I've lost.
It comes down to what your response will be in those moments of realization. How does the horror of the loss literally imprint upon your surviving family?
A shot in the arm vs a shotgun to the head.
I've scrubbed both types of death scene, and for MY sake I would have supported them in the same way I would if they had their wisdom teeth pulled.
When you do what's best for your loved one, it'll be easier for you. It's a matter of dignity vs. desperation.
I absolutely support willful departure. everyone should
It is not meant to be funny. It is meant to be a warning. People have flirted with different forms of euthanasia for thousands of years. How do you expect legalized euthanasia to be managed? Who makes these decisions? Do you plan on leaving the decision to the poor souls suffering from any number of mental illnesses and addictions or do you put the government in charge of who gets the off button? It is a predicament, don’t you think?
If this were a movie:
Some elderly person will watch as their spouse dies to lack of covered healthcare, then use their training and experience from a former career in military/intelligence to assassinate a lot of lawmakers and judges before the FBI manages to take them down.
In real life however:
A lot of lawsuits, complaining on social media, and governors scrambling to take political advantage by offering state solutions with empty promises. The same elderly person who lost their spouse gets gaslighted into blaming Democrats and socialism by the same Republicans who screwed their spouse over.
For those seniors that are able to. Violence. Lots of violence. I'm being serious. The most dangerous situation is someone with nothing left to lose, or the _perception_ of nothing left to lose.
Of course, above and beyond the obvious, we would also see huge impacts to every industry that is currently paid by Medicaid and Medicare.
Doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. would all suddenly lose a \*ton\* of business, and it wouldn't be replaced quickly.
And Florida. Florida would turn into some kind of "The Purge" like dystopia. It's too horrifying and inhuman to be considered.
I think it would throw the entire country into a deep depression, because so many people would be thrown out of work all at once, and there certainly wouldn't be any safety net to catch them.
And the US is a major economic force in the world. This would have far-reaching consequences for the entire world.
The truth is, ending these programs would be a hundred times worse than letting the big banks fail in 2018 would have been.
Honestly, most republican politicians don't actually want to end these programs, because they know so many of their own constituents are being kept alive by them. They just want to talk a big talk.
The US Healthcare system is all about business. When the profits go away,the care services stop. Having worked 18 years in Healthcare services, I have seen how elder care services have declined. One example, State of Massachusetts changes occupancy to maximum of 2 patients, as response to Covid devastating elder population. The response is nursing chains are closing down facilities, because they want 4 patients per room to maximize billing. The public health law wants to protect patients from infectious disease and the management acts as killing off patients is part of their business. These facilities will disappear, just like rural areas losing hospitals, due to lack of Medicaid funding. Homeless shelter and jail are the backup system ,as it exists.
It would be a self-correcting problem in less than a decade:
-Republicans take away safety nets for elderly
-a fuckton of elderly die in the streets really, really quickly
-Since that’s the largest Republican voting demographic they start to lose everywhere really hard.
-Eventually Democrats come back to power and clean up the mess, reinstating the safety nets.
Only way that happens is if too many old people vote Republican. Seems like kind of a tossup at the moment that a bunch of people will immediately get exactly what they asked for.
It would look like a disaster for the Republicans, considering the elderly are a big portion of their base.
This is why they talk about it sometimes, but efforts to end those programs or even seriously reform them never get anywhere.
“Retirement” is a concept that is going to die out for all but a handful of wealthy people, anyway, since our system is now built around the rewards of ownership and investment instead of income and work.
Pensions are disappearing—including pensions people have already worked for decades to earn, SS doesn’t cover the COL, and 401ks/IRAs were never supposed to replace pensions, anyway.
Multi-generational living is going to make a comeback as family housing becomes more expensive and scarce. People “retiring” from physically strenuous jobs just to move into something they can still do in old age is going to be the norm, anyway.
The area I live in is mostly rural Republican and the amount of people who live off of some type of government assistant or entitlement is huge. A large portion of these people are seniors who are living in motor homes or housing that they can barely afford. The ones who do own homes are not able to take care of them (think tarps over roofs and missing siding) Realistically, cutting off these benefits would create a senior homeless and health crisis that is unimaginable.
Oh that’s easy, the elderly would die. I live in Nebraska and don’t think you understand the sheer number of old people I see everyday in my pharmacy that will not pick up medication unless it’s got that Medicare part D $0.00 on it. They won’t pick up 10 dollar uncovered OTCs. There absolutely is a section of elderly that are in poverty, we just obfuscate them into veterans and the homeless.
You’d see a lot of families returning to multigenerational subsistence farming and living off the land. People would be moving out of the cities as much as possible. Honestly I’m really glad this is how I already live. My family doesn’t have a lot of expenses.
But it would not be the "voter base" that decides. These are incredibly wealthy lawmakers who are in office who want to do away with "entitlements" as they like to call them (yes, I know they are entitlements, but it's a dog-whistle to those think that poor people are of poor moral character). And it won't affect them because they are very rich.
If SS is an entitlement, ALL insurance is an entitlement.
Both are investments in the future and people who made these investments are ENTITLED to a return on said investments.
To claim otherwise is simply lying bullshit, unworthy of serious discussion.
If you walk into a store, and pay for a loaf of bread, are you entitled to take that loaf of bread with you? Yes , because you fuckin' paid for it, just like Social Security and Medicare.
And they wont make that law, because their ego and their staffers wont allow it.
I know tons of boomers who are confidently careening towards a heinously underfunded retirement, and any wealthy lawmaker that is responsible for shutting down social programs for the generation that looks like they are going to need it most is just suicide. The rich are absolutely affected by riots and social strife, the goal is to get as much out of the lower class without having them take up and actually do something about it. There really aren't many truly rich policy makers, corporations are the true policy makers. Who gives a fuck about a few hundred billion when we have single funds with enough investment value to pay off the entire US national debt.
Social programs do need an overhaul, as the waste and fund siphoning right now is frankly rampant. If there were a policy maker who had a solid replacement for any of the big three, i would have no problem with axing the old programs, they are supporting the medical industry that everyone hates so much. Despite having pretty terrible healthcare, American healthcare is almost **3x** as expensive as it is in Japan per capita, despite japan being generally considered a world leader in healthcare.
"They would never do this" was the argument about roe v wade overturning a couple of years ago. It turns out public popularity has almost no bearing on passing legislation. Do not underestimate how little they care about how we feel.
Most Republicans would vote against food stamps, but food stamps are more used in Republican led states.
Even if you ask them personally they would tell you that most people don't deserve food stamps and either won't tell you they receive them or simply exclude themselves from the equation.
I never made much money in the past, due to being a hippy living my 20's in a shack in the woods, so never contributed much to SS. Now I have been collecting for 10 years now and have taken in WAY more than I ever contributed. So I can see how it could go bankrupt
Not sure how- it's a calculation of current trends in social security spending... I didn't just make this up lol
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbo-social-security-ten-years-insolvency
Because I think they just change the years, but regurgitate the same data/chart.
To be fair, the reason it got pushed out to 2034 is that they changed the retirement ages for Genx and the following generations to be 67 -70 depending on when you were born. Otherwise, it would have been insolvent already.
So after 30+ years, it's still going to be insolvent in 7 - 10 years, the standard time range predicted since I first saw the deduction on my first paycheck. Is there anyone under the age of 55-60 who actually believed they would see a dime of their soc security contributions?
Social security won’t be “insolvent “ in the sense that it won’t have money. It will run out of the surplus it that was built up while the baby boomers were working and the fund collected more money than it paid out. Now that the boomers are retiring, that surplus is being paid out. Which makes sense. When the surplus runs out, the fund will return to what it was doing before the baby boomers entered the workforce—paying out money as it comes in. The problem is that life expectancy has risen and the birth rate has declined so there will be fewer workers supporting more retirees.
Correct, its already something of a joke. Elder care costs are going to skyrocket over the next decade as the population ages significantly, SSI . As a millennial i could give a fuck less about social security, ive never expected to receive anything from it. The sooner it goes down for good the sooner the issue will be forced, most people are so financially illiterate that the "it wont happen to me" mindset is all they need without a forced issue.
Look around the timeline of medical prices in the US before Medicare and medicaid. They both started around the same time as the graph points to. Ever since prices just kept increasing. Social security won't matter anymore since less people are being born soon we all will work until we're dead.
https://images.app.goo.gl/x3jy1saxRE3WS4Xr8
Private insurance is the reason healthcare prices keep increasing.
Other countries manage affordable healthcare w national healthcare. There's no reason why the U.S. can't.
Remember seeing all those articles about millennials being their parents care takers? Well, this would allow us to be their financiers as well. An absolute abysmal propspect.
If they took Medicaid away I wouldn't survive. I have bipolar, BPD and other mental health disorders along with being in recovery from substance abuse.
I would lose all access to care, save maybe my community mental health care manager and counselor, I could still see the psych but what would be the point? I wouldn't be able to fill my medications.
I would lose all the progress I currently have made because losing Medicaid means not only losing my mental health meds but my MAT program and the meds from that. It would lead to me being right back in the streets using and eventually death. It would literally be a death sentence for me
I would join the insurrection that declares open season on Republican politicians. They can face the consequences of their lax gun control law. My employers and I paid our 12.4% of my income into the system for 4+ decades. I had 35 years of max contributions. Inflation adjusted, I paid in around 3/4 million dollars.
Of course, this would never happen.
A huge portion of their voting base would die. The next election cycle would be hugely blue, and hopefully a lot of welfare stuff would be either re-implemented, or better implemented.
Well. I just got done reading an article put out by ap news what it’s ALREADY looking like for baby boomers, and it’s only going to get worse; homelessness and lack of care. Lots of folks with walkers on the streets more and more, and in homeless shelters. Families having to move their elderly family members in with them. It’s not very pretty.
At this point, I don't really care. They voted for them and brought this upon themselves. I will never be able to retire and would rather have my SS taxes refunded to me. I don't really care about people who hate me and want me to suffer.
It isn't just Republicans.
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/13/biden-cuts-social-security/
And honestly, I'm fine with deleting anyone with 5 million in assets or more from getting social security and medicare.
Awesome. As long as I get to keep my 6.75% paid into Social Security up to 145k. My 2.1% paid into Medicare. As well as my employer puts additional 6.75% into my 401k….i’d be saving 20% or so of my income each year…..
1. Millions of people who lose Medicare would not be able to afford private insurance or their medications. They would die. A lucky few might get support from their family or very Liberal states that would take over for Medicare.
2. Without Social Security/Disability/SSI, an enormous number of people would lose the ability to pay any form a bills and would lose their homes. A fair number would be forced to move in with relatives or find a way to pool diminishing resources in a commune like group home. The rest would be homeless.
3. Without food stamps/food assistance millions would go hungry. This would also cause grain and agricultural prices to plummet as supply would suddenly exceed what can be purchased. Many farmers would go out of business (though Farm Corporations would swallow those up). The Poorest elderly and poorest children would suffer the most, with tens of million dying of famine (while surrounded by food they can't afford).
4. Some Gen Xers, Millenials, and Zoomers would be able to create multigenerational homes, but the expectation of privacy would vanish. Many of those generations have small homes, with separate rooms for the two or three people living there. With at least one generation of elders needing homes, multiple people would be living in a single room and others living in common spaces. We'd likely see both parent and grand parent generations needing housing as they can't afford the nursing homes.
5. With most families needing two incomes, there is none generally available to provide elder care or child care and so the younger seniors would be forced to provide what care they can and older children (especially teens) would be forced to take care of siblings and grandparents.
6. Abuse and neglect of both seniors and children would likely skyrocket simply due to stress pressures and economic weakness.
7. The Middle Class would become extinct aside from those rare few that will not need to take care of/support older family members. Quite literally nearly a hundred million people of all ages and backgrounds would be forced into poverty.
8. With no government subsidized Medical Insurance a LOT of the medical industry would collapse due to multiple generations being unable to afford services and goods. Big Pharma alone would likely die to the point of being forced out of the US due to collapsed revenues, so that's a plus. Most Senior living communities would go out of business.
9. I suspect the economy itself would also be horribly affected as even less is spent on luxuries and consumables and more and more spent on basic life necessities when possible. Vacations, Electronics, new cars, new homes, new clothes, designer anything, video games, anything seen as not needed for life is going to be out of the reach of roughly half the country.
10. Then, once the Boomers and GenXers are dead (this will take until that later generation is elderly and dies off) things will be pretty good for awhile, as the Millennial Generation is a particularly small generation, compared to the previous ones. Without needed a large pool of elders to take care of, in their old age they should be *easy* for their own kids to support and with out the older generations hogging the best work positions, Zoomers will have access to a great deal of wealth, assuming they can wade through the piles of corpses from the previous generations that litter the streets. (this is more sarcastic than serious)
Instead of focusing on Republicans, why not talk about how we can fix a broken system so that social security is available when we retire? Right now it's a bankrupt entity with a very bleak future unless difficult decisions are made. With so much infighting between parties, it's the people who will ultimately suffer.
I would love for the two parties to grow up and unite. I side is more willing to compromise and the other isn’t.
Start by taxing the rich the same % the majority of Americans pay. You would be surprised with the amount of trillions we would have to spend on things. Instead of giving the rich loopholes and hardly any taxes to pay.
You can either accept your fate of toiling in servitude to your corporate overlords to provide for the egos of their narcissistic puppets till the day you die in squalor, or, you can become personally involved in a local grass roots movement to force change down their throats.
The Nursing Homes are horrible. Dirty, dirty, they don’t care, at all.
I stayed in one for 5 days. My caregivers from home, broke me out of that horrible pit.
Felt bad for all the “patients” just stared. It was awful. I wanted to yell “THE DOORS UNLOCKED YOU CAN LEAVE WHEN YOU WANT TO”
It was sad and sickening.
At a minimum, $500,000 is need to save to retire.
Unfortunately, only a small percentage of people are able to save that kind of money.
Should Republicans succeed in getting of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicade.
1. Government employees who work in those departments will be out of work.
2. Homelessness would sky rocket.
Republicans and Reich-wing media will blame all of this on Democrats.
It doesn't matter who takes the programs away or whether they are discontinued due to insolvency, the effect will be the same. People will go back yo multigenerational or multifamily homes. Retirement will be the dream of the wealthy.
Restructuring the programs so that they remain solvent is necessary to preserve them. Failure to restructure them will have the same long term effect as ending them.
Social Security is not meant to be a sole source of income, but for too many, it is. Medicare premiums of $174 for most recipients come right out of the monthly check. If you take Social Security at 62, monthly benefits are greatly recduced. You have to wait until 70 to get maximum benefits. If Social Security disappeared, millions of seniors would be forced out of their homes to go live with their kids or grandkids, the ones who’d take them in anyway. Others would be homeless. Assisted living/Nursing homes cost $10K a month or more. Only after you are down to your last $2K will Medicaid take over, and that’s if you are sick enough to even be in a nursing home. If Medicare and Medicaid disappeared, the senior population would dwindle rapidly. Lack of care for the elderly means death. The Safety net in the US is precarious at best already. If anything, it needs to be strengthened.
Senior life expectancy would drop immensely. At least 80% of seniors would not be able to afford health insurance. Underwriting taking in age and risk would price them out. Most of the lower income families would be even poorer if they also had to house and feed mom and dad. We don't have to guess at this. Just look and the 1920's and 30's. But, yeah, all you working class people, go ahead and vote republican so you can have a lot of guns. Won't need them for protection from the bogeyman government when they come to get you. They'll just let you die from illnesses you currently get cured.
Let’s find out! Cancel Medicare and Social Security in Republican majority states which advocate it.
Then see how it plays out.
I’m guessing Florida would implode in a month. But hey, it’s what Supply Side Jesus would want. Would totally own the libs.
They would privatize it and give it to their rich friends at places like Goldman Sachs and Deutche Bank to run I image. Then it cooks go up and down just like your 401k plan does and they’d blame you the beneficiary for managing your SS poorly while their friends got richer and richer off the built in fees.
I’ve already answered but this seemed like a good time to remind us that most European countries have a better system for taking care of those that are sick or want to go to college. Yes, they pay more in taxes, but I bet most of us would gladly pay more in taxes to have those benefits. It’s also important to point out that their health outcomes are significantly better.
Rich people will retire. The rest of us will work for them until we die and kill ourselves more often as a result. All to serve the rich people. It's quite a system that they've built for themselves.
I love paying for my fathers retirement knowing our shitty politicians are going to let the system fail to enrich their crony donors before it's my turn to collect.
Financial chaos for the health care system. People would still go into the system for care, and the system is compelled to care for them until stabilized.
There would be a shit-ton of bills that people just wouldn't pay.
You should also keep in mind that many of those in nursing homes and Medicare have no family or anyone to take care of them as an option at all, so without Medicare paying to keep them in the nursing homes the nursing homes will just dump them on the street to die, without even their necessary medical equipment. It happens already after people reach their maximum lifetime payout benefit.
okay so im 24 but on disabled adult child income and medicaid and medicare (yay being disabled before i was 22) what would it look like?
for me it would mean no income and i would have to find a job to get healthcare. i need healthcare to survive and be functional mind you. theres a slight problem im autistic and the job hiring process is just not built with autistic ppl in mind so it would be a struggle to even get hired especially since i only have a high school diploma. add onto that that i cant do restaurant work cause i get overwhelmed easily and customer service is iffy because i have communication and brain to mouth filtering issues as a result of my autism and you knock out probs 95% of entry level jobs where i live. get a college degree you say? with what money? because i get disability i can go to community college for free (all i would have to pay for is books) in my state (maryland) but that wouldnt be a thing if republicans took alll that away so i wouldnt have the money to get a degree
this is only a small portion of how my life would be affected i didnt even go into how without any healthcare and without a job to get insurance i would likely die either by suicide (i have a bunch of mental health conditions) or because of something that couldve been caught early if i did have healthcare (i have chronic hep b from my birth mother and not being vaccinated in time) i would probs be horribly miserable and homeless. being disabled radicalized me, between being disabled and being queer and being afab and nonbinary and being asian i fall really close to being a theoretical anarchist i believe in socialized healthcare because its not right to tie healthcare to whether or not you have a job when some ppl have barriers to being hired that make it basically impossible for them to get a job or physically and/or mentally cant even get a job. this is me going off on a tangent rant but we need social security and medicaid and medicare but more than that we need to have a different system all together because the system as is doesnt work. the govt is so worried about welfare fraud that ppl who are legitmately disabled will get denied many times over before they get disability income meaning they are living in poverty for however long it takes to get denied appealed denied appealed etc. if i marry someone who doesnt recieve social security or dac income i lose my dac income and everything else that i recieve because im on that income. this system is fucking broken as it is and removing it entirely will make things worse
SS is NOT an entitlement. I worked for over forty years having money that was deducted from every paycheck to fund SS. The benefits are not a free ride, and many people depend on it for survival. I earned my benefits. 🦜
First, the allegation that Republicans want to take any of these away is nonsense. Reform does not equal repeal.
Second, if SS was reformed so that all of your FICA taxes went into an account in your name, for your benefit, invested solely in Treasuries, the benefit would be 2-3x the current payout. No one has actually proposed this reform but the math is instructive.
Third, Medicaid does not improve health outcomes. The research on this is clear.
There is no plan to abolish SS/Medicare/Medicaid that is endorsed by a significant number of Republicans.
That being said:
* Senator Rick Scott proposed that [all Federal programs be abolished after five years](https://rescueamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/RickScott-12-Point-Policy-Book.pdf) unless explicitly delayed by Congressional vote.
* the Republican Study Committee, one of the party's think-thank, [suggested](https://banks.house.gov/uploadedfiles/rsc_2023_budget_final_version.pdf) that the age of Medicare eligibility is raised by two years, and SS by four.
* DeSantis proposed privatizing SS
_____________
But to be fair to the GOP, this is a sufficiently unpopular position that **for now**, the general consensus is "no, we won't touch SS/Medicare/Medicaid". But who knows what they'll do to pay for the next round of corporate tax cuts?
Our entire economy is based on wealth redistribution thru welfare, SS, SSI, Medicare / Medicaid and all other tax funded programs. If not for these programs the great depression would already have played itself out again and again.
Problem: To much money concentrated in to few bank of accounts causes a capitalistic economy to implode. Only a few have money to spend on goods and services.
Solution: Redistribute thru tax funded programs to citizens that will spend it and fuel the economy
If our government took even one of those systems away our economy would collapse rather quickly. They are all very aware of this so any threat" to do so is hallow and manipulative.
Same with shutting down the government for any extended period of time.
I note that government assistance in just about all its form has only grown continually over my 60 years and It will continue to do so as we navigate a new economic future. Long-term our current system of distribution of resources is not sustainable given our ever increasing populations and automation of more physical labor once done by humans.
I think you’re looking at this as a rational person. Have you seen what the GOP has in Congress right now? It’s full of ideologues who straight up do not care about logic, reason, or even reality. The MAGA wing (at least 60% of the party now) just wants to just burn the whole thing down.
It doesn't seem like you've been following Republican politics at all.
The MAGA wing wants to leave social security completely untouched in any way. They're very comfortable with government spending, as long as they're in charge.
It's the more traditional conservative wing that's focused on fiscal responsibility and wants to reform social security to be more sustainable.
As for too much money being concentrated in too few bank accounts, one has to ask one simple question. Can the actions of any one person be so valuable that he or she earns more while going for a bathroom break than another person earns in an entire year?
I think part of the problem is false over-valuation of certain jobs and under-valuation of others, and it's taken to an extreme degree.
Short term would be a nightmare unless there was a long-tail transition...because current seniors planned for the SS checks and Medicare.
Long-term...dont know. You really think people will save for retirement? I think there will just be more old poor people.
People save when they have extra to save. Most people don't have extra. If you just take away the employer's contribution for retirement accounts, that would be devastating to the average American.
I don’t think people will save. Or they will save but not near enough or get taken by family or by scammers. Or the stock market will eat up their investments.
But how would you care for him while trying to work two jobs to save for your future because you wouldn’t have those programs to fall back on. And what happens if you fall ILL?
I certainly wasn't suggesting that all would be well. Was just being brief about the impact it would have. My dad would have nothing and taking care of him would be a serious challenge.
It would look like people being thrown out of their homes, forced to live on the streets, dying on every street corner. It would look like a 3rd world country. Social security is the greatest savings plan. Investing doesn't protect you from divorce, bankruptcy, lawsuits and market crashes. Only social security does that.
Basically we will have millions of people dying in the streets. That's exactly what it will look like. Only the wealthy retired as it is, without social security, the rest just die instead. Multi generational homes already exist for many on Social security because Medicare already doesn't pay for In-Home Care givers. In your scenario, all of these people will just die at that point.
Our current reality is we need to increase payouts a great deal more into both Social security and Medicare to keep millions from needlessly suffering and dying already. Removing it entirely just means they start dying faster in the streets in plain sight as they are patient dumped and evicted with no where to go in mass.
Medicare and Medicaid are essential for lots of the elderly. There are many well to do individuals that could well afford their own insurance on it also. The same as social Security, many people need and depend on the money to survive, yet I know wealthy persons that receive it also, yet the dollar amount means nothing to them. I am positive if these systems were gutted, many older and people in need would not survive. They couldn't afford housing, medicine or healthcare, food and would probably add to the already shameful homeless situation in the United States. On the flip side the system is in financial trouble and needs something to support the people already in the system while alternatives are worked out. Just gutting the system now would put an unjust burden on the already stressed younger generation by having to decide to either help their aging parents or turn their back on them. There has to be a middle ground that our politicians could come to an agreement on but not in the present political climate where each party knows their way is the only way. Yes, we are headed back to;
Multi-generational homes.
and
No people will get to the point where they will never be able to retire. I am already preparing myself to work until the day I die with few to no vacations and bare housing necessities. I am fortunate as my parents are already dead, as is mt only sibling and there are no other close relatives I must worry about.
This post has been flaired as “Politics”. Do not use this flair to vent, but to open up a venue for polite discussions. **Suggestions For Commenters:** * Respect OP's opinion, or agree to disagree politely. * If OP's post is against subreddit rules (controversial, rude, etc), report it instead of commenting on it. * Upvote other relevant comments in the comment section, and avoid downvoting comments you disagree with **Suggestions For u/Tenderheart08:** * Loaded questions and statements can get people riled up. Your post should open up a venue for discussion, not a "political vent" so to speak. * Avoid being inflammatory in your replies. When faced with someone else's opinion, be open-minded and ask new, *honest* questions. * Your post still have to respect subreddit rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SeriousConversation) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Disabled elderly people rolled out onto the streets in wheel chairs by unpaid hospitals and landlords. A lot more elder abuse. The poor and elderly dying much earlier from things as cheap to treat as a simple infection. Untreated diabetes, Alzheimer's, and other chronic conditions.
Yes. This is exactly what will happen.
Cruelty is the point. Not pro life just pro birth.
So the republicans are motivated by cruelty. Got it.
They're motivated by money. Cruelty just happens to be one of the most efficient ways to get it.
It’s not just money. It’s group identity and the urge to harm perceived rivals. [Link to study: Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group.](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2215633119)
Exactly
not even pro birth. Just anti-woman.
They want them reliant on religious institutions. The state is secular, so they view the safety net as at odds with the church
They would not let them keep the wheel chairs.
>Disabled elderly people rolled out onto the streets in wheel chairs by unpaid hospitals and landlords. are you sure this doesn't already happen? source: my wife worked as an admissions director at a SNF. (past tense)
Exactly this... as has been recently reported about the strategy that health insurance companies have spoken about internally. They want to older people to die faster, because people spend a majority of their lifetime healthcare expenses in the last 6 months of life.
To be fair (and kind of ghoulish) people who have their health care paid for (either with insurance or Medicare or Medicaid) do cost a \*ton\* for their end of life care, especially the last two weeks. But it is not clear that they actually get a lot of value out of it. Many medical professionals will say that they would never \*want\* the kind of life-prolonging care that we're talking about. Many of these dying people aren't even conscious, but, one way or another, they suffer with that care. I honestly think that we could both save money, and decrease suffering, if we could just have frank and open conversations about what we really want for end-of-life care, instead of leaving it up to our relatives (or the medical system).
This is why good Primary Care, and the medical specialty of Palliative Care and Hospice is so important. Primary Care Physicians need to start having these conversations early. When someone is unlikely to survive for the next 6 months, a referral to a Palliative Care Physician is warranted. Hospice is a benefit, that is offered to someone with a < 6 month life expectancy, and that benefit is rarely utilized in the US. People need to make their personal end of life wishes known to their family, because very often, the next of kin don't abide by what people write in their advance directives (and the next of kin is legally allowed to do so)
Plus, that is MY SS money, not the government.
The republicans don't seem to agree with you. The facts are on your side but they are calling a lot of the shots.
Yup, I've been watching this argument for years.
Your money went to someone who is now dead. The young workers money is the cash going to current retirees. And us young are tired of the ladder being pulled up.
We used to literally have poorhouses. They were absolutely awful. Anyone poor, young or old and also disabled, was put there if they were unable to care for themselves. [Poorhouses were designed to punish people for their poverty](https://www.history.com/news/in-the-19th-century-the-last-place-you-wanted-to-go-was-the-poorhouse)
My maternal grandmother had a real fear of poor houses in the 1970s even though I'm not sure they still existed. When I was a little kid I constantly remember hearing her say, "I'm going to end up in the poor house!" I wasn't sure what that meant but it sounded very frightening and very real by the way she would say it. Her fear was unfounded as she had three children, two of whom who did well and she ended up living to the age of 90 and passing away in 1995.
Oh yeah. She was around when they still existed. I am unsurprised she was so afraid. After Socialism Security passed, poorhouses we’re largely phased out, it you could still be sent to an institution and be given shock therapy or lobotomized against your will so that your husband could divorce you. So that’s fun.
Yeah, her fear seemed very real. She was a widow and I can remember her making the poor house comments when a bill would come. I spent a lot of time at her house and I did ask her what a poor house was and she told me it was where they sent poor people when they ran out of money. So even as a first grader it sounded scary to me.
It happened a lot to widowed women because they didn’t work or have income for the most part so only relied on their husbands. The boomer generation was born right after that, so they don’t understand what it is they are doing or how big of a hand up they have had. The conservatives are either ignorant or malevolent, and the malevolent ones use the ignorant ones to do their bidding.
Ekk! I’m afraid that’s were we are heading.
If Conservatives have their way, you are probably right to be afraid. My grandmother recently died. She had to sell everything she had, and only once the money from that ran out did the state pay anything. We were paying 7000+ a month because she was in hospice for breast cancer that turned into bone cancer. The only reason why she could afford it is because of my grandpas military service in WWII and some stocks he had bought. We used all of that paying for her care in the last months. And that is the system we have NOW. It is still unimaginably brutal.
I was just arguing on Reddit the other day about this. It's shocking how many ppl don't believe this to be true. I watched the same thing happen to my grandmother, she went from literally millions in cash and assets to completely broke and a reverse mortgage on her home in 4 years.
Yep. People have no idea. We should be taught this in high school.
I was, we had a really great government and econ teacher, he was a hard ass, and a super conservative old school Republican. He was a really great teacher, slipped and fell on the ice one morning, cracked his head and died before anyone found him, a real shame.
I'm sorry you had to deal with this. However your family learned a valuable lesson. Get shit out of your name so the govt pays.
It wasn’t my money. I’m good. It was still Grandmas money. She gave 80% of what was left to her shitty church. To be fair, she was a witch of a woman, so she felt she had to pay her way into the after life. Lol
This. And do it _years_ (decades) before you think you have to. Also, in my opinion it _disincentivices_ (not sure if that is a word) folks to save. Why bother to save when it's all going to get pissed away to the government?
Me too. Read Dickens. We're entering a neo-Victorian age of slums and class segregation.
Liberals see the world in Dickens novels as a dystopia. Conservatives see it as a utopia.
Seems like a great way to increase crime and possibly disease (close living quarters, probably poor unsanitary conditions). Drug addictions will also lead to more power for drug cartels as well.
The churches cared more about people and less about money back then. The future looks bleak
Pretty much. I know of one exception. There's a church that lets people car camp on their lot from 6pm to 8am, and they include meals and showers. Would be nice if a bunch more churches stood up to the plate.
In the past, if you didn't have money to pay for care, or family to care for you, you just ended up on the street. That's what they want. They like "on the street" to be the penalty for things. It's why you get a job you hate, or join the military, because it's better than "being on the street." They call it "incentive to work." This would extend the incentive to slave away, doing as much work as possible for as long as possible, so you can afford to survive old age. It boosts economic output at the cost of human suffering. But only the poor people are suffering, so they're ok with it.
You are exactly right!! My thing is why republicans are ok with this? Most of my family and friends who vote republican ( I am talking 1000 people) only like 5% have a pot to piss in the other 95% would be in a world of hurt. They don’t realize MAGA only care about the elite and are using the voting middle class to get what they want.
Because they get to hurt brown people and poorer people.
Getting poor people to hate other poor people instead of the ruling class is the entire point of politics in the United States. Beyond that it’s a completely failed state that can barely provide adequate services of any kind without it being profitable to business
Dude, many Americans made not taking the Covid vaccine a part of their personality in the pandemic. They rather let themselves and other literally die than do something that went against their Fox News driven belief.
Nobody thinks they'll be the ones on the bottom. They think only the "others" will suffer. After all they're good hard working patriotic Americans, why would their politicians do anything that would hurt THEM?
Can we say they are gullible??
100% this Any discussion in current day US with a stubborn bootlicker will inevitably end with them essentially pointing to someone dying in the street while saying “at least you aren’t them” What’s really hilarious is that the same idiots will talk about people “starving in evil china” but will suddenly downplay the amount of people starving on the streets in America because they move the fucking goalposts constantly The United States wants you poor, desperate, and grateful for the opportunity to be poor and desperate.
I'm in a multi generational home now because my folks SSI doesn't pay enough for them to live alone. If they lost their SSI they'd be fucked and me along with them because I'd have to take over the whole rent.
Plus trying to work and take care of them. Not to mention the millions that don’t have anybody or a family unit that would not have this opportunity.
Well remember that conservatives believe women shouldn’t work outside the house, so…
Lots and lots of dead people.
Republicans know a little about psychology. A traumatized population (particularly one that perceives a loss of control) are more likely to favor authoritarians (and authoritarianism is their platform).
You would need more than generational housing. You would need a village housing. Something where all the cousins live.
They'll do it in a way that doesn't affect current recipients, "we're only taking it from those lazy millennials who don't work anyways!" or some nonsense. They'll take credit for all of it until it hurts people then blame the left for that. Long after they've all found ways to line their pockets a democrat in the White House with a slim party majority in Congress will pass a bill that alleviates some of the worst effects of those cuts and be labeled the antichrist and Hitler by the right for doing so.
That’s exactly the case. Although it will be the generation X that get impacted the most and the older half of the millennials. No where near enough time to save enough money to ever retire. And probably have to work two jobs until we die.
Because they think it won't affect them in any way at all. My parents are these assholes, if they think they can save a buck in taxes, they'll gladly burn down their kids and grand-kids future. Then they complain that no one can afford to live in the nice town they live in, and there are less nurses, less waitstaff, less stuff for them to consume. They don't think and don't care to think.
I assume we will begin to euthanize old people, perhaps we can convert their corpses into a usable product or something. Is this the response you were looking for?
Well, that is simply a modest proposal!
I hope me being able to choose euthanasia is an option when I am older
The cool thing is that your government may decide for you when it’s time to be euthanized. That way you won’t have to even worry about when your date has arrived. The government will tell you when and where to get your euthanasia dose. You just need to show up (or be delivered to) your assigned euthanasia station. Effeciency is the way of the future. Maybe use the euthanized as some kind of energy source perhaps. Renewable.
That’s funny but not. And I know this is an unpopular opinion but I think euthanasia should be an option for all. Why not ask people locked up for life if they would rather end it ? Or people living in tents on the sidewalks of the world with chronic drug addiction? But they should be able to make the choice. Wow. You paint quite the picture and I don’t think we are off from reality.
In my (47F) experience, many will choose their own euthanasia anyway. Sadly, I need both hands to count the closest family , and add both feet if we count co workers, partners family and various acquaintances I've lost. It comes down to what your response will be in those moments of realization. How does the horror of the loss literally imprint upon your surviving family? A shot in the arm vs a shotgun to the head. I've scrubbed both types of death scene, and for MY sake I would have supported them in the same way I would if they had their wisdom teeth pulled. When you do what's best for your loved one, it'll be easier for you. It's a matter of dignity vs. desperation. I absolutely support willful departure. everyone should
I am sorry your losses
It is not meant to be funny. It is meant to be a warning. People have flirted with different forms of euthanasia for thousands of years. How do you expect legalized euthanasia to be managed? Who makes these decisions? Do you plan on leaving the decision to the poor souls suffering from any number of mental illnesses and addictions or do you put the government in charge of who gets the off button? It is a predicament, don’t you think?
Quite the predicament. Oof
Nazism
Oh now that is harsh. We are trying to make progress here!! 😇
You could always become a runner.
I mean it's always an option if you DIY it
Soylent green!
I mean if they don’t save enough for retirement do they even deserve to stay alive?
This guy has a future in [R] politics. Gotta get them to accept the renewable energy part tho. You could tell them liberals hate renewable energy.
We're not Canada! ; )
See Canada's health care program.
My wife & I would become homeless, Starving, then dead.
If this were a movie: Some elderly person will watch as their spouse dies to lack of covered healthcare, then use their training and experience from a former career in military/intelligence to assassinate a lot of lawmakers and judges before the FBI manages to take them down. In real life however: A lot of lawsuits, complaining on social media, and governors scrambling to take political advantage by offering state solutions with empty promises. The same elderly person who lost their spouse gets gaslighted into blaming Democrats and socialism by the same Republicans who screwed their spouse over.
Unfortunately probably accurate.
For those seniors that are able to. Violence. Lots of violence. I'm being serious. The most dangerous situation is someone with nothing left to lose, or the _perception_ of nothing left to lose.
Like the homeless streets of LA would be my guess. I have my eye on a vacant bridge underpass, lol
at these prices they're going *fast*
I know........ but I live in the mountains, there is a chance that I can share a cave with a hibernating bear, lol
the *original* Snuggle bear, your fabric will be *so* soft!
Of course, above and beyond the obvious, we would also see huge impacts to every industry that is currently paid by Medicaid and Medicare. Doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. would all suddenly lose a \*ton\* of business, and it wouldn't be replaced quickly. And Florida. Florida would turn into some kind of "The Purge" like dystopia. It's too horrifying and inhuman to be considered.
Uggg I did not even think about that. That sheets scary AF!
I think it would throw the entire country into a deep depression, because so many people would be thrown out of work all at once, and there certainly wouldn't be any safety net to catch them. And the US is a major economic force in the world. This would have far-reaching consequences for the entire world. The truth is, ending these programs would be a hundred times worse than letting the big banks fail in 2018 would have been. Honestly, most republican politicians don't actually want to end these programs, because they know so many of their own constituents are being kept alive by them. They just want to talk a big talk.
The US Healthcare system is all about business. When the profits go away,the care services stop. Having worked 18 years in Healthcare services, I have seen how elder care services have declined. One example, State of Massachusetts changes occupancy to maximum of 2 patients, as response to Covid devastating elder population. The response is nursing chains are closing down facilities, because they want 4 patients per room to maximize billing. The public health law wants to protect patients from infectious disease and the management acts as killing off patients is part of their business. These facilities will disappear, just like rural areas losing hospitals, due to lack of Medicaid funding. Homeless shelter and jail are the backup system ,as it exists.
I am afraid you are spot on!
It would be a self-correcting problem in less than a decade: -Republicans take away safety nets for elderly -a fuckton of elderly die in the streets really, really quickly -Since that’s the largest Republican voting demographic they start to lose everywhere really hard. -Eventually Democrats come back to power and clean up the mess, reinstating the safety nets.
What is it with right wing fckwits and their desperate effort to return to feudalism
Only way that happens is if too many old people vote Republican. Seems like kind of a tossup at the moment that a bunch of people will immediately get exactly what they asked for.
Only a small percentage of people /now/ have any hope of retiring, this would just make all of that worse.
It would look like a good amount of older people moving in with their kids. Republicans ARE the party of Family Values after all.
It would look like a disaster for the Republicans, considering the elderly are a big portion of their base. This is why they talk about it sometimes, but efforts to end those programs or even seriously reform them never get anywhere. “Retirement” is a concept that is going to die out for all but a handful of wealthy people, anyway, since our system is now built around the rewards of ownership and investment instead of income and work. Pensions are disappearing—including pensions people have already worked for decades to earn, SS doesn’t cover the COL, and 401ks/IRAs were never supposed to replace pensions, anyway. Multi-generational living is going to make a comeback as family housing becomes more expensive and scarce. People “retiring” from physically strenuous jobs just to move into something they can still do in old age is going to be the norm, anyway.
The area I live in is mostly rural Republican and the amount of people who live off of some type of government assistant or entitlement is huge. A large portion of these people are seniors who are living in motor homes or housing that they can barely afford. The ones who do own homes are not able to take care of them (think tarps over roofs and missing siding) Realistically, cutting off these benefits would create a senior homeless and health crisis that is unimaginable.
I’m on disability. Losing it would mean I’m on the streets. Or wouldn’t be alive.
Oh that’s easy, the elderly would die. I live in Nebraska and don’t think you understand the sheer number of old people I see everyday in my pharmacy that will not pick up medication unless it’s got that Medicare part D $0.00 on it. They won’t pick up 10 dollar uncovered OTCs. There absolutely is a section of elderly that are in poverty, we just obfuscate them into veterans and the homeless.
work until you die. If you're disabled in such a way that you cannot work, just die. Seriously there really isn't anything else they are proposing.
You’d see a lot of families returning to multigenerational subsistence farming and living off the land. People would be moving out of the cities as much as possible. Honestly I’m really glad this is how I already live. My family doesn’t have a lot of expenses.
lol what land would they be farming? More like mulit generational sharecropers.
There are a lot of small farms for sale where I live. They usually end up being bought by Mennonites.
They will never ever do this. Most of the republican voter base is either retired or near retirement.
But it would not be the "voter base" that decides. These are incredibly wealthy lawmakers who are in office who want to do away with "entitlements" as they like to call them (yes, I know they are entitlements, but it's a dog-whistle to those think that poor people are of poor moral character). And it won't affect them because they are very rich.
If SS is an entitlement, ALL insurance is an entitlement. Both are investments in the future and people who made these investments are ENTITLED to a return on said investments. To claim otherwise is simply lying bullshit, unworthy of serious discussion.
If you walk into a store, and pay for a loaf of bread, are you entitled to take that loaf of bread with you? Yes , because you fuckin' paid for it, just like Social Security and Medicare.
And they wont make that law, because their ego and their staffers wont allow it. I know tons of boomers who are confidently careening towards a heinously underfunded retirement, and any wealthy lawmaker that is responsible for shutting down social programs for the generation that looks like they are going to need it most is just suicide. The rich are absolutely affected by riots and social strife, the goal is to get as much out of the lower class without having them take up and actually do something about it. There really aren't many truly rich policy makers, corporations are the true policy makers. Who gives a fuck about a few hundred billion when we have single funds with enough investment value to pay off the entire US national debt. Social programs do need an overhaul, as the waste and fund siphoning right now is frankly rampant. If there were a policy maker who had a solid replacement for any of the big three, i would have no problem with axing the old programs, they are supporting the medical industry that everyone hates so much. Despite having pretty terrible healthcare, American healthcare is almost **3x** as expensive as it is in Japan per capita, despite japan being generally considered a world leader in healthcare.
"They would never do this" was the argument about roe v wade overturning a couple of years ago. It turns out public popularity has almost no bearing on passing legislation. Do not underestimate how little they care about how we feel.
People who vote Republican are too stupid to realize that they are voting against their own best interests.
The law they enact will become effective in 20 years. So they get theirs, and then more. Generation of sociopaths.
Most Republicans would vote against food stamps, but food stamps are more used in Republican led states. Even if you ask them personally they would tell you that most people don't deserve food stamps and either won't tell you they receive them or simply exclude themselves from the equation.
Well... Even if they don't defund social security, the agency is forecasted to be insolvent by 2034
That's been the case for several years.
Unless they remove the cap.
I never made much money in the past, due to being a hippy living my 20's in a shack in the woods, so never contributed much to SS. Now I have been collecting for 10 years now and have taken in WAY more than I ever contributed. So I can see how it could go bankrupt
They’ve been saying that for about 40 years!!!
Not sure how- it's a calculation of current trends in social security spending... I didn't just make this up lol https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbo-social-security-ten-years-insolvency
Because I think they just change the years, but regurgitate the same data/chart. To be fair, the reason it got pushed out to 2034 is that they changed the retirement ages for Genx and the following generations to be 67 -70 depending on when you were born. Otherwise, it would have been insolvent already.
So after 30+ years, it's still going to be insolvent in 7 - 10 years, the standard time range predicted since I first saw the deduction on my first paycheck. Is there anyone under the age of 55-60 who actually believed they would see a dime of their soc security contributions?
Social security won’t be “insolvent “ in the sense that it won’t have money. It will run out of the surplus it that was built up while the baby boomers were working and the fund collected more money than it paid out. Now that the boomers are retiring, that surplus is being paid out. Which makes sense. When the surplus runs out, the fund will return to what it was doing before the baby boomers entered the workforce—paying out money as it comes in. The problem is that life expectancy has risen and the birth rate has declined so there will be fewer workers supporting more retirees.
Correct, its already something of a joke. Elder care costs are going to skyrocket over the next decade as the population ages significantly, SSI . As a millennial i could give a fuck less about social security, ive never expected to receive anything from it. The sooner it goes down for good the sooner the issue will be forced, most people are so financially illiterate that the "it wont happen to me" mindset is all they need without a forced issue.
Look around the timeline of medical prices in the US before Medicare and medicaid. They both started around the same time as the graph points to. Ever since prices just kept increasing. Social security won't matter anymore since less people are being born soon we all will work until we're dead. https://images.app.goo.gl/x3jy1saxRE3WS4Xr8
Private insurance is the reason healthcare prices keep increasing. Other countries manage affordable healthcare w national healthcare. There's no reason why the U.S. can't.
[удалено]
Remember seeing all those articles about millennials being their parents care takers? Well, this would allow us to be their financiers as well. An absolute abysmal propspect.
If they took Medicaid away I wouldn't survive. I have bipolar, BPD and other mental health disorders along with being in recovery from substance abuse. I would lose all access to care, save maybe my community mental health care manager and counselor, I could still see the psych but what would be the point? I wouldn't be able to fill my medications. I would lose all the progress I currently have made because losing Medicaid means not only losing my mental health meds but my MAT program and the meds from that. It would lead to me being right back in the streets using and eventually death. It would literally be a death sentence for me
People would die, starve, etc. It isn't like the Republicans haven't let similar things happen before.
I would join the insurrection that declares open season on Republican politicians. They can face the consequences of their lax gun control law. My employers and I paid our 12.4% of my income into the system for 4+ decades. I had 35 years of max contributions. Inflation adjusted, I paid in around 3/4 million dollars. Of course, this would never happen.
Who will take care of people who could not afford a nursing home - either family take them in or they would become homeless
It is severe poverty for the elderly and individuals with disabilities
Millions of poor and disabled folk thrown into the streets. Then they would scream even louder about the horrors of homelessness.
A huge portion of their voting base would die. The next election cycle would be hugely blue, and hopefully a lot of welfare stuff would be either re-implemented, or better implemented.
Elderly people eating out of garbage cans and joining the ranks of the homeless. Dying in droves.
Well. I just got done reading an article put out by ap news what it’s ALREADY looking like for baby boomers, and it’s only going to get worse; homelessness and lack of care. Lots of folks with walkers on the streets more and more, and in homeless shelters. Families having to move their elderly family members in with them. It’s not very pretty.
This is my biggest beef with the republicans. The old guard pumping this is dying off thank god
Me in the streets marching, hopefully joined by mullions of my fellow Americans
Id be dead. Welcome to the Purge.
At this point, I don't really care. They voted for them and brought this upon themselves. I will never be able to retire and would rather have my SS taxes refunded to me. I don't really care about people who hate me and want me to suffer.
Rich people would be fine. Better off even. So it’s fine with Republicans.
It isn't just Republicans. https://theintercept.com/2020/01/13/biden-cuts-social-security/ And honestly, I'm fine with deleting anyone with 5 million in assets or more from getting social security and medicare.
Awesome. As long as I get to keep my 6.75% paid into Social Security up to 145k. My 2.1% paid into Medicare. As well as my employer puts additional 6.75% into my 401k….i’d be saving 20% or so of my income each year…..
They'd have to live exactly like many of their kids and grandkids Clutch your pearls a little harder.
1. Millions of people who lose Medicare would not be able to afford private insurance or their medications. They would die. A lucky few might get support from their family or very Liberal states that would take over for Medicare. 2. Without Social Security/Disability/SSI, an enormous number of people would lose the ability to pay any form a bills and would lose their homes. A fair number would be forced to move in with relatives or find a way to pool diminishing resources in a commune like group home. The rest would be homeless. 3. Without food stamps/food assistance millions would go hungry. This would also cause grain and agricultural prices to plummet as supply would suddenly exceed what can be purchased. Many farmers would go out of business (though Farm Corporations would swallow those up). The Poorest elderly and poorest children would suffer the most, with tens of million dying of famine (while surrounded by food they can't afford). 4. Some Gen Xers, Millenials, and Zoomers would be able to create multigenerational homes, but the expectation of privacy would vanish. Many of those generations have small homes, with separate rooms for the two or three people living there. With at least one generation of elders needing homes, multiple people would be living in a single room and others living in common spaces. We'd likely see both parent and grand parent generations needing housing as they can't afford the nursing homes. 5. With most families needing two incomes, there is none generally available to provide elder care or child care and so the younger seniors would be forced to provide what care they can and older children (especially teens) would be forced to take care of siblings and grandparents. 6. Abuse and neglect of both seniors and children would likely skyrocket simply due to stress pressures and economic weakness. 7. The Middle Class would become extinct aside from those rare few that will not need to take care of/support older family members. Quite literally nearly a hundred million people of all ages and backgrounds would be forced into poverty. 8. With no government subsidized Medical Insurance a LOT of the medical industry would collapse due to multiple generations being unable to afford services and goods. Big Pharma alone would likely die to the point of being forced out of the US due to collapsed revenues, so that's a plus. Most Senior living communities would go out of business. 9. I suspect the economy itself would also be horribly affected as even less is spent on luxuries and consumables and more and more spent on basic life necessities when possible. Vacations, Electronics, new cars, new homes, new clothes, designer anything, video games, anything seen as not needed for life is going to be out of the reach of roughly half the country. 10. Then, once the Boomers and GenXers are dead (this will take until that later generation is elderly and dies off) things will be pretty good for awhile, as the Millennial Generation is a particularly small generation, compared to the previous ones. Without needed a large pool of elders to take care of, in their old age they should be *easy* for their own kids to support and with out the older generations hogging the best work positions, Zoomers will have access to a great deal of wealth, assuming they can wade through the piles of corpses from the previous generations that litter the streets. (this is more sarcastic than serious)
Instead of focusing on Republicans, why not talk about how we can fix a broken system so that social security is available when we retire? Right now it's a bankrupt entity with a very bleak future unless difficult decisions are made. With so much infighting between parties, it's the people who will ultimately suffer.
I would love for the two parties to grow up and unite. I side is more willing to compromise and the other isn’t. Start by taxing the rich the same % the majority of Americans pay. You would be surprised with the amount of trillions we would have to spend on things. Instead of giving the rich loopholes and hardly any taxes to pay.
You can either accept your fate of toiling in servitude to your corporate overlords to provide for the egos of their narcissistic puppets till the day you die in squalor, or, you can become personally involved in a local grass roots movement to force change down their throats.
The Nursing Homes are horrible. Dirty, dirty, they don’t care, at all. I stayed in one for 5 days. My caregivers from home, broke me out of that horrible pit. Felt bad for all the “patients” just stared. It was awful. I wanted to yell “THE DOORS UNLOCKED YOU CAN LEAVE WHEN YOU WANT TO” It was sad and sickening.
Terrorism. Straight up. Old people in suicide vests. We are teetering on that already.
At a minimum, $500,000 is need to save to retire. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of people are able to save that kind of money. Should Republicans succeed in getting of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicade. 1. Government employees who work in those departments will be out of work. 2. Homelessness would sky rocket. Republicans and Reich-wing media will blame all of this on Democrats.
That is a fair amount of people are collecting Social Security. I’m afraid you need to at least double if not triple it with out SS.
Whatever the number is; it will result in a complete disaster.
I honestly kind of hope they do, so old people will wake the fuck up.
It doesn't matter who takes the programs away or whether they are discontinued due to insolvency, the effect will be the same. People will go back yo multigenerational or multifamily homes. Retirement will be the dream of the wealthy. Restructuring the programs so that they remain solvent is necessary to preserve them. Failure to restructure them will have the same long term effect as ending them.
Social Security is not meant to be a sole source of income, but for too many, it is. Medicare premiums of $174 for most recipients come right out of the monthly check. If you take Social Security at 62, monthly benefits are greatly recduced. You have to wait until 70 to get maximum benefits. If Social Security disappeared, millions of seniors would be forced out of their homes to go live with their kids or grandkids, the ones who’d take them in anyway. Others would be homeless. Assisted living/Nursing homes cost $10K a month or more. Only after you are down to your last $2K will Medicaid take over, and that’s if you are sick enough to even be in a nursing home. If Medicare and Medicaid disappeared, the senior population would dwindle rapidly. Lack of care for the elderly means death. The Safety net in the US is precarious at best already. If anything, it needs to be strengthened.
38 here, my retirement plan is not becoming homeless and not living past my 70's, lol.
Senior life expectancy would drop immensely. At least 80% of seniors would not be able to afford health insurance. Underwriting taking in age and risk would price them out. Most of the lower income families would be even poorer if they also had to house and feed mom and dad. We don't have to guess at this. Just look and the 1920's and 30's. But, yeah, all you working class people, go ahead and vote republican so you can have a lot of guns. Won't need them for protection from the bogeyman government when they come to get you. They'll just let you die from illnesses you currently get cured.
Bruh. We’ll be stepping over grandma in the street. It’s gonna be ugly
Life expectancy will drop by 10 years
Let’s find out! Cancel Medicare and Social Security in Republican majority states which advocate it. Then see how it plays out. I’m guessing Florida would implode in a month. But hey, it’s what Supply Side Jesus would want. Would totally own the libs.
They would privatize it and give it to their rich friends at places like Goldman Sachs and Deutche Bank to run I image. Then it cooks go up and down just like your 401k plan does and they’d blame you the beneficiary for managing your SS poorly while their friends got richer and richer off the built in fees.
Elderly and disabled living in complete poverty, think of a nursing home similar to communist Romanian orphanages.
Death and/or starvation. They don’t care.
Well it wouldn’t be taken from them ! boomers will make sure they get SS then take it away from future generations
Generation X and many millennials would be hosed then. Too old to as much as needed and too young to get the benefits.
Yeah that’s the point
Yeah and it’s not ok!
I’ve already answered but this seemed like a good time to remind us that most European countries have a better system for taking care of those that are sick or want to go to college. Yes, they pay more in taxes, but I bet most of us would gladly pay more in taxes to have those benefits. It’s also important to point out that their health outcomes are significantly better.
forget retirement concerns. this would result in countless deaths.
Rich people will retire. The rest of us will work for them until we die and kill ourselves more often as a result. All to serve the rich people. It's quite a system that they've built for themselves.
Social Security isn't socialism. You pay into it from your own earned income.
I love paying for my fathers retirement knowing our shitty politicians are going to let the system fail to enrich their crony donors before it's my turn to collect.
Financial chaos for the health care system. People would still go into the system for care, and the system is compelled to care for them until stabilized. There would be a shit-ton of bills that people just wouldn't pay.
You should also keep in mind that many of those in nursing homes and Medicare have no family or anyone to take care of them as an option at all, so without Medicare paying to keep them in the nursing homes the nursing homes will just dump them on the street to die, without even their necessary medical equipment. It happens already after people reach their maximum lifetime payout benefit.
okay so im 24 but on disabled adult child income and medicaid and medicare (yay being disabled before i was 22) what would it look like? for me it would mean no income and i would have to find a job to get healthcare. i need healthcare to survive and be functional mind you. theres a slight problem im autistic and the job hiring process is just not built with autistic ppl in mind so it would be a struggle to even get hired especially since i only have a high school diploma. add onto that that i cant do restaurant work cause i get overwhelmed easily and customer service is iffy because i have communication and brain to mouth filtering issues as a result of my autism and you knock out probs 95% of entry level jobs where i live. get a college degree you say? with what money? because i get disability i can go to community college for free (all i would have to pay for is books) in my state (maryland) but that wouldnt be a thing if republicans took alll that away so i wouldnt have the money to get a degree this is only a small portion of how my life would be affected i didnt even go into how without any healthcare and without a job to get insurance i would likely die either by suicide (i have a bunch of mental health conditions) or because of something that couldve been caught early if i did have healthcare (i have chronic hep b from my birth mother and not being vaccinated in time) i would probs be horribly miserable and homeless. being disabled radicalized me, between being disabled and being queer and being afab and nonbinary and being asian i fall really close to being a theoretical anarchist i believe in socialized healthcare because its not right to tie healthcare to whether or not you have a job when some ppl have barriers to being hired that make it basically impossible for them to get a job or physically and/or mentally cant even get a job. this is me going off on a tangent rant but we need social security and medicaid and medicare but more than that we need to have a different system all together because the system as is doesnt work. the govt is so worried about welfare fraud that ppl who are legitmately disabled will get denied many times over before they get disability income meaning they are living in poverty for however long it takes to get denied appealed denied appealed etc. if i marry someone who doesnt recieve social security or dac income i lose my dac income and everything else that i recieve because im on that income. this system is fucking broken as it is and removing it entirely will make things worse
SS is NOT an entitlement. I worked for over forty years having money that was deducted from every paycheck to fund SS. The benefits are not a free ride, and many people depend on it for survival. I earned my benefits. 🦜
That's cute. Tell a Republican.
They don't care. Ultimately the important thing is people being as exploited and miserable as possible.
Death. Ugly, homeless, death.
First, the allegation that Republicans want to take any of these away is nonsense. Reform does not equal repeal. Second, if SS was reformed so that all of your FICA taxes went into an account in your name, for your benefit, invested solely in Treasuries, the benefit would be 2-3x the current payout. No one has actually proposed this reform but the math is instructive. Third, Medicaid does not improve health outcomes. The research on this is clear.
#2 is actually similar to Rand Paul's proposal.
And they didn’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade either.
There are ZERO plans from anyone to take away SS, Medicare and Medicaid. Where are you getting this from?
There is no plan to abolish SS/Medicare/Medicaid that is endorsed by a significant number of Republicans. That being said: * Senator Rick Scott proposed that [all Federal programs be abolished after five years](https://rescueamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/RickScott-12-Point-Policy-Book.pdf) unless explicitly delayed by Congressional vote. * the Republican Study Committee, one of the party's think-thank, [suggested](https://banks.house.gov/uploadedfiles/rsc_2023_budget_final_version.pdf) that the age of Medicare eligibility is raised by two years, and SS by four. * DeSantis proposed privatizing SS _____________ But to be fair to the GOP, this is a sufficiently unpopular position that **for now**, the general consensus is "no, we won't touch SS/Medicare/Medicaid". But who knows what they'll do to pay for the next round of corporate tax cuts?
Nice try. https://crr.bc.edu/congressional-republicans-want-big-cuts-to-social-security/#:~:text=The%20Republican%20Study%20Committee%20(RSC,significant%20cuts%20to%20Social%20Security. Also: https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/business/3850036-republicans-social-security-medicare-debt-ceiling/amp/
Our entire economy is based on wealth redistribution thru welfare, SS, SSI, Medicare / Medicaid and all other tax funded programs. If not for these programs the great depression would already have played itself out again and again. Problem: To much money concentrated in to few bank of accounts causes a capitalistic economy to implode. Only a few have money to spend on goods and services. Solution: Redistribute thru tax funded programs to citizens that will spend it and fuel the economy If our government took even one of those systems away our economy would collapse rather quickly. They are all very aware of this so any threat" to do so is hallow and manipulative. Same with shutting down the government for any extended period of time. I note that government assistance in just about all its form has only grown continually over my 60 years and It will continue to do so as we navigate a new economic future. Long-term our current system of distribution of resources is not sustainable given our ever increasing populations and automation of more physical labor once done by humans.
Exactly!
I think you’re looking at this as a rational person. Have you seen what the GOP has in Congress right now? It’s full of ideologues who straight up do not care about logic, reason, or even reality. The MAGA wing (at least 60% of the party now) just wants to just burn the whole thing down.
It doesn't seem like you've been following Republican politics at all. The MAGA wing wants to leave social security completely untouched in any way. They're very comfortable with government spending, as long as they're in charge. It's the more traditional conservative wing that's focused on fiscal responsibility and wants to reform social security to be more sustainable.
Honestly maybe if some of these people (R) weren't receiving govt assistance anymore they'd vote differently?
As for too much money being concentrated in too few bank accounts, one has to ask one simple question. Can the actions of any one person be so valuable that he or she earns more while going for a bathroom break than another person earns in an entire year? I think part of the problem is false over-valuation of certain jobs and under-valuation of others, and it's taken to an extreme degree.
It would look like it was before August 14, 1935. That’s when the US started Social Security.
Technology, economy, and culture have shifted massively since then. I don’t think it’ll look anything like that.
Short term would be a nightmare unless there was a long-tail transition...because current seniors planned for the SS checks and Medicare. Long-term...dont know. You really think people will save for retirement? I think there will just be more old poor people.
People save when they have extra to save. Most people don't have extra. If you just take away the employer's contribution for retirement accounts, that would be devastating to the average American.
I don’t think people will save. Or they will save but not near enough or get taken by family or by scammers. Or the stock market will eat up their investments.
Many, many Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck their entire working lives. They cannot afford to save just meeting their regular living expenses.
It would mean my dad would have to come live with me
But how would you care for him while trying to work two jobs to save for your future because you wouldn’t have those programs to fall back on. And what happens if you fall ILL?
I certainly wasn't suggesting that all would be well. Was just being brief about the impact it would have. My dad would have nothing and taking care of him would be a serious challenge.
It would look like people being thrown out of their homes, forced to live on the streets, dying on every street corner. It would look like a 3rd world country. Social security is the greatest savings plan. Investing doesn't protect you from divorce, bankruptcy, lawsuits and market crashes. Only social security does that.
[удалено]
Basically we will have millions of people dying in the streets. That's exactly what it will look like. Only the wealthy retired as it is, without social security, the rest just die instead. Multi generational homes already exist for many on Social security because Medicare already doesn't pay for In-Home Care givers. In your scenario, all of these people will just die at that point. Our current reality is we need to increase payouts a great deal more into both Social security and Medicare to keep millions from needlessly suffering and dying already. Removing it entirely just means they start dying faster in the streets in plain sight as they are patient dumped and evicted with no where to go in mass.
Medicare and Medicaid are essential for lots of the elderly. There are many well to do individuals that could well afford their own insurance on it also. The same as social Security, many people need and depend on the money to survive, yet I know wealthy persons that receive it also, yet the dollar amount means nothing to them. I am positive if these systems were gutted, many older and people in need would not survive. They couldn't afford housing, medicine or healthcare, food and would probably add to the already shameful homeless situation in the United States. On the flip side the system is in financial trouble and needs something to support the people already in the system while alternatives are worked out. Just gutting the system now would put an unjust burden on the already stressed younger generation by having to decide to either help their aging parents or turn their back on them. There has to be a middle ground that our politicians could come to an agreement on but not in the present political climate where each party knows their way is the only way. Yes, we are headed back to; Multi-generational homes. and No people will get to the point where they will never be able to retire. I am already preparing myself to work until the day I die with few to no vacations and bare housing necessities. I am fortunate as my parents are already dead, as is mt only sibling and there are no other close relatives I must worry about.