[ExI] health care individual mandate

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Mon Nov 9 23:21:27 UTC 2009


On 11/9/09, spike wrote:
<snip>
>  In the current system, the government measures who is rich and who is poor
>  based entirely on d$/dt, and not at all on its integral over time, $.  So
>  the young and healthy low $ people will need to subsidize the much higher $
>  much lower d$/dt older people.  So we get poorer younger people subsidizing
>  richer, older people.  Even if Jeff and I clearly benefit from that deal, I
>  do not think it is a damn bit right.  We cannot dump the load on Joshua and
>  his peers.  I do not see it as workable at all.  I am surprised the young
>  are not protesting wildly.
>
>


Spike

I think you'll find that all government pension schemes already work
like this. It's not a new idea.

In the UK every employee and their employer pays a contribution into
the government old age pension scheme. The problem now facing the UK
(and shortly the US) is that the government noticed that the
contributions it was collecting were more than required to pay the
state pensions. So it said 'Goody' and spent the excess contributions.
Unfortunately the UK has an aging population and there are now too
many old people saying 'Where's my pension?' So the old folk are
relying on the young people's contributions to pay their state
pensions and there aren't enough young people nowadays.

The European problem now is how to square this circle.
Postponing the pension age from 65 to 70 is a temporary fix.
But there are still big problems.

BillK



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