Over the past five decades, our policy of taking ever larger sums from young savers and giving them to old spenders has more than doubled the ratio of average consumption of oldsters to average consumption of youngsters.
Much of this redistribution has taken place through Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Collectively, these three programs spent $1.2 trillion on the elderly last year [2009]. Their total payment per oldster equaled a whopping $30,000, which is three-quarters of U.S. per-capita income. And, about half of this total constituted Medicare and Medicaid benefits, which are provided to the elderly directly in the form of personal consumption of health-care goods and services.
The bottom line? If we are serious about reversing the decline in national saving, we need to stop expropriating the young for the benefit of the old.
