Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | I agree with you Pat but maybe I'm getting too old and cynical to believe that I can simply tell someone to behave "correctly" and they will. Perhaps I can have a standard of behavior and by example convince some young person but since I live an almost solitary life here on the farm and seldom see people young or old that's not likely to be effective.
But as to the point, I don't know if people are more or less moral today as opposed to sixty years ago but the demographic data suggests they're not. Keep in mind there is a difference between a "bastard" child and an "unwanted" child. And furthermore what the demographic data shows us quite clearly that the birth rate in general and among young women specifically has fallen dramatically. Now we can't determine how the sexual behavior of young people has changed in the past sixty years but what we do know for certain is that there was a higher rate of live births then and it is much lower today. As Donald Trump would wont to say: " There was something going on."
So you can see that I'm pessimistic that we can change human behavior but maybe we can manage the consequences.
As for our contributions to Medicare (and Social Security) now it is quite clear if you look at the history of funding for these programs the current recipients have never paid more than a small fraction of the benefits. The bulk of the benefits are paid by the current contributors. That's just the facts. Worse yet, if it wasn't for the "Cramdown" where Congress mandated lower payments to doctors & hospitals Medicare wouldn't even be able to manage that. And the consequences of these lower Medicare (& Medicaid) remebursments is higher costs for the younger working population. As for Social Security most current beneficiaries recover all of their actual contributions within a few months to a couple of years.
For what it's worth. |
This might get interesting - Swiss to do away with fractional reserve lending????
