"When you look at government policies, there's a massive
transfer of wealth from the young and relatively poor members of
society toward the old and relatively members of society," says
Veronique de Rugy, a Reason magazine columnist and economist at the
Mercatus Center at George Mason
University.
In 1970,
de Rugy notes, transfers from the young to the old took up
about 20 percent of the federal budget. In a few years, that figure
will break the 50 percent barrier as the population ages and Social
Security and Medicare ramp up. Those programs are paid for by
payroll taxes that suck up around 15
percent of every dollar most workers will ever make.
Yet the #Occupy movement spends most of its energy railing
against "the 1 Percent" richest Americans, whose wealth is not
gained at the expense of the "99 Percent." Rather, it comes from
providing goods and services that people want to consume.
As transfer payments to elderly Americans - irrespective of
wealth or need - increase in absolute and relative terms, de Rugy
argues that we should scrap entitlements and replace them instead
with a "social safety net" that helps poor Americans of whatever
age. "There's absolutely no reason to continue paying for lots of
people who have accumulated wealth their entire lives," de Rugy
tells Reason's Nick Gillespie.
About 3.40 minutes. Shot by Meredith Bragg and Joshua Swain and
edited by Swain.
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