in the coming decades - closer to 10 or 15 years for Medicare and maybe more like 30 for SS (too lazy to look it up, but point is, these are relatively long term problems). Now, marry that with people's concerns that very soon, there isn't going to be enough work for people to do. AI is on the cusp of taking all our jobs.

Personally, I think that risk is overstated, but the way "work" works is pretty damn likely to change. The demographic shift away from the structure that supported the design of SS and Medicare will invariably continue. Fewer and fewer payers for every beneficiary.

This notion of simply raising taxes to fix it strikes me as the ultimate in stuck-inside-the-box thinking. For starters unless you disagree with my statement about the demographics, it won't "solve" the problem. The problem is in the structure - it works at 15 workers per beneficiary, but is strained at 2 or 3 workers per, and breaks down completely once you start getting to multiple beneficiaries per worker. Which seems inevitable even if AI doesn't take over the workforce.

So doesn't it make more sense to really fix it structurally, instead of just doing what amounts at best to kicking the can down the road?