Social Security Solvency: How to Ensure Social Security Benefits, Cut 400 Billion Dollars in Federal Spending a Year, and Make Everyone Happy

So you think there's a Social Security crisis, huh? Then you probably believe that Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden used to spend league nights together down at the Baghdad Bowling Bunker, rolling balls of uranium yellowcake, chowing down on 2500-dinar Allah-you-can-eat cheezee nachos from the Akbar Snackbar.

In other words, your reality is informed more by nonsensical rhetoric than, well, reality.

The Social Security program is entirely solvent for the next 34 to 44 years. Social Security now collects more in taxes than it pays in benefits annually. It's estimated this will no longer be the case by 2018, when the program will begin to withdraw funds from its surplus. The surplus will run out in either 2042 (according to the 2005 Social Security trustees report) or 2052 (as projected by the Congressional Budget Office). After that, Social Security will rely solely on collected taxes, and will be able to continue paying out benefits at 75 to 80% of earmarked amounts. As Social Security benefits increase annually, even reduced future payouts will be more than what today's senior citizens receive.

Crisis shmisis.

Clearly, though, preemptive financial measures to ensure future Social Security annuities would be prudent. There will be a problem, nobody's denying that. Without fueling the retirement fund privatization conspiracy, we certainly don't want to be the proverbial ostriches lounging lazily on the beach, sipping Mai Tais with our heads up our sandy asses.

Or do the ostriches drink Bahama Mamas? I can never remember that part of the metaphor.

My Social Security solution is so brilliantly simple that it can be summed up in only two words: abolish Medicare.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "If we abolish Medicare, won't millions of senior citizens be unable to pay for essential doctor visits and life-saving medications?"

Exactly.

Hear me out on the benefits of this plan and you'll get through the initial stage of distaste, a common but misguided reaction.

Social Security's woes stem largely from the ever-increasing longevity of life. Modern medicines and the array of perpetually improving health-related sciences are prolonging life further beyond its productive, useful, sexy years than ever before. The average American life expectancy as of 2007 was 78. Partial Social Security benefits can be collected starting at 62, and fully at 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later.

This gives retirees an average of 16 years to consume benefit funds like termites. Giant termites that eat cash like wood.

We've come a long way. Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935. The Social Security Administration began collecting taxes and paying benefits in 1937. Back then, people were lucky to hang in there just a few years beyond retirement at 65.

By abolishing Medicare, most lower to middle class aging--sorry, youth-challenged Americans, generally on somewhat restrictive fixed incomes, wouldn't be able to afford the medications and advanced health care services that sustain them. We're all aware of the skyrocketing costs of U.S. health care, and many standard geriatric medications are among the most expensive.

These soaring costs have left Medicare in more dire financial circumstances than Social Security. According to the 2008 Social Security trustees report, Medicare's expenditures will surpass those of Social Security in 2028. They will steadily monopolize an increasing percentage of our annual GDP, and will created enormous deficits.

It would appear we have a golden opportunity to kill two old birds with one stone.

Medicare spending is currently about $400 billion a year. Give it the guillotine treatment and let that money spurt all over the other sectors that so desperately need it.

Given the imperative nature of many medications to their senior imbibers, we can expect the herd of retirees to begin thinning almost immediately. This means an instant, direct, positive impact on the future of Social Security benefit coffers.

Significantly reducing the duration of Social Security benefit payouts should more than ensure continuing solvency. It will probably permit ongoing growth in the Social Security surplus. This may prove useful should future generations of senior citizens mutate--sorry, evolve, into a more resilient, durable species. Perhaps with amoeba-like regenerative saggy flesh or wrinkles that secrete a gooey yellowish supernourishing substance.

Unfortunately, I can offer no projected data to support the above claim. As of yet, nobody has studied the prospect of a sort of mass-euthanizing of retirees to decrease Social Security spending. Not that I'm aware of. But I believe common sense concurs.

There are of course endless societal benefits to accelerating the demise of senior citizens beyond the financial. To identify just a few that spring immediately to mind:

Drastically improved safety on roads. Fewer conversational black holes in the form of rambling stories referencing some mythical era known only as the "good ol' days" or "when I was growing up." The world will smell a little less like bug spray. Faster, more efficient checkout lines in stores. Don't scoff--the potentially devastating consequences of being in line behind a senior citizen are well-documented. Too small a market to justify Golden Girls reruns.

In fairness, there will be some drawbacks. This plan will be a severe blow to a few industries such as denture adhesives, Life Alert, hard candies, granny diapers, Tony Bennett, and cottage cheese. Small price, I say.

It's plenty chic to discuss the poor outlook for Social Security benefits. Economists, politicians, pundits, and laymen--sorry, laypeople, are eager to discuss our options. But we do know that privatization would be disastrous in several ways, and nobody wants to pay more taxes. These are generally the two poles of thought in overhauling the Social Security system. Yet the simple plan of abolishing Medicare to curtail the lives and benefits collection of retirees while simultaneously disengaging hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending to use as we see fit never makes its way into the public discourse.

Until now.