Wonkbook: 84 percent oppose Ryan’s Medicare plan

[Eliot Hosewater]

...Consider an average-wage, two-earner couple together earning $89,000 a year. Upon retiring in 2011, they would have paid $114,000 in Medicare payroll taxes during their careers.

But they can expect to receive medical services – from prescriptions to hospital care – worth $355,000, or about three times what they put in...

Quote from Gabfly1:

I'm not sure it should necessarily be a dollar-for-dollar comparison in absolute terms. There is, after all, the matter of time value of money.

Exactly, what's the inflation-adjusted valued of that $114,000?

 

[Kpatel83]

Good article

 

[Hello]

Quote from Eliot Hosewater:

Exactly, what's the inflation-adjusted valued of that $114,000?

The thing is that sword cuts both ways, the article uses 89,000 dollars as an average household income. That infact would have been in the top 1%, 40 years ago.

 

[Rodney King]

Quote from Hello:

For example had the government been investing the money they took in from medicare 114,000 would have been worth 355,000

The government can't "invest" trillions of dollars. What would they "invest" it in? Government paper -- that's just shuffling money from one pocket to the other. Equities or corporate paper -- do you want Washington owning the S&P500? Mortgages -- that was Fannie/Freddie...