Читать книгу Northern Light: Lessons for America from Canada's Fiscal Fix - Robert P. Murphy - Страница 8

One of the main difficulties in turning around the long-term fiscal condition of the United States government is the unsustainable current structure of entitlement programs, in particular Social Security and Medicare. From a unified budgetary perspective (disregarding IOUs issued by the Treasury to other parts of the US government), the latest Trustees Report estimates that the Hospital Insurance (HI), Supplemental Medical Insurance (SMI), and Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs – constituting what the public knows as Medicare and Social Security – over the next 75 years will have a massive shortfall in anticipated payroll contributions relative to expected beneficiary payments. If the government kept a fund to cover the difference between what it takes in for these programs and what it needs to pay out for them, they would currently need a staggering $38.6 trillion.