The real worker to retiree ratio is much higher, because workers are 80% more productive!

You've almost certainly heard of the changing ratio between workers to retirees.

Right now it's 2.8 workers to one retiree, in non-relative terms. However, if you take into account that the average worker now works 80% more efficiently than they used to, you can find that the real efficiency based ratio is 5.2 workers to one retiree. I say workers, because it's almost as if we've got a work force that's 80% larger than the real numbers indicate, for no other reason than they work so fucking hard!

But there's a problem. These efficiency increases have not been rewarded, at least the middle class and poor haven't been properly rewarded.

That's because income that would usually have fallen into the realm of the FICA taxes has gone to people who pay no FICA at all, or very little relative to their income because they make so much money they max out on the taxes (in other words they've hit the cap.)

This is the real reason we are facing any problems with Social Security and Medicare, at least as far as revenues are concerned. (Costs may be increasing in Medicare because of high inflation in the medical sector.)

Because of the fact that workers now work so much harder, we don't actually have as much burden to take care of retirees.

That monkey your back is not grandma, it's Daddy Warbucks. You're carrying his lazy ass around while you're 80% more productive than you used to be!

The funding mechanism for SS is what it is. That's the hand we got dealt and it's unlikely to change.