This is why people call it a pyramid scheme.

The breakdown of single-earner families means kids and seniors get institutional care. And there isn’t enough money to socialize care as good as your family.

> The breakdown of single-earner families means kids and seniors get institutional care. And there isn’t enough money to socialize care as good as your family.

I guess we'd save a lot of money if we just had family structures more like people in asian countries.

If we spent the same money supporting family educational choice and preferred elderly in-home care, I suspect we'd be ahead of where we are.

Obviously, some people will need school and care that family can't give, and I'm not against paying for it.

But these policies encourage assets to be wasted so that you can get in the safety net.

wouldn't that lead to a lot of job losses in the nursing homes / facilities sectors?

Yeah. It isn't worth people making bad decisions to support other people's jobs. A key part of what makes a job a job is the worker, in some sense, creating more value for others than the personal cost to themselves.

If people are better off doing something for themselves, then it is a net win if they do. The nursing home employees can go and do something else.

> what makes a job a job is the worker, in some sense, creating more value for others than the personal cost to themselves.

"in some sense" really means in a collective sense. Not everyone falls into the safety net, but those that do certainly could exceed, in expenses, what they paid into the system. That's OK and totally fair.

Only a small percentage of people end up in a skilled nursing facility, of these the typical stay is almost always less than 2 years.

The numbers add up in bulk. It's a safety net that not everyone falls into.

> Do you think most citizens pay in that much tax in their lifetime?

For a fraction of them to need long-term care at some level, mostly not the nursing level, for on average around 2-3 years? Yes, easily.

It doesn’t, which is why benefits are the biggest portion of US government spending.

https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305...

>Mandatory expenditures, such as Social Security, Medicare, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program account for about 60% of the budget.

Technically Medicaid is from state governments or at least some portion of it, but it probably looks the same there.