Now, one might counter that, for some things, prices are increasing for seniors–“things” like health care. So we need to make sure seniors have their Medicare, right? I’m fine with that, but let’s keep in mind that current retiree-recipients will receive Medicare benefits that, on average, exceed what they ever put in, even when you adjust for inflation. American Enterprise Institute scholar Andrew Biggs makes a powerful point when he calculates that “a typical person who was born in 1944, began work at age 21 in 1965, and in 2009 retired at age 65 and enrolled in Medicare,” and who then draws the typical benefit until death at age 83, will have paid roughly $64,971 in Medicare payroll taxes during his/her lifetime but received around$173,886, for a net of “$108,915 more in benefits than he paid in taxes over his lifetime.” Hey, that sounds like socialist-style redistribution to me! Which brings me to my next point: Although the redistributive effects of Social Security and Medicare are to some degree intragenerational, a lot of the redistribution works intergenerationally. Because it’s intergenerational–specifically from younger Americans/workers who have paid into these programs at higher tax rates than their parents and grandparents–and because each new American generation is less white than the previous one–such redistribution also has a racial effect. Moreover, as a result of different life expectancies, even the intragenerational redistributive effect has a racial element: Cato’s Michael Tanner explains in his 2004 book, Social Security and its Discontents, because of different life expectancies, the typical black man will receive on average about$70,000 less than a white man, and even if the white man and black man both reach age 65, the disparity still remains about \$25,000.