"paid into it for years/entire life" is, of course, an utterly meaningless statement without qualifying exactly what they paid in and what they are getting out.
Seniors hold a position of unreasonable protection in our society right now. Via medicare and SS they are sucking up a great deal of federal income. Sure, they paid into it for a long time, but evidently they didn't pay in enough for long enough. Their group is just like every other: "Cut somebody else's benefits, not ours."
Woah there. They were asked to pay in x all those years, and promised to get y in return. If giving them y right now is more expensive or SS is having problems because the idiots in DC raided the stash to pay for general spending, that's not the problem or fault of those people who held up their end of the bargain.
Seniors, unlike a 30 year old, are no longer in a position to make changes in their lives to significantly increase income (like get another degree etc), or make career changes. They are more vulnerable to changes in their financial environment. They paid into the system in good faith, the system should give them what was promised.
Changes should be made to what is being promised and how SS / medicaid etc work for future beneficiaries, not current seniors.
Only with a contemporary example will more people internalize properly that government finances the world over (almost) are untenable and need to be fixed and fixing requires pain. We literally push it to our children the longer we wait.
Agreed. Faced with tough decisions, every politician prefers kicking the can down the road to doing something that might cost him/her a re-election.... and thus we have spending that's out of control.