Thread by @ThomasHCrown

Dear Millennials: I know that as a group, you believe there needs to be a larger safety net and a more protective state because [reasons you'll find insulting]. To make that work, we need money, and taxing the rich won't cover it. I'm here to help you. So:

"How Millennials Can Curate a More Generous and Compassionate State That Provides All the Things People Need but Especially [insulting remarks about consumer technology and Chipotle redacted], Medical Care, Food, and Shelter, for Everyone."

STEP ONE: UNDERSTANDING HOW SOCIAL SAFETY NETS WORK

I know a lot of you are as dumb about how social safety nets are financed as your parents, who let's be honest were the thickest group of thickies to lurch down the clotted river in a while, so I want to clear up some misconceptions.

Contrary to what you believe, the money taken from your paycheck every pay period is not put in some savings account, investment vehicle, or even government accounts.* It is instead destroyed.

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* The government only maintains a few hundred billion in accounts at any time.

However, the Treasury/ the NY Fed runs some computers to produce enough zeroes and ones to simulate your money (and then some). This money is then used to directly transfer funds to old, disabled, or otherwise Social-Security- and Medicare- eligible people.

None of this new money, which is basically fungible to the money taken from your employer/you is set aside for you. However! They do keep track of how much you make so they can decide how much you'll get from the next generation(s)* when your time comes.
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* Assumes any.

At current rates of taxation, in order to fund the social safety net, we must have more of you -- the taxpayers/workers/suckers/wage slaves/baristas -- working and contributing to the net than the people receiving it.

Think of it as a pyramid, because that's a really cool shape and also gives you an idea of how this works. The current contributors/donors/suckers/taxpayers are at the bottom; they provide the foundation for the recipients.

There are ways to marginally affect the base of the pyramid -- by raising rates, lowering payouts, means testing, and so on -- but the essential shape remains the same.

What you absolutely cannot manage is to turn the pyramid upside-down. Taxing the rich to pay for the many is a fraught position morally; in terms of net value, it's stupid. The real, consistent money is and remains in the middle class.

And the middle class likes lower taxes; likes welfare as a retirement supplement; votes; and is armed.

So, again: There must be more payors than payees to make the system work. Lots more.

That leads to

STEP TWO: HOW TO CURATE A CUSTOM EXPERIENCE WHILE DOING GOOD AND SAVING THE SAFETY NET AND THE ENVIRONMENT AND ALSO SHOWING HOW INCLUSIVE AND TOLERANT YOU ARE

As we've discussed above, to work, you need a lot more people at the bottom than the top of the safety net system. You can help.

First, have lots of babies.

Now, I know you don't want to hear that. It suggests you'll have to do more than put something on Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter or whatever. You'll have to make real sacrifices, and in a nation as wealthy as ours, that sucks. So

Second: Eat lots of red meat, take up smoking non-artisinal tobacco, and drink lots of alcohol. Smoke weed too, the toxins will offset the health benefits you rationalize yourself into thinking you're getting.

You already want to do at least some of these things; explore your options! Life is what you make of it, especially when you hurtle toward death.

Because if expanding the base is too hard for you (and based on the national total fertility rate, it clearly is), you can help make the pointy-part on top a lot smaller by dying off at a higher rate before you tap the system.

STEP THREE: CONSIDER THE EFFECT OF YOUR ACTIONS UNTO THE SEVENTH GENERATION AND NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT IT EVER

Until about ten-to-fifteen years ago, the Baby Boomers were recognized and respected for their limitless self-regard and inability to keep it to themselves; they were the most openly self-absorbed generation in American history.

You, yes you, have the power to be better at this than your parents, and you're already showing the signs of having the raw talent and the will to take the prize.

But don't stop now. Tell your kids as you raise them that on top of being both the awesomest/most amazing AND burdened/underprivileged generation ever, you also saved compassion and kindness by having your 3-5+ kids, as you stuff steak in their mouths.

Teach them that they can be almost as awesome/amazing, while not having nearly the burdens you did, by having at least as many kids as you, and also put out their cigarettes at the dinner table, the smoke is ruining the baby's dinner.

There you go: An adventure that you curate that allows you to be as awesome as you've always been told you always were and are. You'll have saved the promise of America for generations to come.