This is true – but is highly misleading. The propaganda meme is that for each $6 spent on the elderly, the Federal government spends only $1 on those under age 18.
Most spending on ages 0-17 is funded by local and state taxes (think K-12 education and Medicaid programs covering children).
When total tax spending is viewed, the ratio of spending on those age 0-17 is nearly the same as Federal spending on ages 65 and up.
We could argue that state and local governments are unequally funding programs for those age 65 and up – versus age 0-17!
While Social Security and Medicare make up a huge part of the Federal budget, they have been heavily funded by those who are now age 65 and up (including Medicare Part A) and significant parts of Medicare Part B and Part D, from premiums paid by recipients. But in this 6:1 metric, the part the recipients are paying into the system is ignored.
The Cherry-Picking Problem
The 6:1 ratio is technically accurate but misleading in isolation. It counts only federal spending, which is structurally designed to skew that way because:
- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid dominate the federal budget
- Education is primarily a state and local function — the federal government intentionally plays a minor role there
- Comparing federal-only spending across age groups is an apples-to-oranges framing
Pre-Funding of Social Security and Medicare
Workers and employers contribute to Social Security and Medicare Part A via payroll taxes for their entire working lives. Additionally:
- Medicare Part B and D require beneficiaries to pay monthly premiums
- These aren’t purely “gifts” from the government — they’re partially deferred compensation from prior contributions
- The analogy to children’s spending doesn’t hold symmetrically, since children haven’t yet contributed
- Social Security was historically a “pay as you” program where the workers of the past largely funded the then retirees. In the 1980s, Congress reformed Social Security, raising the full benefits age from 65 to 67 and raising the payroll deduction. This was done so workers from the 1980s onward not only paid the benefits of the then retirees, but also contributed to a “trust fund” that would supposedly be used to pay their future benefits. In other words, workers from the 1980s up to the present paid twice compared to the past – funding the then retirees and pre-funding the trust fund. However, because Congress cannot do math, that trust fund is depleted around 2035 -which may require slashing promised Social Security benefits by 15 to 25%. Social Security benefits, contrary to another meme, are not huge – with the average recipient getting about $24,000 per year in benefits.
- Related. Today only about 14% of workers are in a pension system. In the 1970s, 80s and 90s, around 70% of retirees received a pension, plus Social Security. In the 1970s, Congress created the IRA and 401(k) programs – and gave incentives to move workers from “defined benefit” pensions, to self funded “defined contribution” programs to save for their own future retirement. A side effect of this is that retirees today generally have more assets than they did in the past – because that is what Congress wanted. Some paint this as a “bad thing” where older people are evil for having more money – but in reality, this is a good thing that more older people have self funded their retirement.
The Rhetorical Setup
The argument on Federal spending uses a classic framing technique to present a technically true but decontextualized statistic to make a predetermined conclusion seem inevitable. The implied logic — “therefore cut Social Security and Medicare” — doesn’t follow even if you accept the raw number, because it ignores:
- The multi-level government (Federal, state, local) funding structure
- The contributory nature of the programs where much has been pre-paid by recipients
- Total government spending across all levels
A Fair Assessment
An honest analysis would look at total government spending (federal + state + local) per age cohort, account for the contributory nature of retirement programs, and acknowledge that the policy levers for children’s spending are primarily at the state level anyway.
The meme is an example of statistical framing used as advocacy — not outright lying, but selectively presenting data to manufacture a conclusion.
It’s pure propaganda and those pushing it are either dishonest people – or liars.
