Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
February 06, 2017 at 01:04 PM
In Europe, the United Kingdom is talking about leaving the European Union, through what’s come to be known as Brexit.
Some Republicans have allegedly suggested that the United States should encourage California to break away, through a “Calexit,” to get its pesky Democratic votes out of the Electoral College. Maybe, for example, all of the “Blue States” on the coasts could form their own United Blue States of the Americas, or join up with Canada to become “the United States of How About That, Eh.”
Related: S&P says the health insurers it rates look strong
Here’s a modest proposal: Let’s reframe this exit idea.
Instead of thinking merely in terms of breaking off geographic regions, we could break off demographic segments of the population.
We could, for example, leave all of the Republicans and Democrats where they are now, but give the Republicans passports for the Reagania and the Democrats passports for Clintonia. People could live together, work together, and use the magic of the Internet to exist in separate ecospheres. Democrats could pay high taxes and enjoy as many pounds of Federal Register regulations per day as they could read. Republicans could pay low taxes, carry guns and stick with a law that would consistent mainly of the advice that, “A well-armed society is a polite society.”
To make the numbers work, we could further subdivide the population by age, and, in effect, create a population-backed security supported by baby boomers, or people who are now ages 53 to 71.
Some insurers have ideas about paying reinsurers to take closed blocks of long-term care insurance business off their hands.
Perhaps we could classify retired baby boomers as “closed blocks of governmental post-retirement obligation business.”
Put them in a great big pool, pay some big, rich country (China?) to assume responsibility for the pool, in exchange for them getting a chance to profit from unexpected gains in tax or investment revenue, or drops in benefits obligations.
If China wants some hard assets to back the boomer obligations: Maybe that’s what we could do with California. People in China like California. Instead of just owning some real estate in, say, San Francisco, they could own San Francisco.
