A friend recently accused me of making no sense when I laid out a basic argument against dismantling medicare and social security. I would love for folks to review my thought process below and help me figure out where I’m being loony, irrational or impossible to understand.

1. Before social security and medicare, millions of seniors were forced to live in abject poverty because (a) they were too poor or irresponsible to build their own retirement savings, (b) if people might have had a bit of money, it was quickly wiped away by ailments so common to seniors, and (c) there was no social safety net to to provide a modest income when they hit old age.
2. Once social security and medicare came along, our country almost entirely eliminated the plague of seniors living in abject poverty.
3. Republicans and even a few libertarians I know have proposed to dismantle medicare and social security by giving health care vouchers to the elderly to go buy insurance in the private market, and privatizing social security so people will invest the money themselves, respectively.
4. I view both of these proposals as misguided because (a) senior health care is the most expensive insurance to buy on the free market and this option would only really help people who can afford it, and (b) privatizing social security won’t protect the tens of millions of people to manage their accounts irresponsibly.
5. Because of 4, and the fact that I believe that nothing can really be done to eliminate the fact that tens of millions of people are too poor and/or too irresponsible to properly save for retirement, my assertion is that dismantling medicare and social security will lead to tens of millions of seniors (not to mention handicapped people) once again living in abject poverty.

As a side note, my friend seemed to be basing part of his puzzlement at my reasoning  on a notion that people can be educated away from being too poor and/or too irresponsible to properly plan for retirement.  I assume that he also thinks that there is some libertarian way to force health insurance companies to offer really affordable senior health plans that wouldn’t drive seniors into penury.  He kept coming back to it as if I was willfully avoiding some grand, unavoidable truth. In actuality, I wasn’t do any such thing.  I just simply disagree with the premise that most of the barely sentient lumpenproles in this country who have a hard enough time keeping track of what Brangelia are up to these days could ever be perfectly transformed into a group with enough disposable income and enough responsibility and common sense to properly plan for retirement. To my mind, our disagreement just seems to be a disagreement about certain premises that we disagree on.  But for some reason, he still thinks I’m just being obtuse and ridiculous. Can anyone please help spot a point in there that is something other than just a disagreement on whether a proposition is plausible or not?