We can choose to fund health care and a guaranteed retirement income for our older citizens, or we can choose not to. (Those answering "not to" should provide an acceptable poverty rate for the elderly. Thirty percent? Fifty percent?) More importantly, before we freak out about potential public-sector failures in the future, we should be seriously freaking out about the current failure of the private-sector systems designed to provide health care and retirement benefits to Americans.

People in the business community often argue against expanding public health care and pension benefits, arguing that this would raise taxes and that the private sector can do a better job providing those benefits than the government. But the evidence is mounting that the private sector can't.

45 million people without health insurance, of whom 21 million worked full time,

the percentage of people receiving employment-based health care coverage fell every year since 2000, a period of low unemployment.