A Patchwork Assembled Across Nine Decades.

The American safety net is a patchwork of programs assembled across nine decades, each addressing a specific population at a specific moment of political possibility — Social Security in 1935, Medicare in 1965, EITC in 1975, ACA subsidies in 2010. The result is gaps where people fall through, overlaps that waste effort, and an administrative cost so high that for some programs the cost of determining eligibility approaches the cost of the benefit itself. The proposals here aim at structural coherence — not just simpler enrollment, but replacing fragmented financing with unified systems: a single federal health contribution in place of private insurance premiums, a universal retirement account replacing eight separate account types, and consolidated nutrition benefits delivered automatically through the tax system.