Editor's note: By 2020, millennial voters will outnumber their Baby Boomer counterparts.

And recent studies suggest millennials prefer socialism over capitalism.

At a time when Americans are drowning in debt and a "Debt Jubilee" may be on the horizon, you have every reason to be concerned.

As Porter explained in yesterday's Masters Series essay, what comes next could wipe out your savings... crash the U.S. stock market... and disrupt your way of life.

In today's essay – originally published in his brand-new book, The Battle for America – he details what some of these radical new policies could look like...

'Medicare for All' and Other Radical Programs Will Crash the U.S. Economy

By Porter Stansberry

According to a recent poll, more millennials today would prefer to live in a socialist nation than a capitalist one.

Personally, I don't think these numbers express a true hatred of the free-market system. Instead, I think these numbers point to the extreme hopelessness this indebted generation feels... and the difficult economic conditions this generation inherited.

Which is the reason why Sen. Bernie Sanders became so popular with this demographic. At one point in 2016, Sanders had as much as 84% of the millennial vote. Altogether, he received more primary votes from this age group than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined.

One of the most popular campaign ideas Sanders proposed that resonated with this young generation was the notion that: "Health care should be a right of all people, not a privilege."

Of course, Sanders ultimately lost the Democratic nomination to Clinton. But that hasn't stopped him from continuing to advocate for a single-payer, government-run health care system.

In fact, Sanders, along with Sen. Kamala Harris and one-third of the country's Democratic senators, introduced a bill in the Senate last fall that proposed a government-run "Medicare for All" program.

A similar proposal was introduced by Rep. John Conyers in the House, where 117 Democrats voiced their backing.

This bill proposed that the government would become the "single payer" of all health care expenses – including dental and vision care. There would be no charge for doctor's visits – routine or otherwise. No charge at the emergency room, either. No deductibles, copays, or anything like that.

Proponents point to countries like Canada, the U.K., Switzerland, Australia, Denmark, and Hong Kong – along with many others, as examples of developed countries that have already implemented government-run universal health care.

But is health care in those nations really as great as it sounds? According to Business Insider...

In Canada, doctors have waiting lists and the process is more like getting into a country club where you have to be recommended by other members.

Special equipment, like MRI machines, always have a waiting list and work around the clock, so it is not unusual to get an appointment a month or two out, with a middle of the night time slot.

According to the Pacific Research Institute, it's so bad that 52,000 Canadians come to the U.S. every year to receive the medical care they need, but refuse to wait for.

It's a similar story in the U.K... where waiting lists are so bad that nearly 300,000 citizens had to wait six months or longer for treatment.

One Swedish economist confessed that his country's health care system is "such a colossal failure that few in the Left today view the memory as something positive." Which is why 10% of that country's population has reverted back to private health insurance.

Of course, there's another big problem. Simply having "free" access to medical care doesn't necessarily mean that the quality of care is decent.

According to two separate studies of Medicare recipients conducted by the RAND Corporation and the Oregon Health Study, providing Medicare for All health insurance doesn't equate with better health.

After all, you can go to your doctor as often as you'd like... but if you smoke a carton of cigarettes a day, are obese, and inherited poor genes – you're probably not going to live to 100.

Another side effect that nobody talks about is how a government-run plan would stifle medical innovation.

Today, companies will willingly operate at a deficit for years at a time on the quest for a drug that could be worth billions of dollars a year – more than enough to quickly earn back the cost of developing the new treatment.

Under a government-run health care system, some sort of price control would likely be in place... meaning it could take decades or longer for innovators to be compensated for their discoveries. That could be enough to deter our nation's top medical minds from wasting years on a discovery that comes with little-to-no payoff.

Of course, we haven't even discussed the economic impacts of a Medicare for All plan. According to estimates from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a Medicare for All program would cost $15 trillion over the next 10 years.

Somebody has to pay for it all.

And nearly all of the options Sanders has proposed focus on higher taxes. For starters, there would be a 7.5% payroll tax, and a new 4% income tax... as well as a potential "wealth tax" on folks above a certain net-worth threshold.

There's absolutely no evidence that government-run health care would improve the quality of medical services here in the U.S.

In fact, the only thing it would unquestionably do is contribute even further to our country's weak financial footing.

According to research from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Medicare/Medicaid is already one of the key drivers of our nation's debt.

Yet even so, this crazy idea already has the support of as many as two-thirds of Americans. Among millennials, 69% of the generation supports a government guarantee of health insurance for all.

Which is why I think Medicare for All will be such an important tool leveraged by progressive Democrats in the 2020 election.

Universal Basic Income

As drastic as a Debt Jubilee for the masses and Medicare for All would be, Universal Basic Income (or UBI) is perhaps the most radical of them all.

It's effectively Social Security for all... a new way for the government to hand every American, regardless of age, race, employment status, or net worth a monthly check.

The idea has been around for decades... and has been backed by figures as varied as Thomas Paine, Martin Luther King Jr., Milton Friedman, and President Richard Nixon.

Alaska's Permanent Fund (which pays every citizen an annual dividend from oil revenues) has done something similar for the past 36 years.

It's also probably no surprise that this crazy idea has already won the support of many of the radical Left's leading voices.

Universal Basic Income will be sold to the masses as a good thing, as a way to rebalance America's wealth gap and help struggling millennials.

And it will probably be disguised under a different name.

For example, it might be called a "Freedom Dividend," as one New York Democrat running for president in 2020 calls it. Or maybe a "Human Security Plan" as Senator George McGovern called it in the 1970s.

Or maybe it will be branded simply as "A New Way of Living."

But whatever it's ultimately called, and however it's ultimately achieved, it all spells disaster for any American who has saved and made investments.

By now, you're probably wondering exactly how much money we're talking.

Obviously, at this early stage, the numbers vary. But from what we've seen, most proposals usually call for around $1,000 a month, or $12,000 annually.

Based on the current U.S. population, the cost of this program would be roughly $4 trillion a year.

(Although, according to the progressives who support this radical idea, the more money the government hands out, the greater the societal benefit would be.)

Where would this money come from?

According to some folks, UBI would replace the estimated $2.3 trillion the U.S. government currently spends on entitlement programs. In other words, Social Security itself would be replaced by UBI.

But that still doesn't cover the nearly $2 trillion difference.

Some estimates we've seen show that, in order for UBI to successfully roll out in America, income taxes would have to quadruple.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes (who later organized Barack Obama's digital presidential campaign) recently proposed to pay for UBI with a wealth tax on anybody making more than $250,000 a year.

Other funding proposals include:

• Taxes on stock, bond, and fund transactions.
• Cutting military spending.
• Eliminating tax breaks.
• Implementing a national sales tax.

You'll notice that no matter how UBI will be rolled out, some level of higher taxes seems certain.

Finding a stable source of funding is likely the reason Finland recently suspended its two-year UBI test.

But the underlying problem with UBI is not even the funding – it's the reality that all this program does is simply redistribute trillions of dollars from some Americans to other Americans.

UBI would not create trillions of dollars of new wealth.

As the economist Charles Hugh Smith eloquently puts it in a recent book:

This free money machine is the equivalent of adding a zero to all the currency bills and declaring that everyone is ten times wealthier now. But as we've seen (and history shows), all that happens is a $5 loaf of bread is repriced to $50.

Even so, to most people, this still sounds like a good idea. In fact, roughly half the country already supports UBI.

And can you guess which demographic has the highest level of support?

Yep – the millennials.

Which is one reason why this idea is rapidly gaining support in the Democratic Party. It's starting to understand just how critical this voting block is if it wants to regain control of the government.

In fact, Congressman Keith Ellison, deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, recently announced that he believes UBI "has a lot of merit" right now.

Of course, this wouldn't be the first time a broad-reaching welfare program like this is implemented in America...

After the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of American widows or orphans were struggling to get by. A Civil War pension program passed in 1862, providing heirs with checks based on what the deceased veteran was making.

Then came the Great Depression, which left more than half of the elderly population in poverty. Upon winning the Democratic nomination in the 1932 presidential election, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a "New Deal" that ultimately created Social Security to help retirees.

You may remember when President Lyndon Johnson declared "unconditional war" on poverty in the 1960s. He created the modern welfare system of Medicare and Medicaid... expanded Social Security benefits... and the food-stamps program.

But our federal government is already 100% tapped out. Not a penny is available for a program like this.

We've already had to borrow nearly $1 trillion in 2018, just to cover the federal government's spending. We're adding more and more every year to the $21 trillion in outstanding U.S. government debt. Within five years, the interest alone on the debt will eclipse the massive amount of money we spend on the U.S. military.

There's simply no more money available.

Which is why a program like UBI would be a huge, huge hit to the economy. It would crush businesses and the stock market, and have far-reaching impacts on the way of life we've enjoyed for decades.

But the facts don't matter to these ultra-left-wing progressives, which is why I have no doubt that UBI will be the magical solution they'll promise to the masses.

In fact, a real-world test of this program already launched in a small city in California last fall, branded on the notion that "cash is an effective way to rebuild the American middle class."

But I believe an even bigger program is about to roll out on a much larger scale.

Because today, for 83 million millennials and the 80% of Americans who are trapped under debt with no way out, there's no more powerful political promise than wiping the slate clean... granting free health care... and topping it off with free money.

Which is why you need to prepare for this new reality immediately.

Regards,

Porter Stansberry

Editor's note: Porter's brand-new, 278-page book – The Battle for America – will tell you everything you need to know to keep your money safe during the coming era of uncertainty... which investments you should own (and which to avoid)... ways to protect your retirement nest egg... three warning signs that suggest this nightmare scenario is already underway... and all of the corruptions destroying America. Get a hardback copy shipped right to your door for just $19 by clicking here.