O Tempora!

I am a thief. I get money from people who earn it. I get money that hasn’t been earned yet from people who will earn it. I get money that hasn’t been earned yet from people who haven’t been born yet.

I don’t do the actual stealing myself – a big crime syndicate does that work. This syndicate is the biggest in the world. It dwarfs all other criminal activities. It dwarfs all legal business in the United States. This syndicate is the United States government, and it steals from working people to give me “entitlements”. These “entitlements” are referred to by the inaccurate names of Social Security and Medicare.

Of course, I could have refused to sign up for these institutionalized dens of thievery. However, hundreds of thousands of dollars were stolen from me on behalf of non-working people older than I. At least a million in opportunity cost (potential increase from investment) was taken, making my nest egg is much less than what it should have been. So I joined the legions of other old people who lead a life of crime by ripping off younger people.

You might think that younger people would cotton to these scams, but so far, not many have figured it out. They think that they are paying for their own future retirement by having over 15% of their income taken every paycheck. But the youngsters are paying for my retirement and that of millions of other geezers and geezettes. There is no investment and no guarantee that the kids will get anything.

As today’s younger people age, there will be fewer and fewer new young people to replace them. Therefore, Social Security and Medicare have over-promised to the tune of $100 trillion. That's TRILLION with a T. The so-called trust fund for these programs consists of government bonds – just more government debt. The government can’t use its bond debt to pay off entitlement debt. No amount of tax increases could fill the gap. Cutting benefits slightly won’t fill the gap. And the politicos in Washington, all whom suffer a greater or lesser degree of Potomapsychosis (the madness of Washington power), are unlikely to solve this problem.

Meanwhile, I have to keep on accepting stolen goods. I don’t feel all that guilty, though. For one, I paid thousands for other retirees during my working life. Also, there are three members of my immediate family who are younger than I am and “contributing” to my retirement via FICA. They will eventually benefit from my top-of-the-food-chain position in the Ponzi scheme of things. Of course, if the suckers at the bottom finally figure out that entitlements are a scam, there will be hell to pay, but I’ll collect my pittance till then.

On the plantation, there are two classes of people. There is the plantation master and his minions, and there are the workers – slaves – who produce the plantation’s product. The master pays the minions, but he does not pay the slaves. The slaves are not completely destitute, though, because the master allows the slaves to keep part of the product they produce. The slaves, in truth, pay everybody, because the product supplies the entire income of the plantation.

On the plantation, the master and his minions have rights, but the slaves do not. For example, any property that a slave claims as his own can be seized by the master or his minions at any time, even if the slave has done nothing wrong with his property. Also, if a slave wants to leave the plantation, he must get permission from the master. And if a slave tries to speak against the master, the slave may find himself in serious trouble – jail, or worse.

On the plantation, the master lives in a big white mansion. But the master is kind-hearted. He allows the slaves to build housing on the plantation. Of course, the buildings must comply with all the master’s whims about housing. The master allows the slaves to grow, harvest and process food – with the same kind of compliance requirements. Some slaves seem to be unable to get housing or food on their own, so the master supplies that. Of course, the money to pay for these commodities comes from the other slaves.

On the plantation, the master has armed guards to protect himself and his high-ranking minions. He does not feel that the slaves need to protect themselves, even though there are sometimes murders among the slaves. The master wants the slaves to be unarmed.

On the plantation, the master takes care of the slaves’ health. He does not do this because they are people. He does this because they are valuable property; they are machines that cause all the money to roll in to the plantation’s coffers. The master does not like the idea of slaves caring for their own health, for if they do that, they are not dependent on the master.

On the plantation, the workers are not free – they are slaves. But why should they want to be free? After all, the master and his minions provide the slaves with everything needed for a good life – using the slaves’ product, of course.