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.