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A Steady Diet of Nothing
by anna at 07:35 PM on December 01, 2004
Soldiers are dying in Iraq every day, and for what? Mainly, it seems, so Iraqis can enjoy the sour fruits of democracy. I can't think of a worse goal.
As a political system it's vastly overrated. It doesn't work because some parts of the population are more apt to vote than others. Power-hungry politicians are keenly aware of this. They kowtow to those who vote and blow off those who don't. Their paychecks and daily ego massages depend on it.
Old people have nothing better to do than fret about bowel movements and saggy jowels and vote. They live off a sizable slab of your income. The government syphons it off the top from those who earn it and gives it to those who don't. Why? Ostensibly because the elderly paid into the system all those years. Except they collect far more than they paid in.
I'm 45. I've worked since I was 14, except for those shady years. Every year Social Security sends me a printout showing my earnings over the years and projecting my imaginary benefit. I know for a fact that this is a lie. Per the government's own figures, Social Security will begin bouncing checks (or in their parlance "operating at a deficit") in 2018. Within six years or so it will collapse altogether, just in time for my outdoor retirement.
Yes, I will pour more money down the Social Security rathole than I'll pay in income taxes and I'll receive nothing in return. Neither will you. The math is straightforward. Money comes in the door one day and goes out to retirees the next. The soc-called "trust fund" is a chimera. It's comprised of IOUs from a scofflaw $3 trillion in debt.
On a more personal level it's important to realize that you must continue working until you drop dead. Or else you could sock away $400,000 or so to tide you over. Or else get used to the fact that you'll spend your golden years rooting around for grubs like a North Korean peasant. You'll live in an appliance box under a bridge.
Fact is there's too many baby boomers who failed to reproduce at adequate levels to support themselves during their dotage. Short of forcibly thinning out the aging population based on relative worth of persons, the shortfall is inevitable. You can't rely on politicians to address the issue as any solution would irk those voting seniors. As that bleak day draws near, with millions of hungry, homeless, walker-wielding savages roaming the countryside in search of sustenance, society will swiftly unravel. Of purely existential necesssity generations will turn on one another. Any morsel of food that you eat will be another meal I miss. Therefore we must battle to the death to see who gets to live another miserable day. You seen that movie Mad Max? That's your future. Warm up to it.
Besides the impotent/infertile, baby-aborting, contraceptive sponge-hoarding boomers, who else can we blame? 5 million disabled persons, that's who. Congress didn't have the gumption to create a new entitlement program for them so they just slipped 'em in with the oldsters while we weren't looking. The cripples (and drunks and addicts) have absconded with your nest egg. They're spending it as we speak. Is this a great country, or what? Ha!
The real question is this: Suppose the government gave you the chance to cut your losses. You don't have to squander another dime on this Ponzi scheme, but you forfeit all benefits. Do you take them up on their offer? I do, in a heartbeat.
comments (8)
Soldiers are dying in Iraq because we - as a country - need to enforce a good political climate for doing business in the middle East, basically for the purpose of buying oil. Americans could address this problem through economic choices, but would rather let people die in Iraq than look at a mileage sticker for a giant 6000 pound car they don't need. That's called obliviousness. The same is true for retirement. If people are given a choice to save for themselves, 90% say they'll do it, 2% will actually succeed. And when those 88% who failed + the 10% who never vared in the first place get old, we'll have 98% of the people on our hands with nothing to fall back on. However, given the usual "stimulate the economy by giving people money" Bushism, the economy should be hyperstimulated since everyone will have been pouring their retirement money into it so maybe we can just impose the "dependents" tax to pay for all those who are tehn dependent on the rest of society.
Anyway, it is a society we live in, and as such just as your brain needs your heart, and your heart needs your lungs, and your lungs need your liver, so it is that the old need the young, the young need the old, the sick need the healthy, the healthy that will become sick need themselves, etc. And as long as we have a functioning economy rolling forward, I think there is enough economic mass to cover all the bases, even if the numbers don't add up at present. Then again, I could be oblivious.
by chris at December 2, 2004 12:11 PM
Unfortunately, even as a mathematician and computer scientist, there's a pretty good chance I'll be living in anapplicance box under a brdige anyway. (Cue trobome failure music: Whah Whah.). Probably twenty years off at best.
by Mike Sheffler at December 2, 2004 1:14 PM
Absolutely the BEST POST of the YEAR on BadSam, Anna. 'Blog' was the number one word of the year, and will be ordained in Websters in 2005. That is sickening. Actually, they say Social Security is in a segregated account, not part of the national debt(fucking the gall of these WaspeanJewish...) Anyways, I would definitely say fuck no and take the risk... my parents did grub for insects to eat in China and Taiwan, and yet they became doctors... so its in my bloodline to survive on both extremes of socioeconomics... As I always said, these are the kind of posts that have merit... I would love for once in my life to live in that hocus pocus, "I had a date with so and so, and sex was so and so, and I'm so horny, and blah, blah, blah, blah..." There is no time at the current period in human history to take a breather... the breather comes soon, but furious love, war, and peace will ensue first.
by LOCKHEED at December 2, 2004 6:12 PM
Well Chris, just today in the paper I saw they are going to try privatizing some of Social Security money, which isn't segregated from the other money BTW. That seems like a sound step in the right direction.
Mike it's not so bad. I lived in my Toyota Corrolla hatchback one fall. Kind of a bitch when winter rolls along.
Thanks Lock, glad you like it. But I like the sex and horniness posts myself.
And thanks to all (thus far) for not villifying me. I did, after all, dis democracy, mock the elderly, assail the largest generation in history, stomp on the third rail of American politics and get in a dig at the disabled to bboot. A cornucopia of insults as it were.
by anna at December 2, 2004 6:31 PM
I am so UPSET that nobody is Commenting on this Post. What the fuck? This is the greatest post Badsam has had since I've returned. Fuck man.
by LOCKHEED at December 3, 2004 10:23 AM
I am so UPSET that nobody is Commenting on this Post. What the fuck? This is the greatest post Badsam has had since I've returned. Fuck man.
by LOCKHEED at December 3, 2004 10:23 AM
Well that's weird. There were 6 comments now there are 4. 2 musta been deleted.
by anna at December 3, 2004 6:47 PM
I bought myself my Christmas present! Read about it on www.tradinganddrugs.blogspot.com
And if any BadSammers are interested in buying the same present, I'll fill you in!
by LOCKHEED at December 4, 2004 2:30 PM