The Irony Of Entitlement
After years of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and now months of heated debate over health care I can’t help but feel like people have a disconnect between their money and the government’s money. It’s the same thing. We are paying the government to pay for services we don’t want to pay for out of our own pocket. If that sounds ridiculous it’s because it is.On June 12th, 2009 a man named Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in Federal Prison after defrauding clients out of 65 billion dollars, the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. People were outraged. He ruined many of his client’s lives when they found out their nest egg for retirement was complete fiction. To understand the relevance you first need to know what a Ponzi scheme is.
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned.
Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Investments of younger workers are used to pay returns to retired workers. This exact same investment plan was used to send a man away for 150 years in Federal Prison to resounding cheers, but when government does it, I want my check.
Most of you probably haven’t thought much about retirement. We tend to be focused on actually graduating and getting our new iPad, Etch a Sketch of the future but these are real problems that are going to affect us much longer than we’ll remember “Pants on the Ground!” Fact of the matter is that Social Security will eventually bankrupt itself without reform, screwing everyone. Then with reform it is inevitably going to screw over some folks. That is the bed we have made.
Furthermore, we have heard a lot recently about the government tightening its belt. The irony of entitlement is, when government tightens its belt we get stuck in the buckle. We don’t want government spending so much. We don’t like how they are spending it, and they sure as heck better not cut any of “my” benefits. If government tightens its belt as it needs to, that means entitlement reform, which means less Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for us. Even so we need to support serious reform for these institutions.
Why do we pay government to pay for services that we don’t want to pay for ourselves? We don’t feel like it’s our money, but actually look at your paycheck and do a little math. It might surprise you. If we don’t do anything about entitlements in our country, we may have to finance Social Security with a National Lottery, another Ponzi scheme.
Tyson Bam
