Replies

Way back (when?), we had a Social Security Trust Fund set up with few people withdrawing but many people contributing [required by law]. It was becoming an enormous cash-rich bank account and as such canny politicians started looking for ways to put that cash cow to 'work'. At first it was things like "Survivor Benefits" and others that at least went along with the original idea of supplementing and helping the aged and infirm.

However once the wall was breeched and politicians learned that they could raid this trust fund with relative impunity by stuffing the box with IOUs, it became a re-election and constituent service dream. After all, the politician only had to worry about his electoral career and the bill wouldn't become due until long after he was gone. They even admitted it while they were doing it, but so long as they kept the goodies flowing, hey who cares.

I remember the 2000 election cycle when Vice President Al Gore stood there with a straight face and absolutely LIED about the safety of the Social Security Trust Fund and it's "Locked Box". It was almost as good as when he was in the Rose Garden defending Bill Clinton's morality.

So the difference between our past and this Irish present does not surprise me. Now, given the proclivities of America's "Native Criminals" (Mark Twain), with our systems in such dire straights, is it inconceivable that their eyes turn to our PRIVATE INVESTMENTs next. Sadly, no, since to so very many of them, including our President, there is no such thing as private wealth nor sanctity of contract nor supremacy of Constitutional Law.

The brilliant and glum Jim Manzi has pointed out that millions of Americans are depending on promises that cannot possibly be kept, by Social Security, Medicare and government pension schemes. Even private pension schemes that are funded on an “actuarially sound” basis are at risk.

The reason is simple: the resources to meet these promises simply do not exist. No taxation scheme, redistribution scheme, belt tightening scheme or any other scheme is going to make them exist.

Think of a situation where the human race no longer procreated, say because of a wide spread epidemic that wipes out our ability to reproduce. You could save as much money as you wanted, you could hoard bars of gold or bags of diamonds or stacks of hundred dollar bills, but for the last remaining aging humans, there would be no one to care for them in their last years, no one to bury the dead, no one to grow crops, drill oil, man firehouses. Humanity would end in a bleak barren landscape of a decaying civilization.

While our current plight is nowhere nearly that grim, the analogy holds, at the margins. We have many more claimants on future productivity than there is any prospect of satisfying. Forget money or dollars or inflation. What will not exist are enough people who will be productive enough to fulfill these promises, barring unprecedented increases in productivity. The current administration’s anti-energy, anti-business tendencies bespeak a deep luddite streak in the body politic of the republic (and the larger world) that make such miracles seem even more unlikely.