6
February 2013 –
The
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just reported that spending on
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will double to $3.2 trillion a year over
the next decade, nearly all of which will be added to the national debt, unless
Congress acts now to avoid the crisis.
The report has no plan or recommendations to resolve the long-term
imbalance between money in and money out on retirement and healthcare
benefits. But, the report said that something
has to be done now to minimize the crushing debt later on.
"Unless
the laws governing these programs are changed – or the increased spending is
accompanied by corresponding reductions in other spending, sufficiently higher
tax revenues, or a combination of the two – debt will rise sharply relative to
(the U.S. economy) after 2023," the CBO warned.
Duh!! How long can a nation spend more than it
takes in, increase Social Security and Medicare benefits, and expect to not
suffer the governmental equivalent of bankruptcy? Exacerbating these conditions, which were caused
by the profligate expansion of the government’s role in every aspect of our
lives, including taking care of us when we are old, is the unavoidable increase
in the ratio between old, retired people and young workers over the thirty
years. The falling birth rate in our
society and the economic and societal problems it has and will cause may be the
only truly lasting legacy of the Baby Boomer generation to its increasingly dwindling
progeny.
The
CBO gave no recommendation to Congress on how to ease this impending
crisis. Well, whatever these 535 men and
women decide, it has to include heavy benefit cuts to all who fall below a
certain age and increased Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid payroll taxes
for the foreseeable future on all workers.
What does that mean to those below the age of, say, 58? Short of a major scientific breakthrough that
would clone 25 year-olds, there will be no worker pool big enough in the next
generation to cover the costs of taking care of the population bulge of the
Baby Boomer generation. All of you who
are young and working now should expect to pay increased payroll taxes
immediately for benefits that you will certainly have to work longer to receive. And, even with drastic increases in taxes, given
Washington’s track record of never resisting a chance to spend more, you may
not see any benefits anyway when you reach the age of 68-70.
The
hard fact that nobody in Washington wants to admit is that Social Security was
a Ponzi scheme from the inception. The original
plan was not self-sustaining from the outset.
While it was sold as a retirement investment plan, the law was, in fact,
written as a tax. In the original plan, quite
modest benefits were paid out at age sixty-five, at a time when the average
life expectancy in the U.S. was sixty-three.
If you lived long enough, you would get Social Security benefits for a
few years and then die, but what you would receive was not permanently tied to
what you would pay in. Then, used as political
largesse to lure voters, the benefits were regularly expanded and increased. The
eligibility age for receiving benefits was lowered, even when the Social
Security Trust Fund was being borrowed against to fund deficit spending and the
life expectancy of Americans was rising to over seventy-five. No wonder the program cannot be sustained
today with present payroll tax rates; it has been raided and abused for three
generations. Now, with the demographics
shifting, the coffers are seriously being drained by the aging Baby Boomer
bulge. No one is willing to make the
tough calls in Washington. The next
generation of workers will be the swindled ones. They will reach for their checks, and the
crooks will have already skipped town. If
you were smart, young workers, you would plan to never receive any Social Security
benefits when you reach the eligibility age, whatever it may be then. You got a lot of work ahead of you. You’re welcome.
5
February 2013 –
While writing
yesterday’s blog on falling birth rates and the erosion of the family, I did
not delve into marriage and the specific things that men and women do in a
marriage, as wife and husband, as mother and father, to make it a successful
and strong institution. The subject is easy to outline, but, for me,
difficult to flesh out. One of the reasons for the difficulty is the
common use of the word “role” when talking about responsibilities in marriage. I
don’t like the word. It smacks of life and marriage being a stage
play. Men and women memorize the script and proceed through life’s
three acts as actors on a stage pretending to be something. I
have enough trouble staying out of my fantasy world to be directed thusly.
I prefer the word
“tasks” when describing necessary activities in a successful marriage and
family. Tasks carries a better sense of action and reality than does
the word role. It also does not lend itself to the time-honored but,
in my opinion, lazy method of assigning responsibilities by sex. The
word carries more the image of writing together the list of things-to-do and
then discussing how to best divide up primary and support taskings to get them
done, and then adjusting when necessary. Of course, some
tasks will be divided up by sex. Like duh, women have babies; men
don’t. But, accomplishing the primary and support tasks—gittin’er
done—is a team effort.
Today’s blog is
one of those team efforts. I told my wife that after writing 1,600
words yesterday, I wanted to write 300 words on roles vs. tasks and end it for
the day. She asked me if I could include something on capability and on
desire. I agreed.
Like duh, women
are the ones who have babies. But, that unique female capability
does not require wives and mothers to shoulder the full responsibility of
raising those children. The task is out there before the
team. The capabilities each partner brings to the mission (I almost
said fight,oops!) must be applied to accomplishing the task of building and
running a home, providing an income, and raising children to be disciplined,
responsible, God-fearing, hard-working adults. Working and raising
one child tasks to the limit all the capabilities of both parents, all the
time. Working and raising four children exposes and refines hidden
capabilities both mother and father, husband and wife, never even knew they had
(Raising seven children makes your Aunt Carolyn a saint to be held in
reverential awe). But, such success only occurs if the tasks are
approached by the team as a team effort. Immediately dividing
responsibilities into established roles discourages team effort, personal
motivation, and success; hidden capabilities rust in the dark; children learn
limited lessons from a limited example of family cohesion.
Capabilities, of
course, vary from team to team. Proven tradition says that families
are most successful when some tasks are primarily the responsibility of the
husband and father and some are the primary responsibility of the wife and
mother. That is what the large statistics indicate strongly, and
these findings should be weighed carefully. The small, personal
statistics will vary a bit from that model, however, depending on the specific
capabilities of each partner in the marriage and parent set. What a
couple decides to do, when based on careful and continuing examination of
individual and mutually enhancing capabilities, is going to be best for their
family and their lives. Children will more probably follow, love,
and respect their parents if the tasks of life are approached
thusly. The same loyalty, love, respect, and willingness to
sacrifice for the other in the partnership also will follow such an approach to
the tasks at hand.
All that wonderful stuff
said, my wife is smarter, emotionally and mentally stronger, and more
courageous than I am. She sees things I don’t, in the people around
us and in events that transpire. Her sense of right and
appropriateness is unerring. She communicates specific messages with
words and actions far better than I do. I, however, can lift more
than she can and know what it takes to maintain things and
property. What a dangerous fool I would be if I didn’t want to team
up with her to git’er done.
Finally, an
uncommon thing in life is to accomplish what you signed on to do and still do
other things you want to do. One’s desires are vital to one’s
happiness and to a team’s success in its required tasks. A team
approach to life in a family is the best way to adjust responsibilities so that
desires are also addressed with the full support of the other team
member. This translates into manspeak thusly: my wife’s
desires are more important than mine. It is my privilege to adjust
and to sacrifice so that she can fulfill her desires as much as
possible. If we assign everything to roles, however, with the
hierarchy that always seems to accompany those roles, her individual desires
will rarely be fulfilled or be forgone completely in order to fulfill the
required tasks at hand. Team decisions and subsequent adjusted
decisions, however, make things work.
This is not a
sermon. This is a personal understanding, based on wisdom that I
have acquired from the myriad mistakes I have made. This wisdom
tells me that this is the best, most adaptable way to achieve life-long success
in all family relationships.
