Re: Why Millions Have Given Up Hope This Holiday Season 8LSWISGMEPIGYVMX]ERH2IHMGEVIFIRIǻXW were taken out of paychecks and paid for by the worker and their company, who also contributed to those payments. We were not given a choice, so stop calling them entitlements. If I had a choice I would not have contributed, instead I would have put it into a better plan than the paltry government’s bond or whatever it is plan. – Mary C. Please stop lumping Social Security with true entitlements. I have paid SS TAXES for 54 years and I am still paying them even though I am now 70 as I continue to work. I understand how the program is not structured in a sustainable manner, but I would have been happy if they just had invested my SS TAXES in something like Treasuries for the last 54 years and just gave me the funds to draw down like my 401(k). Congress has STOLEN my duly paid SS TAXES and now convinced guys like you to call my money an entitlement. Get real here and give us facts, not BS hype. I don’t disagree with your issue about the debt addiction of this country and most of the rest of the world for that matter. – John C. P.J. O’Rourke comment: Mary and John, you’re both right! As I’ve said before, the problem is that we’re right, too. Social Security shouldn’t be considered an “entitlement.” And it was deliberately set up as an “insurance program” so that it wouldn’t appear to be an entitlement. But that insurance program was a Ponzi scheme, which left Social Security, in fact, unfunded.
of states (East vs. West, as well as North vs. South) exercising a tyranny. And they worried about any one branch of the government – presidency, legislature, or judiciary – having a majority of power and tyrannizing the other two. Democracy is like eating – a wonderful thing that we sure wouldn’t want to give up but not necessarily beneficial when unlimited. Re: The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades As much as your perspectives provided are insightful and valuable, what may be missing is “the even bigger picture”... that being climate change. And I am not referencing global warming in this case, but quite the opposite, global cooling. With the sun in a cooling trend through that last three or four solar cycles, and now transitioning from #24 into #25, the forecast is for the lowest energy output from our host star in two centuries. Historical records suggest there will be more than just a little global cooling, which could radically alter peoples’ priorities and certainly impact stock market investments. – Ken L. P.J. O’Rourke comment: Oh my gosh, Ken – one more thing to worry about! (And I don’t suppose there’s any chance that man-made warming will nicely balance sun-made cooling – because things never work out that neatly, do they? Rising sea levels will put Key West under water and the water will be freezing cold.)
American Consequences
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