by James Glaser
June 3, 2003

My parents had a good retirement, what with Social Security, savings, Medicare, and what their employment gave to them as a retirement plan. Times are going to change. The Baby Boomers are starting to come on board and our federal government has been sitting there with their thumbs some place that didn't allow them to prepare for this influx of people in the system.

Here is a tip that will explain a lot. If you are a Senator or Representative, you don't pay into Social Security. In fact Congressmen don't pay in at all, but they do have a real nice retirement. Their retirement comes right out of the general fund, out of tax dollars. While most Americans will get some where around one thousand dollars a month at current rates on Social Security, many lawmakers will get ten times that much each month for life. Isn't that sweet.

For years and years every man or woman running for Congress has told you and I that they would be working to fix Social Security and Medicare. Remember that "lock box" on the funds? Well George Bush picked that lock and spent the money. Our leaders in Washington are addicted to spending and a lot of that money isn't even spent in our country. They needed more money to give to Israel and Egypt, Columbia and Afghanistan, and now Iraq. So they broke open that box and spent every penny and borrowed more.

So here is the deal. You kids that are starting out in the work force now, will have to either pay forty to fifty percent of your take home pay to Social Security to give benefits to your parents in the not too distant future, or you are going to have to add a apartment on to the back of your house for them.

If you look at the rest of the world, parents and grandparents live all the way to death with there kids. When I was in Vietnam, I watched and found out that the old people did the drugs and sat around and bullshitted in groups, while the young people worked. Betal Nut was their drug of choice and when planting time came around the old people were right out there helping.

It will be a real turn around for our society to have parents living with their children again. There are not enough rest homes built now for the Baby Boomers and even if there were, there is not enough money to pay for them.

You know at the rate we are going, any new money, will have to be put into the Military as with each new conquest a detachment of soldiers must be left to control the rabble. More and more foreign nationals will have to be allowed to join the Army and Marines with the promise of citizenship. Maybe we will do the same for rest home workers. Learn English, change old peoples diapers, feed them, wash them, and then you too can be an American.

Really we don't have time to mess around any longer on this issue. If you vote for an incumbent, Democrat or Republican, you are shitting on your parents. Those in Congress today have never cared if this crisis came to a head as their retirement is all set. If they did care they would have done something before now.

George Bush and his crowd have both money and a much better retirement set up for them than Joe American, so what do they care? The Vice President has to figure that he will be dead by the end of a second term, so all he can do is get all the cash he can for his kids and maybe stop any tax on inheritance.

This is a Big problem that we know is there and unless we start wasting a lot of seniors, we are going to be in trouble.