The Crime of the Century
I have just participated in the greatest embezzlement in all of history. In my 70 plus years, I have never seen such a perfect crime. Like most other master criminals, I am heady with success and feel a need to brag. I kid you not -- never before has one group appropriated as much money that belonged to another group in the history of crime. The victims, while they are increasingly suspicious, still do not know they have been had. It was literally and figuratively as easy as taking candy out of the mouths of children.
Here is how we did it. The first rule of embezzlement is to find some naive patsy. We sensed 40 years ago the younger generation was not paying enough attention to public policy, so we quietly found ways to maintain our lifestyle and charge it to the next generation. While those of you under 45 were preoccupied with other things, my generation dumped the largest load of debt on them that history has ever seen -- and found ways to maintain our lifestyles on their credit cards.
A good scam needs a compassionate come-on. In our case, we developed a new word: "poor elderly." To this day, most Americans do not understand that this is actually two words, and that "poor" no longer describes all elderly. The New Deal worked and today these programs keep most elderly out of poverty. As a class the elderly have the most discretionary income of any group in America (except those in the age bracket of 55-65).
Next, we devised a number of systems that allowed us to charge our retirement to the next generation of Americans, who will wake up to find they are on the losing side of a Ponzi scheme. Like all good con artists, we relied on "trust." We told them there was a "trust" fund for both Social Security and Medicare. Of course, this was a lie. There is no "trust" fund, in the normal sense of the word, because we take this month's Social Security and Medicare taxes from today's workers and pay them to today's elderly or otherwise spend those funds. In actual fact (as former Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina observed), our children would be no better off if the fund was invested in Confederate war bonds. The trust fund is a sham because it only contains IOU's that tomorrow's generation of workers will have to (mostly) pay off themselves. They will have to pay for both our retirement and their own. Not bad. We succeeded in taking money from poor workers in St. Paul and sent it to wealthy retirees in St. Petersburg -- and no one was the wiser. But, I have hardly begun.
The perfect embezzlement maximizes its take. We soon found there was money left over after paying the Social Security funds to today's elderly, and we did not want to stop half way. What self-respecting crook would leave money lying in the bank vault after a robbery? Hell no. We completed the job by something called the "consolidated budget." This allowed us to quietly take the Social Security funds left over to reduce our taxes by spending the money on current government services. Under the "consolidated budget," we could legally "borrow" the money in the "trust fund" left over every year, and spend it on current government services; thereby, reducing our yearly taxes. We spend every last cent, every month!
Virtually every year for the last 38 years we understated the yearly deficit and understated the total federal debt. Even though the official federal debt is approximately $12 trillion, the amount actually passed on to the next generation is closer to $59 trillion. (See http://www.usdebtclock.org/) My generation is master embezzlers. The entire scheme was done with clever accounting gimmicks, which allowed us to minimize our taxes and maximize our spending while we passed the bill on to the next generation. Like many victims of a crime, by the time they figure it out I will be long gone.
I have completely and totally spent the Social Security Trust Fund and left nothing in trust, absolutely nothing, for today's workers to pay future obligations. They will have to either raise their taxes substantially, or dramatically reduce their benefits under the system. They have no other practical alternatives. They may, of course, try to do the same thing that my generation did and try to perpetrate the Ponzi scheme, but I doubt it will work. Young people catch on at some point. The true perfect crime only works once.
The next generation will wake up to the magnitude of the fraud. They will recognize they are working long hours (or two jobs) and make less working than I make in retirement. Yet, every month they transfer money to me to pay for my health benefits. I have plans for that also. When they start to blow the whistle, I will say with shock and horror, "You can't start a intergenerational war." I will tell them about how hard I fought for this country (six months in active service -- most of it at the officer's club bar). I will shame them by accusing them of breaking the "generational contract," neatly covering the fact that it was really my generation who "broke" the contract by leaving them an unsustainable and insolvent system. Like any successful crook, I cover all my bases.
When health care costs became a larger factor in our budgets, we found a system to subsidize our health care costs at the expense of following generations. We called it Medicare. The average senior who turned 65 in 2000 got back $4 from today's workers for every $1 that he/she paid into the system. Today's retiree receives on the average a $100,000 subsidy toward his health care costs -- from a system that is slated to go broke not far into this century. I am looking forward to playing golf and living high and sending much of the bill to today's workers who make less working full-time than I make in retirement. Après moi, le deluge.
The story does not end there. My generation screwed up the savings and loan industry and more recently, the whole financial system. What did we do to get out of it? We issued thirty-year bonds for the S & L crisis and national debt for the second! We started a gratuitous war in Iraq and rather than taxing ourselves, we scheduled our kids to pay for it. Why should I pay for my mistakes when there is a gullible generation right behind me? Will I be here to pay off the debt? No. I leave it to my kids to pay off.
My wife and I bought our first house in 1963 for $11,900. Our first mortgage payments were $49 a month because we had a VA loan subsidized by the federal government. Everyone in my generation could buy his or her own home. It is estimated that thirty percent of the current workers below age thirty will never be able to own their own houses. It does not end there. I, to this day, get more money in housing allowance every year from the federal government than the poorest American. It is simple. I get to deduct my mortgage interest and real estate taxes, which is worth to someone in my income bracket more than the cash equivalent that any poor person in this state receives for housing. Ditto health benefits. By not taxing my health insurance paid for by my employer, I also receive more health benefits from the federal government than most poor children on Medicaid.
Do I feel guilty? Well, occasionally. The other night I was standing in the line for the movies, getting a senior citizen discount. There was a struggling young couple in front of me who were wondering how they were going to pay the baby-sitter. My wife and I had driven to the theater in our fancy foreign car from our debt-free house -- but we got a $6 discount from the price the young couple paid.
I try not to spend too much time thinking about it. I keep busy. Right now, I have to go down to the state legislature to lobby for free fishing licenses for seniors. Why not? We already get free state park admission. See you around.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Right on, Gov. Dick Lamm! You hit the nail right on the head!!
I am part of the same generation that Dick Lamm refers to here.
We had great visions when we were young, we were going to bring in the age of Aquarius!
What a crock of bull. Our generation was the wimpiest generation of all, and I am thoroughly embarrassed of what we have become. Our generation wimped out and sold out, and now are perpetrating the greatest generational ripoff in history.
What a buch of punks we are. I am sick of us.
Not all of us are a bunch of punks. If you are "sick of us" then do something about it. This self-serving self-absorbed venting of "guilt" should turn everyone's stomachs as much as your sense of entitlement that should have had and should now keep all this that causes you to feel the "guilt".
I am on SS and barely make it. Not everyone in your generation were able to buy their own homes, it was everyone in your "class" was able to do so. That was the class that included people who had the opportunities to be Governor and other "leaders" that made high living from a corrupt Economic system.
I need the senior discounts to survive, but most of them are for luxury and entrainment that my budget does not allow. Travel and staying in State and Federal Parks is not part of my existence. You expose your elitist ignorance of how most of your "generation" lives.
Now we can all see why Gov. Lam's political career sputtered and stalled - the above is merely an exercise in wanting to have it both ways: the application of an arch-conservative ethos (social safety net BAD - low taxes GOOD) as though it represented a liberal world view. Lumping the cost society's safety net and the rape of the financial sector by ultra-right ideologues is a philosophical crime at least as egregious as the fiction Lam postulates, although I will give him points for admitting that there IS a monstrous financial crime being perpetrated in this country - it isn't the old stealing from the young, though - it's the rich stealing from the poor...
Fanned!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the honesty and the irony Gov Lamm.
This is funny. Pure comedy. Now we are about to do Healthcare which is yet another Ponzi scheme. There is already Medicaid so help the "poor" argument goes out the window and quite frankly, those making $75,000 could afford their own insurance without gov't help. If not change jobs paying 65 and get the employer paid health benefits that come with it. It's economically better and at lower taxes!
The only reason our economy has looked good, up until recently, is because my generation (I'm 60) has been spending our parent's foundation and our children's future...o
I once had a neighbor that was an accountant. She was on the original social security board. She must be over 100 now and still alive. She said that originally social security was to be a safety net for the poor. If one made a certain amount of money per year, you were not supposed to get social security. It was like "commodities for the poor." You just didn't get it if you didn't need it. Whatever happened to that idea? My Father, who invested during his lifetime, made more in interest every year than I made working every year. And he collected social security too.
I have way too much say on this blog post, lets's just say a big can of worms needs to be addressed
To quote Lily Tomlin from a comedy sketch, "The solution is so simple I am surprised even you did not think of it."
Progressive taxes. In fact, you could start by paying your fair share right now, now couldn't you?
Everyone who is elderly is not so greedy as you, and everyone who is elderly is not rich, either. You have shown your true colors. But I have every reason to believe your constituents have known your true motives all along.
Angela, Angela, Angela... Gov. Lamm was writing using the literary device called irony. He is telling you he thinks the shenanigans of the past years are deplorable.
katyann, katyann, katyann...
I am in my 60's as well, and it is true that the children of the "Greatest Generation" squandered their inheritance and their children's, too, but it is not like the good Gov thinks. Corporate America robbed and looted the rest of the world to give this generation and themselves a lifestyle that was unrealistic in the real world. Since late 50's this country has lived in Disneyland while the rest of the world struggled. In the 70's when the rest of the world realized that we were not the power we seemed to be and began to turn us out of their countries and control of their resources we began to irrationally try to maintain Disneyland lifestyles at the expense of the poor and unborn.
We are still seeing the refusal of the elite of this country to grasp their mortality as they seek to squeeze the life out the middle class to keep their illusions of wealth. It is a death spiral we are in and the good Gov's literary devices are very clever but no where near clever enough to cover the arrogance of his existance.
This is so right on, and so tough. I was born in Denver in the early 60s. For years, I have had growing frustration that the economy is structured in a way that is much more stacked against the middle class than it was for my parents. But how do we deal with this issue without vilifying our parents' generation?
On Saturday, my husband and I got a babysitter for our kids, and went to see a matinee of Capitalism, A Love Story. The tickets were $8 each. The babysitter was $15/hr x 3 hrs = $45. This seemed like a bad joke: $61 for the bargain matinee.
On Sunday, we went to church and signed up to bring meals to a couple in our parish because the wife has been in and out of the hospital all year. The husband is really struggling to deal with this all, and said that "at least we haven't had to pay a dime for the 9 cumulative weeks in the hospital." They also sent their kids to the same school mine now attend, but without the looming threat of teacher strikes and eviscerating budget cuts. And with California's Prop 13, I'm guessing they pay a fraction of what we pay ($8,400 this year) in property tax.
So Governor Lamm, I do not want to be angry at these people or your generation. but how can we make it more fair? Where do we go from here?
simple. have the govt stop spending money we don't have
The money we DO have, though - spend it on tanks, missiles, fighter jets, paying agribusiness NOT to grow crops, bailing out failed corporations - or health care, education, infrastructure, and the aged? Your call, I guess...
Excellent! Now that we have someone admitting what we already know all we need is some accountability.
"Why should I pay for my mistakes when there is a gullible generation right behind me? Will I be here to pay off the debt? No. I leave it to my kids to pay off".
We are not a gullable generation as much as we are a powerless generation. The only power we wield is the power of the gun as it is the only one left worth considering.
If im not mistaking correct me if im wrong but what he is saying is the elderly gets back more than what they put into the system. which is true when think about it if you thimnk about it. i work as a home health aide with the eldelry who us to make only 12-30 bucks a week now they receive more in benefits than what they paid in because we adjust for inflation. if u notice during the protest over the summer these were the same people who were showing up and comdeming the public option. i say they gey only what u put in. just like southern states who put in 1$ and get back 3$ in taxes while my city nyc gets back less than the amount it sends to washington in taxes. bec ause we subsidise the poorest states,
My comments never get shown but I'll try again. This is why we should file a lawsuit against the Senators and Congressmen on the Hill for the crimes against the United States. They have defrauded this country, they have lied, they have misappropriated funds by allowing insurance companies, oil companies and Wall Street to act like they are going broke and then giving them more money, and they have robbed us. But most of all they have been insubordinate in the fact that they work for us and not the other way around. We pay their salaries. And when we say we want something, unless they can give us a REALLY GOOD explanation as to why we cannot have it or even come up with a better plan, then they are to do what we want.
Very true, but it has always been this way in America. The founding fathers were a group of wealthy, old, white, slave-owning landowners who invented the electorial college so the unwashed, uneducated masses would not "turn" the elections in their favor. Has anything really changed?
Just ask the American Indian or the Mexicans. I find it interesting that through immigration "reform" the mighty white europeans are trying to keep poor Hispanics and native Americans off the land - the very land they stole from them in the first place.
Isn't that ironic?
I really didn’t like this article. I am not quite sure why.
But one thing I do agree with is the fact that we must remember than not just benevolent Grandma’s and Grandpa’s get SS. We must also remember that tax cheats and shysters or those people that notice when someone drops something and simply scoop it up and go the other way also collect Social Security.
But I would also like to remember that at one time many employers offered real Retirement plans, now it is all privatized and based on the stock market. And at some point companies were excused from caring for the people that put their lives work into making many companies great. Our businesses decided that since the government was going to take care of the retirees why should they sock so much away for the old timers?
Part of the problem is that people are living longer than they used to so maybe that is the problem? Or maybe we should force people to work until they are 70 or 72 instead of mid 60’s?
I am still upset by this article.
I forgot who said this, but it is an interesting quote I remember:
"We don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
We used to borrow it, now we steal it. The extra carbon's not going away for 1000 years.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
