Basically, I've kissed goodbye to all that money that gets sucked out of my paycheck in the name of Social Security. I'm never going to see those sweet little greenbacks again. Bye, darlings! Look, we all know that Social Security has become an unsustainable Ponzi scheme. I'm fully expecting the whole rickety structure to have collapsed by the time I get to retirement age. You'd have to be an economically illiterate idiot if you're my age and still thinking that you won't get totally screwed by this.
On a personal note, I got into an argument with some elderly relatives not too long ago when Social Security came up in the conversation. I did not - did not! - want to talk about it, but they kept on and on until finally I couldn't help myself anymore. There's not going to be anything by the time I retire, I said. I am flat-out assuming that I won't get any Social Security at all. But the government promised! they insisted. You paid into it, so you have to get something out of it! I gave up at that point. How can you be so naive? How can you be so baffled by the ideas that (a) my generation's going to get the shaft, and (b) the only smart thing to do is to plan ahead as if there won't be any Social Security?
I knew better than to say that what I'm paying into the thing now is going toward the checks going out now, as in their checks. Mama didn't raise no fool.
Now my peers and I gloomily wait to see if our pessimistic predictions will come true of the government raiding IRAs and 401(k)s and every other kind of savings so it can pay for its profligate, irresponsibly managed joyride. Heck, it's like in those old cartoons when a hungry character looks at another character, and that second figure morphs into the image of a delicious roast chicken or something.
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