How Ya doin' young fella?

Thus queried the guy behind the counter at Fedex today as I entered to mail my weekly package out.

Having just passed the 60 mark a week and a half ago I was at once delighted that someone would call me a young fella, but somewhat confused as the gentleman had fewer gray hairs than I and fewer wrinkles around the eyes by far. Smooth as a babies butt would have been a suitable description of his cheeks.

"Well thank you", I said, "But I suspect I might have a couple years on you".

"I'm nearly 70", he said............. whoa.....got me by nearly 10 years. Didn't look it.

He'd either liveed a stress free life with no wife and kids, or had availed himself of one of those Lifestyle Lifts you see advertised on TV.

After leaving I started pondering a little bit on the fact that in a couple of years I'll be eligible to start drawing my Sociable Security. Hot damn, just think, what joy will be mine when I start drawing those $750.00 payments on the first of every month. Las Vegas here I come. I'll be living the high life then.

Wow, just about had a Myocardial Infarction just thinking about it.. I guess that's what the gubbermint hopes seeing as how they've plundered the Social Security fund for each of the last 40 years and put IOU's in their stead pledging the full faith and credit of the United States to stand behind them. What will happen when people start losing faith in this country.

Trustees say that while the financial standing of Social Security decreased more sharply than Medicare last year, the health program remains at greater risk of insolvency. The financial difficulties facing Social Security and Medicare pose serious challenges, the report concluded.

How many more years will Peter allow himself to be robbed in order for Paul to be paid? At what point will there be not enough workers paying into the system to keep us old farts in medicine and just enough poverty to survive.

How long will the government continue waging wars in a vain effort to reduce the potential future recipients of Social Security and decide that it would be cheaper to conscript retirees to go and spill their worthless blood, and keep the young healthy workers back here at home flipping burgers and providing servants for the service economy at wages that allow them to buy the cheaply produced foreign junk that is shipped in from third world countries where the profits go to the wealthy and connected.

We've elected a good group of socialists to lead us......I'm sure they'll think of some answer to our future problems soon.

Socialism has come to mean many different things to many people, but regardless how it is defined, in the months immediately ahead it will be put to a rigorous test. The test will be visible to everyone as countries around the globe run out of money and confront overwhelming debts that cannot be repaid as well as other wide-ranging financial promises that can no longer be met. In short, the ideological bankruptcy of socialism will be laid bare by government insolvency.

It had to come sooner or later. The reasons are not hard to understand.

The ideological bankruptcy is neatly captured by British author and advocate for individual rights, Cecil Palmer: “Socialism is workable only in heaven where it isn’t needed, and in hell where they’ve got it”. And government insolvency is explained by famed economist Frederic Bastiat, who made this levelheaded observation nearly 150 years ago about the nascent modern socialism then emerging. “The State is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” More recently, Margaret Thatcher, being a sensible politician, put it pragmatically: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”

Guess I better put in my application soon huh?