Lies the government told you by Andrew Napolitano (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

system, and money was plentiful while they were in the workforce because that generation was so much larger than the one it was supporting. Yet, now, who is going to support the baby boomers? There is no money left to support this large generation of retiring people who contributed to the system in large sums of money. The government keeps pushing their retirement age up, so that it can spread out the relatively small amount of money it has to the vast amount of recent retirees. Social security is supposed to be a rainy day fund for retirees, but now that the rain is pouring, the government is finding the fund is running dry.

If only the large population of recently retired citizens were the only problem with Social Security today, but this is one of many problems. Money that comes in through Social Security taxes has often been spent by politicians on endeavors other than funding for the Social Security system.

What has happened is that the Social Security taxes that were supposed to go into a trust fund have in fact been spent by the politicians. The government bonds turned over to the Social Security system in exchange for this money changes absolutely nothing. These bonds are just claims on future general tax revenues . . . The only purpose served by the bonds is to make numbers look good when the reality is very different . . . Debts are hidden, rather than paid.29

So, in essence, the government takes our money and uses it not for the purpose it purported, and we will probably never gain that money back. It does not take a criminal mastermind to detect the inherent deception and thievery involved in this situation. The so-called “lockbox” for Social Security that we hear politicians pontificate about has never existed. Instead the government treats Social Security as its slush fund, with insincere promises to pay back more than it stole.

This is thievery at the highest possible level. In terms of dollars paid, the American Social Security system is the single largest government program in the world. The United States wastes more of our money on Social Security than it does on extremely expensive programs such as national defense or medical programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.30 So, while politicians lie by pretending that our money is safe and that we will someday redeem the IOU, they have quietly orchestrated the biggest swindle of all time.

FDR’S Legacy of Lies

While present-day politicians are certainly to blame for trying to sweep the problems of Social Security under the rug while still collecting our money, they are not to blame entirely. There is no easy or fair way out of Social Security, because ending it today means stealing the money of those who paid yesterday. Also, the system has caused the elderly and retired to become a class of dependents, in that they plan their retirements with the expectation that they will be receiving a pension from the government.

Today’s politicians have been left between a rock and a hard place by the mess bequeathed on them by the Ponzi scheme’s chief founder and principal swindler: Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR was only able to get Social Security to pass because of the unique political climate during his presidency. Between the lagging economy he made worse, and later the war he manipulated the U.S. into, FDR was able to enact many “New Deal” measures that took (and continue to take) away our property and our freedoms, are unconstitutional, violate basic laws of economics, and are plain damaging to America.

Social Security is unconstitutional in that it violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the government from taking the property of citizens without due process, meaning, a trial. A scheme in which the government taxes the money we earn, takes it, and gives it to others leaves Americans with no choice in the matter but to surrender their money (property). This is a violation of both our Fifth Amendment rights and our Natural Law rights.

From a more personal perspective, Social Security has had a profound impact (for the worst) on American culture. Part of growing old in America now involves settling down, retiring, and living off of government money. The government has managed to turn what is for many a healthy, vibrant, and mature stage of life into a reversion where the elderly beg for an allowance from the paternalistic figure of government.

Before “retirement” was institutionalized by Social Security, there was no such thing as a stage of life where people were left to grow old in the lonely isolation of their living rooms or in Florida. It used to be that the living standards of older people were upheld through a variety of sources: employment income, savings, and help from children.31

One article by Mises Institute writer Dale Steinreich describes the harms that came with the invention of retirement:

Retirement is among the most economically wasteful and socially destructive institutions created by government. The most experienced and knowledgeable workers are bumped from productive employment to the world of golf courses, bingo parlors, and TV watching. . . . Retirement punted older people out of the active community of enterprise, where they are most needed for both their skills and their positive cultural influence. They have also been marginalized in society at large, so that young people tend not to interact with them on a daily basis.32

Indeed, the elderly community has become the butt of many cruel and demeaning jokes in our society, and much of this has to do with FDR’s harmful legacy of lunacy.

All of the programs highlighted in this chapter stemmed from the federal government’s attempts to gain more power so that it could exert more control over the people. These supposedly “temporary” government programs have also left lasting effects on the American economy, American people, and our ability to be free. The role of the federal government, however, is to stay out of our lives, not to set