Ramblings of a Wayward Code Slave

It sounds like a nice idea, doesn't it? Security for the elderly so that people who don't have the extra money to save up a retirement nest egg at least get something for their effort upon retirement. President Franklin Roosevelt proposed it back in the early '30s during the depression era and when it was signed into law in 1935 (the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, or FICA) a lot of people rejoiced since it meant extra income. And that's when the problem started...

FICA is based on the premise of pay it forward. In other words, the current generation of workers is paying for the previous generation and, when the current generation is close to retirement the next generation will be paying in for them. Those people who got FICA back in the '30s made out like a bandit -- they never paid in but they got the benefits anyway. Of course, back then 16 people were paying in for every person getting benefits. That ratio has dwindled to 3.3:1 today and by the time the money crunch comes for the FICA program it is estimated to be closer to 2:1.

So why is the ratio shrinking? A general population increase is the current culprit, but in another two or so years baby boomers will the answer, those kids born in post-WWII America who are nearing retirement age now. People at the retirement age now were born in 1945, so in another couple of years we should really start feeling the crunch of people retiring and wanting their FICA money -- which they deserve, having paid in all of their working lives to the fund.

So what does that mean for us, the current generation of middle-class wage earners who are the backbone of FICA's accounts receivable? It means that the government is counting on us to make good on the promises it made to the boomers. Does it mean our FICA contributions will be going up? Perhaps -- that really depends upon the increase of retirees relative to the increase of workers paying into the system. So the effectiveness of current FICA contributions relies upon us staying one step ahead of the retirees populationwise. Bad news for Planned Parenthood...

But the population increase is just part of the problem. By the nature of FICA, it holds large sums of money for a long time. Congress has seen fit to "borrow" from FICA to pay for everything else under the sun, so while FICA has plenty of money in theory, it is woefully short of cash in reality. It is forecast to go into the red in 2017 and become insolvent in 2041. It sounds like a long time away until you stop to consider that a 30-year old today who wanted to retire at the age of 65 would do so in 2042.

So between the population explosion and the poor financial management, the working middle class is likely going to get to heft this behemoth back into solvency. Most likely this translates into higher taxes and reduced benefits for our generation, if we actually see any benefits at all. I'm not certain why I'm griping about this today except that it really irks me when the IRS chews up my paychecks and then government still can't support itself. Even with people paying in veritable fortunes every year we have an obese government that needs bariatric surgery more than I do. I'm tired of paying for $17,000 wrenches, $2,000 toilet seats, and $3,000,000,000 stealth bombers. I'm tired of listening to Bill Maher and actually having something to agree with him about. I'm tired of paying for people to be baby machines and I'm sick and tired of paying for people who can work but just choose not to do so.

So in the end the FICA problem is just symptomatic of the gorged, flatulent, and ever-hungry federal government that looms over our pocketbooks much as the Grim Reaper does over a funeral home. I certainly don't mind paying into something if I'm going to get it back out -- that is, after all, the entire premise behind bonds et al -- but paying into something when you won't get anything back out is just stupid. Do I advocate FICA rebellion? No, I'm prepared to fall on my financial sword just as everyone else is. I just think that we could have put better people in Washington who wouldn't have crapped all over America's future.

BBC NEWS Science/Nature Arctic ice island breaks in half

Climate shift? What climate shift? Every credible scientist admits to an abnormal shift in climate due to our abuse of the environment and every politician denies it flatly. What more convincing do we need? Okay, here's some more. A chunk of ice -- an "ice island" -- the size of Manhattan broke off of an ice shelf back in August 2005 and has since moved about 600 km (360 miles) south and now has split into two smaller chunks.

Okay, let's say that Manhattan was made of ice and that just happened to it. Right now Manhattan would be two large icebergs floating past Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and it only took 2 years for them to reach this point. This should shock you. If you continue to be nonplussed by it then consider...

All of this fresh water melting in the Arctic -- because it's all coming south and it's melting as it does it -- is affecting the salinity of the water in the northern Atlantic. There are two facts that are important here. First, fresh water is less dense than salt water. Second, the warm surface water coming up from the south Atlantic is responsible in a large way for northern Europe's temperate climate despite its latitude. When the Arctic ice melts, that warm salt water will no longer be close to the surface but will dip underneath the thickening layer of cold fresh water from the Arctic. Great Britain will have a climate roughly equivalent to Siberia.

If all of this sounds like the plot to The Day after Tomorrow, you're not too far off. Take out Dennis Quaid's bad acting, the overly-dramatic ice shelf breakage, the two-day climate shift, and the monster killer land hurricanes then the basic science there is true. In fact, the shot of the Earth at the end of the film is fairly accurate in its ice cover from predictions I've seen online.

I've been seeing climate alerts for over a week now in the news. Stories about how the summer Arctic ice melting this year is an incredible increase from past years. Stories about how the sea pass from Labrador to Alaska through Canada is open again for the first time since nobody knows when. Don't listen to politicians -- they want to be re-elected. Fixing the environment -- if it's even capable of being fixed now -- is going to cost money and people don't want to hear about taxes. I guess turning a blind eye to the problem and dumping it on their kids and grandkids is just as good for them.

So if you want the problem to just go away, that's fine. Ten minutes from now you won't even remember you read this. Just don't bother with investing money for your grandkids' college funds -- buy some property down in Peru instead so they can survive as third-world landowners instead of third-world squatters.

Courtesy of xkcd.com ... I'm certain that my former programming students will love this one.

Reminds me of the funniest thing I've ever been told: "Dr. Alexander, you must be a Republican because that test you just gave was full of shock and awe."