Money in and money out, from the left pocket to the right.

Alright, so let me get this straight: We pay taxes, right? That’s our money. You know, real money out of our pockets. Then we put that money into a pot that’s supposed to be for our retirement—like, “I’m gonna be old one day, can I get a little help so I’m not living in a cardboard box, please?”

So far, so good.

Then we find out the same pot—our pot—is basically loaning money to us… you see what I’m saying? We loan ourselves our own money.

At interest.

We’ve turned into our own loan shark. We are paying ourselves interest with our own taxes. And we’re calling that “smart budgeting.” That’s like having your mom hold your allowance, and she’s like, “Don’t worry, baby, I invested it… in me.”

Then folks wonder why the national debt’s looking like the cost of Drake’s next private jet—like thirty trillion, going on a hundred. And we keep telling ourselves, “It’s all good—tomorrow’s kids will pay for it.”

Fuck them.

That’s a cold inheritance to leave behind: “Welcome to adulthood, here’s a 90K debt invoice, courtesy of your forefathers.”

What about Social Security?

We’re supposed to have checks coming in when we’re old, maybe pay the rent, get a little medication. But the way we’ve rigged it? We basically decided, “Hey, let’s keep benefits super modest so we can funnel the leftover cash to ourselves in the form of government bonds.

Who’s paying the interest on that?

We are!

Crazy.

We, the American people, are paying interest to ourselves with the money that was supposed to cover Grandpa’s dentures.

And folks are like, That’s normal.

That’s not normal, it’s insane.

Picture a future meltdown: We get a big recession, 10% unemployment. So nobody’s paying in like before, but we still gotta send out those retirement checks.

Our big plan is usually to just sell more bonds, but guess who was buying a bunch of those bonds before? Us again—Social Security. If we’re tapped out or we shift from buyers to sellers, now we got to unload those bonds to foreigners or private banks who’ll be like, “Yeah, we’ll buy your debt… for an extra 2% interest. Maybe 3%!”

Next thing you know, half our budget is going just to paying that interest. So we raise taxes or cut spending or why not both? Meanwhile the everyday retiree is like, “Uh, can I get a little more than these peanuts so I’m not eating Ramen every day?”

And we’re basically telling them, “Not right now… we gotta keep these surpluses coming so we can buy more debt from ourselves!”

That’s cold-blooded. It’s like your old grandma’s check is on hold because we need to keep interest rates stable so the government (still us!) can keep borrowing more.

That’s the definition of crazy.

And ironically, if there’s no more surplus, we gotta ask China or whoever, “Hey, you mind buying more of our bonds?” And China’s like, “Yeah, but we want a better return.” We keep inching up that interest, paying even more every year. So it’s this infinite loop: we pay ourselves with our own money, to finance bigger deficits that we can’t truly afford, then in a crisis we pay foreigners for the privilege of going deeper into debt.

Then we all pat ourselves on the back, like, “Problem solved. Next question!”

Look, if a random friend told me, “Hey, I’m broke, so I borrowed from my right pocket to pay my left pocket, and now I owe interest to both pockets.

And by the way, if it gets real bad, I’ll let whoever I can find lend me money at a higher rate,” I’d be like, “Dude, you are crazy. That’s not how you run your life.” But apparently, that’s how we run the biggest economy in the world.

So, does the amount of debt matter? If we were personalizing it, it’s like: Does it matter how many credit cards you max out? Maybe yes, maybe no—until the moment that 30% interest rate hits, right? Next thing you know, all your paycheck goes to paying interest, you got no money for groceries. So in the national sense, we do the same thing: we keep piling on debt, hoping interest rates stay low. But if they spike, we might be spending half our federal budget just paying interest. Then what do we do, skip on child support? Send out fewer Social Security checks? Start a GoFundMe for the Pentagon?

We’re basically acting like debt doesn’t matter as long as we can shuffle it between pockets. “We owe it to ourselves!” Well, guess what: if we owe it to ourselves, that means we’re the ones forking out the interest. It’s coming out of our pockets no matter how you spin it. The day we can’t or won’t keep that game going, we do the unthinkable: either we slash programs, or we raise taxes all over the place.

Or we default.

None of those sound appealing.

So sure, we could keep doing it. Maybe we roll up to $60 trillion or $80 trillion in debt. Maybe kids born in 2080 get that sweet “You owe a half-million bucks each!” welcome to the world. It’s comedy and tragedy all at once.

Meanwhile, we’re telling Grandma, “Sorry, Social Security’s too expensive, we can’t raise benefits. We gotta keep that surplus up so we can buy more of our own debt from ourselves.”

At the end of the day, it’s downright nuts how we turned a straightforward concept—our retirement security—into a massive enabler for deficits, so we can keep living beyond our means. If anything disrupts that or we try to raise benefits meaningfully, the surpluses vanish and we face our debt crisis even sooner.

So yeah, it’s good times. Let’s see how this show ends. If it ever does.

By 2ndrevolution.org