"We will always protect Social Security, Medicare!" says President Donald Trump.

That would be nice.

But when I look at these programs' balance sheets, I don't see how he's protected anything. Both Social Security and Medicare are on track to run out of money.

Politicians mostly ignore the problem. Worse, progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) say they want to expand Social Security benefits.

That's just irresponsible.

My new video points out what we've known for years: These programs are unsustainable.

The problem is that people like me live longer. We like getting monthly Social Security checks and medical care that appears free.

Since we vote more consistently than others, politicians don't want to make us mad by cutting our handouts.

My fellow geezers say, "Social Security is not a handout! I contributed to the 'trust fund' every year. I'm just getting back what I paid in!"

But that's not true. Today, most of us get back much more than we paid in.

In 1935, politicians created the handout, saying, even if you don't save for retirement, government will save for you.

But that was another political lie. They didn't create individual retirement accounts. They didn't save our Social Security payments. They spend every penny as it comes in.

It's why Social Security is like a Ponzi scheme.

Bernard Madoff went to jail because he used new investors' money to pay old investors. That's exactly what our government does.

Few Americans realize it.

"What happens to the money?" I ask people on the street.

"It's held in trust," said one woman.

It isn't.

When politicians started Social Security, there were enough young workers to tax to cover the cost of sending checks to old people.

But now, since we live longer, there aren't enough young workers to fund our payments.

Social Security's costs exceed its income by billions of dollars.

"There is a plan out there to save it, but it requires some tough choices," says the Cato Institute's Romina Boccia. "Commonsense tweaks we can make."

Those include raising the retirement age, capping checks to the affluent, and letting young people opt out of Social Security. Reforms like that require tradeoffs. But ignoring the problem doesn't make it disappear.

We need to act, says Boccia, because Social Security is like the Titanic—gradually heading for disaster.

"Make reforms now," she says, "we can avoid the iceberg. [But] if we wait until the iceberg is in front of our noses and try to turn the ship, we're going to run right into it."

Medicare will hit its iceberg in 2033; then benefits will automatically be reduced. Social Security will hit it the year before.

At that point, incoming taxes will cover only about 78 percent of promised retirement benefits.

Yet irresponsible Democrats say: Spend even more.

"Human wants and needs are unlimited," replies Boccia. "There's always another program that needs more funding."

Sanders says, pay for it by taxing the rich more.

"There isn't enough money even that the rich would have, to pay for the…unfunded liabilities," Boccia points out.

If only politicians had listened years ago, when Cato and the Heritage Foundation proposed letting workers put some of their Social Security money into personal retirement accounts. Instead of relying on future taxpayers, workers could accumulate real assets that grow over time.

Personal accounts give workers something Social Security doesn't: assets we own.

"Even a conservative portfolio of stocks and bonds that got you a 5 percent annual return would have made you many times more [than Social Security]," says Boccia.

Private accounts helped Chile rise from one of the poorest countries in Latin America to one of the richest. Yet leftists still object to capitalists getting a cut of the pie.

"We lack gratitude for what the free market provides," says Boccia.

We should adjust these programs now.

The longer politicians wait, the worse the choices become.

But today's politicians will probably be gone by then.

Our children get the bill.

COPYRIGHT 2026 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

The post Social Security Is Like a Ponzi Scheme. How Do We Fix It? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

I shouldn't get so angry. It isn't healthy.

Last week, New York state summoned me to jury duty.

I went, of course. It's the law, and my duty.

A jury may protect the innocent from government abuse. Ordinary citizens, not officials, decide if you are guilty.

But doing our patriotic duty shouldn't mean surrendering hours of our lives to bureaucratic indifference. Serving justice is important. Sitting around doing nothing isn't.

During my 50 years consumer reporting, I've watched greedy capitalists constantly make improvements and find better ways to do things. They use computers, adjust hours, reduce wait times.

If they don't, we consumers quickly switch to competitors who will.

But government bureaucracies—courts, the DMV, the passport office—have no competitors. So they don't try very hard.

Government is force.

My summons arrived on paper, in the mail.

Most businesses now communicate with customers instantly, by text or email. Airlines send boarding passes to our phones. Doctors text reminders. Restaurants send notifications when our table is ready.

But government sends paper.

We summoned jurors meekly arrive at the courthouse and wait. And wait.

I'm old; it's important I hydrate. At least government provides a water cooler and a drinking fountain. Oh, damn, neither works.

We sit another hour.

Eventually, a bored clerk drones through long instructions on how fill out a form. Printed instructions would be better—a video would be much better. But this is government, and government bureaucracies have little incentive to innovate.

Finally, clerks choose 80 of us to be considered for a criminal trial. "Wait in the hall," we're told.

We wait.

Then they tell us, "Go across the street to another building, and wait there."

We go.

After an hour, we're admitted into a courtroom, where another bureaucrat tells us, "Come back Monday."

Monday! This was the Thursday before. Imagine an airline telling 80 passengers, "Welcome to the airport. Your flight is in five days. Come back then."

No airline would survive doing that.

But courts don't have competition.

When court finally starts, a stenographer types away, recording what people say. Computers today transcribe speech instantly, accurately, at almost no cost. But New York taxpayers still pay someone to type every word.

Amazon experiments with faster delivery. Supermarkets install self-checkout machines. Banks let us deposit checks just by photographing them with our phones.

Capitalism protects your time while bureaucrats waste it.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman explained why by pointing out there are four ways to spend money:

No. 1: Spend your money on yourself. Then you're very careful about both cost and quality.

No. 2: Spend your own money on someone else. You're careful about the cost, but don't care as much about the quality.

No. 3: Spend someone else's money on yourself. You care less about cost, but still care about quality.

No. 4: Spend someone else's money on someone else. You don't care about cost OR quality.

That's what government does.

Some court workers work hard, and many want to help people. But they're stuck in a system where saving people's time brings them no rewards.

In my case, 80 prospective jurors sat around for at least six hours, just waiting—that's 12 40-hour work weeks lost. Some had to hire babysitters, reschedule doctor's appointments, tell their bosses they'll try to make up the work at night. Some lost income. Some missed opportunities.

For just one case. Multiply that by thousands of cases: countless hours of human progress vanish.

Why not stagger arrival times? Let jurors wait at home until needed? Use text messages to call people in?

Because innovation takes effort. So courts don't bother.

They act as if wasting our time is free. It's not.

COPYRIGHT 2026 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

The post My Jury Duty Was a Master Class in Government Inefficiency appeared first on Reason Magazine.