Land Grab

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison of your mind.
--The Matrix

The federal government owns about 30% of the land area of the United States. This land constitutes a huge wasting asset because it is largely producing nothing.

At the same time, Congress has spent every penny that people have paid into Social Security--payments that has been made under force. Those now at retirement age who were forced to pay into Social Security are owed something. But who owes them? Politicians would like to take it out of the hides of those still in the workforce in the form of higher taxes. But that is unfair, as it has been those same politicians who have squandered the resources. The federal government that has not lived up to its end of the contract.

GMU professor Walter Williams says that he would be willing to make a deal w/ the feds whereby he would foresake all Social Security and Medicare benefits owed him in exchange for, say, 50 acres of land in Alaska (the federal govt owns about 70% of Alaska).

I would certainly jump at a similar offer--as long as I would not have to pay anything more into the system from this day forward.

But I wouldn't even need the land sweetener. I'd be willing to call it even right here. Government could keep all that that I've paid in the system. In exchange, I would take no future Social Security or Medicare benefits and I would no longer be subject to any related taxes.