America's Youth vs. Big Government

Today I stumbled across an article on the American Spectator’s website, entitled Democrats Renew Their War on America’s Youth, which read almost exactly like a chapter from our book.   Not only does the article focus on the direct perils that not reforming Social Security would have on the young generation, but the rhetoric of the title specifically hits home the importance of the topic.  Social Security reform is directly tied to the future well-being of America’s youth.  The tension in this conflict is palpable.

The author, Philip Klein, mentions in particular the senate race in Nevada, where the stained incumbent, Harry Reid, has attacked budget hawks and proponents of reform to the biggest drain on our economy, Social Security.  According to Klein, Reid is resorting to the “age-old tactic in his bid for re-election: scaring senior citizens.”

Similarly in our book, we write:

Politicians are reluctant to reform Social Security because it could jeopardize the current benefits that boomers are banking on for their retirements.  Therefore, even the mention of reform could be political suicide.  Old people have the highest percentage of voter turnout, because they receive a lot of money from the government at our expense and want to keep that money flowing in.  Our parents are perfectly happy with PAYGO the way it is, simply because they will receive Social Security money shortly, but they are knowingly hanging us, their kids, out to dry.  If young people put political pressure en masse on our representatives, they will be forced to take action.  Our vote counts just as much as that of our parents’.

These two nearly identical opinions are critical when examining the upcoming crisis that we face as the young generation of Americans, that the irresponsibility of generations before us are in direct conflict with our future quality of life.

Social Security is nothing more than the largest Ponzi scheme ever inflicted upon man by the government.  Today’s recipients of Social Security are only collecting benefits that are supplied by the existing workforce, not some account which boomers believe (at the government’s misguidance) that they have been accruing over their careers.  We now are facing a huge flaw in the government mandated pyramid scheme; baby boomers are retiring at record levels, while the amount of workers supporting their retirements is shrinking.

When the first Social Security check was issued to lucky Ida Mae Fuller in 1940, there were 42 people working and paying into the fund for every retiree collecting money.  By 2002 however, that ratio had fallen to 3.4 people working for each person collecting.  The ratio is plummeting every year and will near 2:1 by 2020.

The only solution to ensure that we have any retirement funds available through Social Security is through the creation of private investment accounts.  Instead of all working Americans lumping their money into a giant pile for the reckless government to squander, we need to take individual control over our retirement accounts and cut the Federal Government out of our retirements.  The government has proven incapable to resist spending the supposed Social Security Trust Fund (long plundered), and privatizing Social Security will save us from staring at a pile of worthless IOUs.

We cover this problem in depth in our book, America’s Youth vs. Big Government, and much like the American Spectator’s piece on the topic, we believe that Social Security reform can not be delayed:

Our parents and their generation have knowingly left us with this problem, under the very same precept we have now adopted ourselves: that our politicians are smart and caring enough to make sure that everyone will get a fair slice of their American Dream for retirement.  Who’s to think that our outcome will be any different from what our parents are finding out now?  Our future financial security is not entitled to us, and if we sit back quietly ignoring this issue, our politicians will happily waste our money away.

This is a topic of utmost importance for the future of this country.  It is up to us young Americans to stand up against politicians like Reid, who resist Social Security reform because of political career aspirations, not because of their dedication to us citizens.

A question I am often asked when talking about our book is why and how we decided to write a book.  There is no simple answer to that question.  In fact, it was a culmination of many events that led us to this project.  Some of this is detailed in the preface and introduction to our book, but I thought this would be a good place to give the longer version.

Tim and I were both raised in a middle-class, conservative family in a wealthy suburb of Milwaukee.  The county we lived in is one of the most conservative areas in the state, if not the entire country.  We were taught the essential conservative ideology of a hard work ethic, respect for religion, fiscal restraint, etc.  Unfortunately for us, during our formative years, Clinton was leaving office after his “cigar incident” and Bush was coming in as the new leader.

Not knowing better at the time, we threw our support behind “W”, believing he would embody the true conservative principles we believed in.  The older we became and the more we watched politics, we began to see that Bush was not much different from his predecessor in many regards.  We believed him and the other Republicans when they told us that social security reform was paramount to our country and that the wars in the middle east were necessary because they had weapons of mass destruction.  Again, promises from the campaign were broken as the Republicans governed with little to no input from their constituents.  Debt was piled on and unconstitutional actions such as domestic spying and wiretapping are now legal through a cleverly disguised law known as the Patriot Act.  (On a sidenote: nothing was more hilarious than watching the reaction of the progressive left in Madison while at school in the year 2000.  I still take comfort remembering the scenes of protest and disgust by out of touch professors, administrators, and brain-washed students)

I was living in Hawaii and working for large real estate developer in 2008 when the bottom fell out from our economy.  I saw firsthand the destruction of private wealth and the effect on markets, employers, and employees.  Nearly our entire staff was laid off within a year and the project significantly scaled down.  The Bush administration as well as nearly all of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, fear-mongered the country into bailing out the very banks who so foolishly started the mess in the first place.  I knew that this move was wrong, no matter how much they tried to scare us into believing it was the only way out of a full-blown recession.  The markets needed to correct on their own instead of simply delaying the inevitable sovereign debt crisis.  This last action of the Bush administration and the subsequent blunders of Obama were true turning points in my belief that a large and powerful federal government was an UNNECESSARY EVIL.  I finished up with the  real estate project in July of 2009 and headed back to California.

My funemployment began with a six week trip to Europe to figure out what to do next.  As I hiked through the Alps for two weeks, meeting up with a group of Brits, I was able to engage in many interesting political discussions.  Everyone I talked to was appalled and confused when I told them about Obama’s disingenuous plan to unite.  The Brits, Dutch, Italians, Israelis, Australians, and many others simply could not believe that the world savior was indeed a hoax.  I learned a lot about the politics of other countries during these conversations.  I realized that although our political system is severely flawed today, it was nowhere near the shape of many of the other European-socialist governments.  This was the first time in my life that I truly learned to appreciate the freedoms and civil rights that we in America often take for granted.

Upon the conclusion of my trek in Switzerland, I knew that my immediate destiny would be to tell the story of the amazing liberties that we possess as Americans and, more importantly, what we need to do in order to preserve them.  I dedicated much of the rest of my trip through Italy, France, and Spain to furthering this goal.  By the end of the trip I was convinced that I needed to help the most vulnerable generation maintain its liberty.  The young generation of America faces a long road of unsustainable debt and government takeovers of our once (long ago) free markets, compounding the danger of losing the inalienable rights that we all possess.

Immediately upon return from my trip, I had breakfast with Tim in Ocean Beach.  I remember very clearly the whole meal because I was nervous that he would not think it was a good idea.  There was no way I could take on this project by myself and I needed another liberty-minded, smart person to work with.  Since we were both unemployed and shared the same values, I knew it would work.

After my pitch about the project, emphasizing the part about the uniqueness of the idea- no young person had written a book about the fate of their generation.  Trust me, we searched Amazon for hours to be sure!  Tim immediately liked the idea and agreed that we should continue down the path.  The concept blossomed since that day in October 2009 and by late November, after much research and discussion, we were on our way toward co-authoring a book!

People have been wondering how our book cover came into existence and the story is an interesting one (at least to me).

When you write a book, spending countless hours researching, writing, reading, rewriting, editing, and writing some more, there are two things that are ever-present in your mind: the cover and the title.  Some authors are lucky enough to have those concepts developed early on in the process, but most think to themselves, “man, I hope I can come with a sharp cover design.”

Let’s face it, despite the old axiom, we still judge books by their cover.  And we should, it’s human nature.  Why do we like attractive women?  Because genetics tells us that she will be able to rear beautiful and healthy children.  We must plant our seed in worthy mates.  Why do we like attractive book covers?  Because it shows that the author put time and creativity into his entire project.  It is easier to believe that the book will have redeeming quality.

Lousy covers give me the impression that the author is either boring, was in a rush to publish, or doesn’t care about his work; all three reasons why we gloss over these books and gravitate to ones with pretty designs or captivating images.

With that in mind, Steve and I both knew that we had to knock it out of the park with our book cover.  It had to have powerful images.  It had to be instantly recognizable.  It had to be cheeky.  It had to be professional.  It had to stand out on a shelf full of books.

With those specific prerequisites in mind, we brainstormed endlessly, throughout the project, on how to becharm the potential reader.  I initially wanted the cover to look like an Xbox game.  Us young people love video games, and I enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek suggestion of being locked into combat with government similar to how we are with our fellow gamers when we play Modern Warfare 2 online.

We also played around with the idea of the entire front cover being an iPhone, with the text resembling an SMS conversation.  We initially liked this idea so much that we moved forward with design, however, we weren’t blown away with the results so that plan got scrapped like the many other contenders.

Ultimately, the idea of what you see today hit me when my brother Scott and I were grilling out, drinking some beers.   “Why not a comic book cover?”  That way we could easily illustrate conflict between a young person and some sort of aggro Uncle Sam.  The kid would be a skater and Uncle Sam would be clinching some sort of legislation.  The idea was solid enough to begin moving forward with, and after Steve gave me his blessing, we continued.

The next hurdle took weeks to get across; finding the right illustrator .  I thought it would be difficult to get an artist on board, as they are usually liberal, and was worried that most would reject any project that questioned statism.   To my immense pleasure, our dreams were answered when local San Diego cartoonist, Jorge Pacheco, responded to my craiglist ad.

I perused his online portfolio and quickly contacted him over the phone to discuss my project.  Jorge is a very pleasant man who was eager to give our idea a crack.  Once the money was wired to him, my inbox promptly contained the draft below.

I knew instantly that this was going to be a fantastic cover.  I was ecstatic that Jorge grasped the thoughts in my head and clearly knew how to translate those intangibles into something real.

“Make the skater look less ripped,” I believe, was our only suggestion for improvement.  Hey, us young people are the victims in this conflict, remember…

Most gratifying was how quickly Jorge produced results.  From the time I sent him money to when I received the first draft was one day.  From draft to complete color design was only another day!

Though the entire process of brainstorming and contacting numerous artists took valuable time, we knew that it had worked out perfectly.  Jorge left us with a powerful cover that is going to look great on bookshelves as well as promotional banners on the internet.

Book covers are extensions of the value of the words inside.  Our cover captures, we hope, our creativity and dedication to quality.

We’d have it no other way.