…or your kid’s property.From an article in the USA Today about the “real” federal deficit:

• Social Security had the biggest financial slide. The government would need $22.2 trillion today, set aside and earning interest, to cover benefits promised to current workers and retirees beyond what taxes will cover. That’s $9.5 trillion more than was needed in 2004.
• Deficits from 2004 to 2011 would be six times the official total of $5.6 trillion reported.
• Federal debt and retiree commitments equal $561,254 per household. By contrast, an average household owes a combined $116,057 for mortgages, car loans and other debts.

Take special note of that last bullet point. Here’s an analogy for what’s going on: you didn’t trust yourself to be responsible enough to defer some of your income for retirement so you decided to offload the responsibility to government. Basically, your human foibles prevented you from saving for your retirement so you thought if you gave the responsibility to save to another human (or group of humans, in this case) he/she would somehow be better at it than you. Well, guess what? He wasn’t able to overcome his human foibles either. In fact, it turns out he was worse. Your inability to delay gratification has put you $116k in the hole. His inability to delay gratification in your name has put you $561k in the hole.

Have a nice day.