>>LOL. He was speaking about France.

He was expressing an opinion about resolving inequality- in France, 4 years before their revolution. Do you recognize anything else in the circumstances he describes? ;-) But if you are less impressed because he wasn't referring to the US that didn't yet face these issues, here's another Jefferson quotation about the US:

“The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied. – Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canal, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”

Clearly the "fact" that selective taxation is unconstitutional and frowned on by the Founding Fathers, had not been discovered yet. Interestingly, claims of constitutional support and summoning the memory of the Founding Fathers usually come from people who insist that the rich should pay less- and perhaps that the poor should eat cake?

>>SS and Medicare are underfunded because they are Ponzi schemes masquarading as a kind of insurance. The only difference between them and Madoff is that Madoff couldn't force participation.

SS and Medicare failed not because of fraudulent intent but because the electorate systematically drummed out responsible politician behavior until the remnant agreed not to see the elephant in the room. Certainly I agree that turned it into a Ponzi scheme.

>>Damn that pesky electorate. How dare they want to keep what they earn. If only they'd succomb to the wisdom of an enlightneed elite. ;)

Yes, that's exactly how it was handled: labels applied as a fig-leaf for selfishness, followed by promotion for politicians who agreed not to see the elephant in the room.

>>From their inception, the inevitable result was underfunding, the only question was when.

You keep saying that, which is why I quoted the Australian scheme. By 2025 their scheme will have $10T in real assets in today's dollars- yes, $10Trillion surplus after paying boomer pensions, built from contributions from earners. Had the US instituted a similar scheme, the "financial crisis" could have been settled out of chump change. Instead there are a few unnaturally rich people who insist that Thomas Jefferson wanted them to pay less tax.

>>Thrift? You must be joking. Try spendthrift.

You insist that individuals can do far better than government at providing for their own future, then you quote this. Which is it?

Perhaps the key is a mandated scheme ringfenced away from political fingers, which is how the Aussie scheme runs. Theirs also is run by competing professional managers who are rewarded just as they would be in a private managed fund. The reason it works is that surpluses are not hoovered away as dividends or to fund pet projects by a politician-of-the-day.

>>No need to look to Africa.
>>http://www.kspr.com/news/local/kspr-copper-thieves-blamed-for-knocking-out-power-to-thousands-20111116,0,5956228.story

LOL.Maybe the things we used to feel superior about from pre-revolution France or the deepest third world, are closer than we think.