Yeah, that's sustainable...

The annual bill for senior entitlements is growing as faster or faster than the senior population itself:

The cost of government benefits for seniors soared to a record $27,289 per senior in 2007, according to a USA TODAY analysis.

That's a 24% increase above the inflation rate since 2000. Medical costs are the biggest reason. Last year, for the first time, health care and nursing homes cost the government more than Social Security payments for seniors age 65 and older. The average Social Security benefit per senior in 2007 was $13,184. The federal government spent $952 billion in 2007 on elderly benefits, up from $601 billion in 2000. It's the biggest function of the federal government.

I'm sure adding a prescription drug benefit, nowhere authorized by the Constitution, had nothing to do with the 50%-plus increase in spending in just seven years.

"We have a health care crisis. We don't have an entitlement crisis," says David Certner, legislative policy director of the AARP, which represents seniors.

He says seniors shouldn't be blamed for the growing cost of government retirement programs.

Wrong. We have both crises. It's a function of a society that fails to plan, fails to take responsibility ("don't blame seniors"), then expects Uncle Sam to fix the mess. The simple fact is many seniors today did not save and invest for retirement, nor did they lead healthy lifestyles. Now they are financially dependent upon the government, both for basic needs and the predictable catastrophic medical costs associated with poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (not to mention the occasional long-term effects of living in the Woodstock generation...).

Basic economic law: you get more of what you subsidize, right up to the point you can't afford to subsidize it any more. Social Security and other government services relieved traditional pressures to be frugal and plan for the future, leaving today's seniors at the mercy of financial politics and near bankruptcy of the treasury. Unless we redevelop the ethic of personal planning and responsibility, we will continue to entrap future generations into what is already a failing Ponzi scheme. The drive toward universal health coverage will merely accelerate this systemic failure. At some point, working-age young adults will balk at paying 50, 60 or 70 percent tax rates to keep the game afloat. A government big enough to give you what you want inevitably becomes powerful enough to take away everything you have. And allowing yourself to become dependent on others for your basic needs is not the definition of freedom.