Inspirational Worker

The business section of today's local newspaper here in Minnesota had a feature article on older Americans (age 90 and up) who choose to continue working or must work due to their financial situations.

One gentleman noted in the article was Waldo McBurney who is a beekeeper in Quinter, Kansas. Mr. McBurney was recently declared the "oldest working American........" at the respectable age of 104 years. Now I probably should also post a comment about Mr. McBurney on my blog dedicated to books (http://erasmusbookclub.blogspot.com) since he is the author of the book, "My First 100 Years -- A look back from the Finish Line", which he wrote at age 101. No doubt the book royalties were an incentive to keep living for at least another three years!! Congratulations on all of these accomplishments Mr. McBurney.

People like Mr. McBurney are clearly redefining our notion of what "retirement" should be in our current world as life expectancies (see my posting on "Life Expectancy" on this blog) continue to increase. The other lesson we can draw here is we need to have our political leaders re-consider what "liberty" means. For instance why should we bow to the federal government by allowing them to establish retirement ages for Social Security benefits? The time has come to phase out Social Security by allowing taxpayers to keep this money in their pockets for investing in whatever financial instruments they choose -- even government bonds would pay better than the "potential return" we might get from Social Security.

Taxpayers just need to ask themselves -- which do I trust more: that Social Security checks will keep showing up when I retire OR having my money invested in a number of certificates of deposit (CDs) maturing at different times at my local bank?

Give me the CDs baby and you can live off Social Security benefits with people like Democratic candidate for President - John Edwards -- but wait, he is a multi-millionaire trial lawyer/former US Senator so he won't even need Social Security benefits to survive given his congressional pension and his ambulance-chasing legal fees.

From what I read people like Mr. McBurney simply love their work and their work keeps them healthy. For me that is clear inspiration that we need to continue fighting for less government and more personal ownership of our futures.

See you at the office,

Todd