Try This Experiment

Social Security Choice blogged Deroy Murdock suggests an experiment:

Open your wallet. Remove $100. Buy a new T-shirt, some socks, a decent lunch, two movie tickets, and beers with a friend afterward. Now, place in your wallet a slip of paper that reads: “I owe me $100 when I retire.”
Social Security is financed similarly.

UPDATE (11:48am EDT): A SSC reader wrote me this email - “Try This Experiment” would be more accurate if the IOU said: I owe me $100 when I retire, signed, your children.

I disagree. The SSC reader's suggestion implies the children signed the IOU.

I believe that a more accurate response would be if the IOU said: My children owe me $100 when I retire, whether they want to pay it or not.