Land of opportunity now of opportunism

Will no one liberate me from my job? I find myself, as the government suggests, "locked" in it. In subzero-degree weather, I trudge and drive through ice and snow, carrying people's mail. Fifty, 60 hours a week,

I do the same thing over and over, loading, scanning, delivering envelopes and packages to the same addresses on my route. At the end of two weeks, I receive a paycheck, and from my earnings, the government takes away $700.

The portion of the $700 that goes toward Social Security has already been spent, back when Bill Clinton was president. When I retire, my children and yours will be supporting me through their payroll taxes, placing their own retirement under the heading "unfunded mandates," the words of our collective epitaph.

The rest of the $700 paid for other people's food stamps, unemployment checks, cellphones, housing aid, health care, school lunches, student loan subsidies and the occasional five-figure perk that lands on a bureaucrat's desk. No doubt a pothole was filled along the way - which makes all the thievery kosher and justified.

But I'm tired of giving away that much of my money just so I can keep working. Seems everybody is leaving the labor force, applying for disability insurance, rummaging through Obamacare's website for some share of socialist largesse. I need time to pursue my own passion, as Nancy Pelosi says - time, for instance, to write more letters to the Daily Herald.

Work like a slave, and the government acts as your master. Slack off, and the government happily becomes your patron and pimp. This is the choice before me, colder and harsher than any polar vortex. The ZIP codes haven't changed, but America has. No longer a land of opportunity, it is a land of opportunism.

Alexander Lee

West Chicago