Not to leave you in suspense, the answer is: definitely not. But when I share with you a statistic I recently came across, you might be excused for thinking so.

According to economists Giovanni Callegariand Laurence Kotlikoff, the Baby Boomers will on average receive $327,400 more in government benefits than they pay in taxes over the course of their lives, owing mostly to Social Security and Medicare. My 9-month old daughter’s generation? They will pay $420,600 more in taxes than they will receive in benefits. (My generation, meanwhile, can breathe easy: our lifetime tax bill will “only” amount to $10-20,000 more than our benefits.)

The whole goal of the welfare state is to commit an injustice: to take money from people because they’ve earned it and to give it to others because they didn’t earn it. But when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, that injustice is disguised because virtually everyone pays taxes to fund the programs and virtually everyone eventually receives benefits from the programs, and we cannot easily know whether we’re net payers or net receivers.

This is by design. The welfare statists who created the system understood that once a person realizes that he is being victimized by the welfare state, there is always the chance he will say: enough is enough.

Well, it’s becoming impossible to ignore that younger Americans are victims of the welfare state. They are going to be robbed of many of their hopes and dreams in order to support their grandparents in old-age.

Will they rebel? That depends. The first step is to realize they are being exploited. The second step will require a great deal more: they will have to have the courage and self-esteem to say “no” to being their grandfathers’ keepers.