Consider the American social security system, which will become so glutted with eligible seniors as the baby boomers retire that it will be soon begin paying out more than it takes in. The service was designed during the Johnson administration, when there were far more people paying into the system than benefits issued.

As the Social Security system matured, the medical system improved, and the methods of payment for medical services changed. An 80 year old could get an organ transplant, but only at considerable cost! Social Security and its Johnsonian twin, Medicare/Medicaid, both weathered the blows of increasing medical expenses and longer lives. As the Social Security Administration realized that the baby boomers were approaching retirement age, they created a trust fund that would build up money in preparation for the aging of these roustabout hippies.

This was a good idea, echoing Joseph's warning in the bible to prepare for the seven lean years during the seven fat ones. What we have to realize is that the Clinton and Bush administrations are like a Pharaoh that deliberately ignores Joseph's advice.

Bush decided to begin spending down that trust fund, slowly but surely. Bush's economic forecasters vastly overestimated this year's budget surplus. Combined with an economic slowdown and a huge tax cut, this mis-calculation will force Congress to spend the social security trust fund in the ordinary budget. This action almost defies political reason, since the Republicans have been warning the Democrats under Clinton not to do just that.

This decision, though, was powered not by anything so polite as politics, but by cold, scientific survival logic. It was meant to provoke a beneficial die off in the upcoming decades.

So is welfare reform. The Welfare Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was passed during the height of the economic boom, when even the more liberal senators and representatives were being convinced that the New Economy meant an end to periodic crashes. That's why it puts a permanent time limit on lifetime welfare eligibility. Of course, this year, when we have the highest jobless rate in 9 years, the first welfare recipients will run up against the total benefits deadline. The only thing this could be doing is lowering the death deficit, easing the burden on welfare, Medicare, charity, and communities.

The need for a steady and proper death rate was first described crudely by Malthus. He states that the population must be kept to the means of subsistence; the amount of grain and meat that can be gotten must increase arithmetically, whereas the population increases geometrically.

Tractors, pesticides, weed killers, farm subsidies and other such innovations have produced a damn huge food surplus, and this many to dismiss Malthus, since there is, even today, enough food to feed the world a few times over.

However, a moment's thought as to the difficulty of redistributing the food resources to end all current famines leads us to the real areas in which Malthusian dynamics exist today.

To a certain extent, we are now dependent as a society on oil, satellites, dollars and medicines; truly, the West is the bad guy when it comes to rapidly consuming these crucial resources. And, what's more, the gap between richer and poorer nations (in terms of gross domestic product) continues to increase. Both production and some aspects of consumption (such as retail) are covered in the GDP; the bigger it gets, the more we are taking. If we look at Western use of oil and other limited resources which, although nonfood, are essential, we prove Malthus right in spades. Without the constant incoming capital provided by rapid growth of the economy, we can no longer afford to buy the resources which allow us to maintain our current standard of living.

That's where the death deficit comes in. Instead of doing something stupid -- retarding economic growth, robbing Peter to pay Paul by giving everyone a tax rebate, raising the minimum wage, instituting a real welfare state, etc., the policymaker can alter the death demographic. One way to do this is to ratchet back all this anti-aging research and specialty care, diminishing the healthcare aspects of the welfare state.With all the advances in medical science, the percentage of government services used per capita by the elderly around the world has increased. We've footed the bill for decades when some destitute senile grandpa is in a hospital and heroic measures are used to save him and the taxpayer pays for it, but now there are more elderly -- and more heroic measures available. The state should not pay for them for everyone.

One good model for the United States, if it chooses to thin out its herd, is Russia. Nearly everyone here smokes and drinks, sometimes resorting to cheap, adulterated vodka. Thus, the life expectancy has dropped to the 50's when, before the fall of the Wall, it was comparable to the United States. With the cash strapped government scrambling for bailouts nearly every year, the death of the elderly relieves not only the government but pension-providing corporations from their obligations. Money, when it's available, can properly be put into entrepreneurship activities.