In "The Real Deal" by Sylvester Schieber and John Shoven, the authors quote an article from J.H. Van Deventer that "described the establishment of a national retirement system in Frogdom.  The motivation for initiating it was that the frogs experienced declining ability to catch insects as they aged." 

Have a guess how the emperor structured the retirement system and what the consequences were?  See below to find out!

From The Real Deal:

"The enlightened ruler of the kingdom decided to implement an old-age pension for the inhabitants.  Under the plan, younger frogs were to catch one more insect per day than they needed to sustain themselves and then to contribute it to the emperor.  The emperor would give the contributor a receipt for it together with an assurance in writing that when he could no longer earn his daily bugs through the skill of his tongue, he would be fed by the Government.

Frogdom took to this plan enthusiastically...[with] the somewhat naive idea that the Government had constructed some bug warehouse in which it accumulated a surplus of dried bugs from the daily contributions made by members of the kingdom.

If the truth must be known, such a thing was not happening at all.  The bug contributions exacted from the subjects of Frogdom, on pain of fine and imprisonment, were not segregated at all but went into the general Royal larder from which the Emperor frog, his immediate Royal family, his henchmen, and the ruling legislators of Frogdom drew their rations.  It was a great thing for the frog legislators especially, who depended upon patronage for election and maintenance in office.  For they had the privilege of shipping great quantities of bugs to their constituents...on the slightest pretext imaginable.

Of course, the rub came many years later when a large number of contributing frogs arrived at pension age. 'But when they got there, the cupboard was bare.'  They had Frogdom's I.O.U.'s it is true, but they could not live on paper.

The Emperor of Frogdom, however, solved the problem very neatly.  He made his subjects contribute two bugs per day thereafter instead of one, which certainly was a masterpiece of progressive statesmanship."

Sound familiar?  What's amazing is the prescience of Van Deventer, who wrote the article back in 1937.   

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