Boomer Serial Killer
This is not an entry into the The Boyd Institute essay contest.
Officer Tyler Koch didn’t see anything odd about the man sitting in front of him, and yet this man was an alleged serial killer. As of this morning, when he was finally apprehended at the New Perspectives retirement community in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, this man was singlehandedly responsible for hundreds of murders.
His name is apparently Brian Miller—bland, boring, vanilla—and everything about him was as average as it could be: straight, white, brown hair, hazel eyes, 5’ 10”, 165lbs. He sat in handcuffs on a folding chair in the hallway while the interview room was being prepared, and Tyler was assigned to watch him during these brief fifteen minutes as his superiors made calls to claim credit for his capture. Brian’s head hung low, his eyes were dull, and his hands hung limply from forearms rested on knees.
His eyes slowly drifted up at Tyler. “Wife and kids, I assume?” he asked in monotone.
Tyler didn’t answer. They weren’t supposed to talk to detainees. The time between arrest and charges being filed was delicate, and a lowly officer like him couldn’t risk saying something that would lead to a mistrial.
“New house with a 6.5% mortgage? Two leased cars?” Brian continued, “Massive co-pay at the pediatrician’s office? Daycare costs $500 a week?”
Tyler’s eyes twitched.
“More? Oh, both kids are in daycare. Sucks, man. I feel ya…” Brian drifted off before continuing again, “That’s why I did it, you know. For us.”
Tyler didn’t like where this was going. He was on the verge of reaching for his radio when Brian started speaking again.
“Did you know that someone who worked in the ‘70s paid only 5% in FICA taxes while you pay 7.65%?” Tyler did not know. “Today that person is retired, and they earn anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 per year. That’s probably almost as much as you make, right? Can you imagine? You’ve got two kids in daycare so that your wife can go to work—what is she, a nurse, a teacher?—and your take-home pay is taxed higher than theirs was so that you can pay them to live without any of the expenses you’ve got. Can you imagine? They paid less so that you can pay more.”
Tyler’s eyebrows tightened.
“And they’re gonna live for like another ten to twenty years, so you’re gonna keep paying—like, it’s only gonna increase, right?—you’re gonna keep paying more as a percent of your income to fund their retirement,” Brian was starting to ramp up, “Meanwhile, they didn’t pay nearly as much as a percent of their income. Right? Because when they were working, they were paying for the retirement of the old people back then. Did you know that?”
Tyler did not know that.
“It’s not like the money they were taxed was invested and grew over time. No, today’s taxes don’t go to tomorrow’s retirees, they go to today’s. See, there weren’t as many old people back then, and they didn’t live nearly as long, so they had to pay less, but you have to pay more because now there’s a bunch of these fucking Boomers,” he spat that term out with visceral disgust, “And they’re all broken and they’re all using your tax money through Medicare to pay for three visits to the dermatologist’s office every month to get another new mole checked out. When’s the last time you went to the dermatologist?”
Tyler didn’t know. He didn’t think he’d ever gone to the dermatologist. In general he tended to avoid doctors and hospitals after his wife had to have an emergency C-section for their first.
“So your tax money’s going to all these medical expenses that’ll only make them live longer so that they can keep collecting their Social Security checks, which you also pay for. How’s that fair? Huh?”
Tyler didn’t know. Brian took a second to calm down.
“How much did your house cost? A lot, right? They all do nowadays. That’s because they’re sitting on them, these fucking Boomers. They’re paying people to come to their house to wipe their ass because they can’t anymore, and that’s coming out of your pocket too. You ever ask your parents how much they paid for their house?” Tyler had. “Three sticks and a nickel, right? Don’t you wish that’s what you paid? I mean, you knew you were overpaying when you signed the mortgage. We all do. Thirty years at 6.5%—what a joke!”
Tyler couldn’t disagree.
“That’s why I did. I did it for us. They sit on these houses that should be getting sold to us, to you. It’s your kids that should be out there playing on that lawn that they pay other people to mow for them because they can’t do it anymore. Your taxes are paying for their nice lawn. Two more decades of a nice lawn in a house that has too many rooms for them to do anything with. They pay other people to come clean those rooms for them—rooms where your kids should be sleeping. The future.”
Tyler’s heart was racing, he couldn’t help himself. He felt his cheeks flush in anger, but it wasn’t anger at the man sitting in front of him. Anything that involved his kids always brought it out of him.
“You want to know how much your kids are gonna have to pay when they start working?”
Tyler didn’t want to know.
“Almost 10%. We’re already spending more than we take in through taxes. They’ve gotta raise the rates. They’ve got to! What, you think you’re gonna vote for change?” Brian audibly scoffed, “When’s the last time you voted? Did you vote in the off-season election?”
Tyler didn’t. He shifted uncomfortably.
“Of course not, I don’t blame you. You’ve got shit to do. But you know who did? They did. That’s why nothing’s gonna change, man. The retired vote in massively disproportionate numbers compared to the people working to fund their retirement. You think they’ll voluntarily give up all those perks? No, they’re gonna keep calling their Congressman—they’ve got all day to do it!—and they’re gonna tell him that he better not mention a fucking thing about reforming Social Security. It’s the same with housing; they don’t want a new development next door. Nope! They’ll go to all the city council meetings and they’ll wave their walking stick in the air and hoot and holler and they’ll block any new houses from being built. Your houses. The ones your family is supposed to move into when you outgrow the one you’re in.”
Tyler was starting to feel angry again.
“That ‘forever home’ your wife keeps talking about, the one with the pantry and the master bathroom, that’s not gonna happen because of them. That’s why I’m doing this. I’m doing it so that all that cash they squirreled away gets passed down instead of spent on a brand new car they’ll slowly drive down the block to the doctor’s office. I’m doing it so that they can’t drive anymore. You think their licenses are getting taken away? Fuck no! They’ll keep mistaking the brake for the gas and running over kids—your kids—because no one is there to stop them!”
Don’t touch my fucking kids, Tyler thought.
“Every one of them gone is another $500,000 of your tax money that doesn’t have to get spent! Twenty years of Social Security checks! And your kids are gonna pay even more, because it’s not like those checks are intended to pay for a bare minimum existence. No, someone earning $20,000 in 1980 is getting a Social Security check calculated off $100,000 in today’s money. They more they earned, the more you pay them. Are you earning $100,000?”
Tyler was not, and it felt hot in the hallway.
“That’s right. Someone retiring today is going to live for another twenty years. That’s enough time for your kids to graduate and start paying their own taxes, and they’ll be paying for someone broken, someone barely alive anymore, earning more than they are so that they can pay 10% of their income in taxes to subsidize their existence while your kids can barely afford to start their own family.”
Brian leaned back in his chair. “That’s why I did it. Someone’s got to do something. You ever feel like that? You ever feel like actually doing something?”
Officer Tyler Koch was found sitting on a folding chair in the hallway of the Sun Prairie Police Department, head hung low, hands limply holding opened handcuffs. Security camera footage showed what had happened. He refused to answer any questions. Booking information showed a perfectly average man: straight, white, brown hair, hazel eyes, 5’ 10”, 165lbs.
Well, dang, his kids are even worse off now!