If you’re receiving Social Security, you’re an accessory to a Ponzi scheme. The rest of us are the suckers.

What high society con man Bernard Madoff pulled off to the horror of many of his big name investors is nothing compared to the Ponzi scheme of Social Security. But there is a way out.

Madoff excelled at finding money from new investors to maintain payouts to earlier investors. Our Congress excels at extracting money from our paychecks to maintain payouts to earlier retirees.

Incredibly, there are still people who believe the money they pay in through their payroll deductions is held for them until they retire. How quaint. Read the fine print. Social Security is not a 401-K.

Speaking of fine print, do you wage-earners read your Social Security statements? Mine came last June. Right there on page one it says:

“In 2017 we will begin paying more in benefits than we collect in taxes.”

Sound sustainable to you?

Why not? Simple demographics. As people live longer, the number of people on Social Security grows. However, birth rates have fallen, meaning fewer new workers to pay into the system. In 1960, there were 5.1 wage earners for each retiree. By 2017, there will only be three.

And 2017 sounds a long way off, doesn’t it? Plenty of time to fix things. Oh really? It’s only 8 years. Have you been following the progress of universal health insurance?

And the issues with health insurance are nothing compared to what has to happen with Social Security.

Let’s look at the math. If you’re retired and get $2,000 a month in Social Security benefits, and you’re going to be around in 2017, that means the three wage earners paying in to cover your checks will get $625 a month taken out of their paychecks. That figure doesn’t include income taxes.

Assuming I don’t die first, I’ll be one of those three. And since even the Social Security Administration is saying it will be bankrupt before I retire, you can imagine how excited I feel.

How do we get out of this mess? There are only four options: More babies, more income, cut benefits, or change the subject.

If I were going to let you get away with option four, you wouldn’t be reading this.

So, more babies? Would you have more babies when the average cost of bringing a child to age 18 –- forget college — is $204,000? That’s up just 2.4 percent since 1999, not a big number, but real median household income was down 5.1 percent during the same period.

What do you predict for the next 10 years?

Household income growth? See above.

That leaves us with cutting benefits. Howl all you want, retirees, but there’s no way around it. You have to support cutting them for everyone, cutting them for the richest in order to protect the poorest, or go to your grave knowing the system will collapse on the backs of your grandchildren because you did nothing.

Fellow workers, what do we do?

First, read the fine print yourself. Next, remember there are still more of us than retirees, so sit down at your computer and type three words: Cut benefits now. Send them to three people: Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and Rep. Jay Inslee. Repeat monthly.

And if you’re a Social Security recipient, forget the grandkids. When you go to the bank to deposit your check, I want you to think of me and my two co-workers. The government is just the middleman. That money comes from us.