Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Sat Apr 05, 2008 10:22 am
I've wanted to rant about Social Security for a long time, so I'm just going to get right into it. Here's a couple of things you believe:
- Without social security, many old people would be destitute.
- The gov't "owes" you social security.
- SS is a trust fund and you're guaranteed a check when you reach retirement age.
- SS was designed from the beginning as a way for all elderly to retire.
The above statements are misleading, naive, and/or flat out false.
Things You Know
First off, let me tell you some things you already knew but are unwilling to apply to this situation. If you give people money, they're not going to need/want to work more. The more you give, the less drive they have to make their own money.
Put simply: Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Don't give a man a fish, he'll get off his ass, and get a fucking job so he can buy his own damn fish.
I know I'm making it sound like people are generally lazy... Well, aren't they?
Social Security makes the assumption that people are going to first and foremost have kids, work hard all their lives, and make good financial decisions. The problem is, with this financial safety net, people end up doing less of all those things--with less thought to the consequences of their actions or inaction, because they know that somebody will take care of them.
The self-defeating nature of SS comes from the fact that people only work as hard as they have to. Retirement is incredibly expensive, and with that already paid for, people are much less productive. The economy relies on growth, hard work, skilled labor, and risk. If Jimmy works at Burger Shack and chooses to flip burgers instead of work hard and become manager, it hurts the economy as a whole since he is creating less wealth. There's the inherent loss of labor or skills due to apathy, slowing the rise in wages and standard of living, hurting the impoverished even more so.
It may seem silly that Jimmy could do all that, but imagine taking that incentive away from 100 million people. That's what SS does.
So to say that SS is important to keeping the elderly from being destitute is misleading, because it actually contributes to poverty in the first place by altering human behavior. Social Security is the most expensive program of the most expensive government of the wealthiest nation in history. It has a profound effect on the way people in the US live their lives and it's insane to think otherwise.
Things You Don't Believe
The government doesn't "owe" you shit. That's not just my opinion, it's actually law.
In the 1960's, President Johnson was spending boatloads of money on social programs and war. He called it "The Great Society." Economists called it "bat-shit nuts". He expanded the nat'l debt to new heights (sound familiar?) and that wasn't even enough to pay for all of it, so he busted into Social Security.
This raised some eyebrows, because everyone was so sure SS was untouchable--some 'lockbox' that couldn't be molested. Well it went to the Supreme Court, and they decided that any money the government takes is the property of the government, and that they have no need to pay it back if they don't feel like it.
What does this mean? Well we all know SS is a failing program, it's slated for bankruptcy within the next 30 years or so. When it goes away, this decision means that there wont be any repercussions--the gov't is not required to cut pork spending or retract troops from Botswana to divert to SS in order to save it. Nothing will happen, apart from all those old people who were banking on their gov'mint checks coming next month (and I'll probably be one of them) will be totally fucked. Oh, and somebody's not going to get reelected... or they'll blame it on their rival political party and they wont get reelected.
The government isn't responsible for jack shit in your life. Nobody in government is responsible or even thinks they're responsible for anything that happens to you. The sooner you realize it, the sooner you'll stop entrusting your future to them.
Things You Don't Know
Most people believe SS was designed so that every elderly person could live a life after 65, and have a decade or two of moderate dignity until they kick it.
Where did this age of 65 come from? Do you know?
Well back in 1935, when SS was created, age 65 was *drumroll* the LIFE EXPECTANCY. I guess back in those days, 'retirement' referred to 'retirement from your corporeal state'.
In essence, they were expecting a huge portion of people to actually have died before they get the chance of receiving benefits. You work until the day you're supposed to die, and if you beat the averages, you get a prize.
SS was never meant to be on this kind of scale--not that I credit the people who conceived this idea in the first place to have an over-abundance of forethought.
If we were to keep SS within the spirit of its original design, we'd raise the 'retirement' age to 78--the current average US life expectancy. Amazingly, this would correct the solvency issue and drastically cut the size of the program at the same time. With a few tweaks to other government programs, we could balance the budget, start paying off the nat'l debt, and stop passing on our mistakes to our children/grandchildren like a bunch of assholes... but that's an article for another day.
Closing Libertarian Love-Fest
Growth in the economy has done more for the poor than any government program ever could. It's an outright lie that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The rich get richer, obviously, but the poor have NOT gotten poorer in this country. Take ANY twenty year period (and almost all 10 year periods) and chart the median wage. Poverty is progressively being eliminated on its own, and through no act of government. The poor in this country are the richest in the world, and it's due to our economy, not wealth redistribution through government. It boggles the mind to think that anyone would hinder the ultimate cure for poverty (economic growth) in favor of temporary alleviation of the symptoms of poverty through government intervention.
The war on poverty, to steal a term from the royal prick LBJ, is a journey, not a destination. Poverty can't directly be attacked through government, and it likely wont ever go away completely. Taxing and giving to the poor, especially on the scale of social security, is like building a roof on a house by taking material from the foundation. To help the poor on this kind of scale, new wealth must be created, and robing the economy via taxation is contrary to this goal.
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