Rainbough Phillips wonders how you could sell Social Security to the American people today if it was just now being proposed:
That’s right kids we’re going to deduct a portion of every pay check to go towards funding your retirement. There won’t be any correlation between how much you put in now and how much you will later be able to get out, and in fact we will use the current funds to pay people who never paid into the system, but who just didn’t happen to bother saving for retirement. You don’t want your grandparents starving do you?
Also if you are particularly industrious and save up enough that you don’t need the money you’ve put into social security we will reward you by not allowing you to have any. Or if you get a job in your retirement after receiving your benefits we will promptly take your benefits away to give them to more needy individuals. Furthermore the money taken from your paycheck and put into the fund, may not necessarily be used for the fund. We reserve the right to borrow money from the fund to use for other purposes from time to time. If we should forget to put it back, don’t worry we’ll just reduce your overall benefits to make up for the short fall.
Another great benefit of the system is that we will assign every individual a number that will never ever be used for personal identification, unless you are getting a driver’s license, bank account, credit card, cell phone, going to college, getting a job, or financing anything ever. So who wants to sign up?!
Even with this sales pitch, I think that Social Security would pass again. I've encountered so many people who are totally convinced that civilization would collapse without government supervision over every sphere of life, and precious few who aren't.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
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4 comments:
One the one hand, I do think that Social Security would still pass in some form, we have to recognize that vast difference between the way things were when it first passed and the way things are now. We also have to recognize that the original system was different than the one we have now, and the amount paid in was much lower.
At the time Social Security was first passed, most people only lived a very few years after the eligable retirement age. It is actually quite amazing how much the life expectancy has increased in the last 50 years.
So Dean, are you saying that Social Security should not be set up primarily as a retirement system, but as a means of redistrubting wealth from the rich to the poor?
I'd be willing to market Social Security in that fashion, because it would be easier to defeat in Congress.
It's true, Joel, that the church has continued to let the poor down over the years in favor of erecting buildings of creating more exciting youth programs, etc.
But by adopting Social Security, we have bought into the Robin Hood mentality that it is okay to steal as long as you steal from the right people.
Joel, in the spectrum of government authority, I'd be somewhere off in the 'minimal' area, but not in the 'nonexistent' point.
It is a subjective, rather than absolute issue. I would define the legitimate purposes of government to be:
1. protect against invasion
2. protect against crime
3. enforce contracts
These are the essential acts of government that only government can do effectively. There are those, however, who in good conscience say that economic regulation, poverty regulation, and moral supervision are legitimate goals of government and the use of force.
At the other end is authoritarianism, where government makes all of the decisions for the individual.
It is a subjective decision because government is a 'necessary evil'. There is no fixed and discrete point in which government becomes unnecessary and cumbersome from any quantitative point of view.
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