The US social security system is run by government, which is ipso facto, quod erat demonstrandum, sui generis, et cetera, evil and ineffective. And by golly, if it is not, then we should hamstring it so that it is! But it would take more than Latin to express my contempt for those lily-livered fudgers and temporizers who advocate privatization of social security.
These are only fair weather free-marketeers. Decent invisible-hand-fearing free marketeers resent the whole basis of the social security system. What right has any government to confiscate hard-earned money from workers and deprive them of their right to choose what they do with it? Why shouldn’t they spend their cash when they want, where they want? If workers want to rush to the saloon and spend the money the government thinks they should be saving for their retirement, it’s their free choice, isn’t it?
And in the meantime, the money that washes across the bar does much more good to the farmers, truckers and barkeepers of the world than it does in the hands of the bureaucrats in Washington – the people who gave you prohibition, you may remember.
To highlight this inconsistency, just compare social security with the robustly libertarian approach Congress takes to healthcare insurance. If citizens choose to spend their money on food, rent, or clothes instead of health insurance, it would be un-American to force them to pay involuntary healthcare insurance premiums. Some countries such as Canada, Britain and France think differently, but we know that they are all socialist quasi-tyrannies stifling the authentic spirit of free enterprise – although some of us are prepared to cut some slack for that Tony Blair, who is certainly on the right track. After all, he maintains (after a fashion) a privatized rail system which puts him one up on Amtrak.
It should be a matter of pride for the US that no less than 45 mn Americans currently exercise their free choice to remain uninsured and 25 mn are underinsured – inconceivable in one of these foreign socializing systems. Indeed, the fact that many of these are immigrants and minorities highlights our success in inculcating true free market principles in some of our newer citizens, as opposed to the older breeds so resolutely sucking at the breast of the nanny state.
If not health insurance, then why force Americans to take out old age insurance, which is what the social security system is? It’s obviously for the same reason that Congress taxes us. Any time Washington lobbyists or politicians – and who can tell them apart anymore, since the lobbyists often directly draft the legislation? – see a pot of money, they begin a conspiracy to get their hands on it.
The trillions of dollars in the social security fund are a pile in point. For years, this has been looted indirectly. The government has pretended that it’s not taxation when they take it from the pay packet, but once it’s converted into government bonds, they set it against tax revenues so Congress people can pretend that they’re not running a deficit while continuing to roll the pork barrels home to their districts. Then they incant magic words like abracadabra, tax cuts, hocus pocus and deficit reduction, which usually mean handing over heaps of money to those who financed their campaigns. Talk about return on investment! Just take a look at what a few judiciously applied millions in campaign contributions can buy you in Washington. It makes the wildest profit promises of the internet seem quite conservative.
George W Bush has put forward a proposal for partial privatization of social security, allowing Americans to invest a portion of their contributions. What a scam! This is still unconstitutional takings, enforced savings. Instead of the confiscated cash being wasted by elected politicians on things like gravitationally challenged ospreys and mentally challenged national missile defenses, it will be handed over to the bankers, who are, of course, the same people who invested the voluntary savings of millions of Americans in internet start-ups, emerging markets and third world debt, and are currently ushering us into a recession.
At least we can occasionally vote the politicians out, but the money managers and their pals have the financial equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. They will carry on getting commissions and management fees selling or buying, rising or falling.
No, the honest free market thing to do is to scrap social security completely. Give out those government bonds to all existing holders, and tell future generations to pull up their socks, and start saving for their retirement – or if they exercise their right to so choose, to wine, dine and fornicate themselves into an early, un-pensioned grave.
Note my own interest here. Last year I bought into funeral homes and tobacco stocks and as the dot-coms have plunged my investments have trebled. If it were not for my conversion to free market principles I would warmly endorse compulsory funeral insurance as well, but I am prepared to drop this demand in a genuine, non-partisan spirit as a self-sacrificing example to stem the tide of these compulsory takings from workers’ hard-earned cigarette money.
The Speculator
