The “news” really isn't. A few years ago, a bipartisan commission reached the same conclusion, noting the program would eventually consume the entire federal budget. This report merely echoes the first: Social Security's budgetary girth will never stop growing.
Privatization is the only answer, but that's not what some folks wanted to hear. When the bad news was released, they sounded the tocsin, charging the commission with publishing a “Chicken Little” report.
It's “a political document,” Democrat Rep. Robert Matsui of California told the Washington Post. The report was published, the House Ways and Means Committee grandee averred, “just to incite the public into thinking the system is in such bad shape they need to move to a radical solution.”
John C. Rother, chief lobbyist for American Association of Retired Persons, told the paper, “They've taken every opportunity to try to make this as alarmist as possible … to work toward a predetermined outcome.”
These things might be something to worry about if Sen. Daniel Moynihan, a Democrat hardly given to radicalism or alarmism, hadn't signed the report. And it was “predetermined,” but not for the reason the totally disinterested AARP thinks. All pyramid schemes are “predetermined” to collapse, but only after they fleece a large group of hapless victims.
The truth about Social Security? The sky is falling.
Which raises the question of why otherwise intelligent men and women would support a program destined to go broke even by the kindest, most generous analysis.
The answer is that Social Security is the socialist glue that holds the modern American megastate together, a pot of money that permits politicians to buy the vote of a politically active and growing segment of the population.
It began under the guise of saving money for retirees, but the government quit that charade a long time ago. Now, it spends the money as it sees fit on “beneficiaries” nowhere near retirement, yet who slurp noisily from its generous trough. So now it's empty. We deserve it, however, for giving our hard-earned income to complete strangers and believing they'd actually save it for us.
That said, whatever the alleged noble intent of Social Security, the results have been the same as with all socialist programs: Fiscal collapse and the simultaneous concentration of economic power in a bureaucratic elite and its elected political regents, who then bribe voters to maintain political power.
Change would mean surrendering that power, which the political suzerains will never do willingly.
The cruel irony of Social Security is that many recipients have amassed wealth far beyond what those still paying the taxes ever will. And the wealth transfer will only get worse as fewer workers support each retiree. Eventually, one worker will directly support one retiree, meaning Draconian taxation will be required to maintain payments.
Even then, Social Security will still collapse. It can't be “fixed” precisely because of the taxation required, which will ruin the average worker's life and wreck the economy. You can't “fix” something doomed to fail.
That leaves one solution: Get rid of it. And not just for these practical reasons. On principle, it simply isn't the government's job to care for citizens in retirement. As with two-thirds of our federal leviathan, Social Security is unconstitutional.
Time to abolish it.
(This column courtesy of Agape Press.)
