Burying Social Security

Burying Social Security
by Michael R. Allen

Tuesday, November 23, 1999

No matter how often its protectors call it a retirement program, the Social Security system is a federal institution that takes a dangerous assumption - that each citizen of the republic cannot provide for himself - and carries on to remedy that false assertion by force. The social security program is involuntary, not in that one has to accept the benefits but in the morally preposterous way that every American has to pay into the system through a tax on their salary.

Some discussion has been generated of ways to "opt out" of the system. But even should they exist, there is no excuse for the government's proclaimed right to guide anyone's retirement in the first place. The reinstatement of the voluntary feature of the program would be welcome to those who want to control their lives. However, those who do not leave the system voluntarily will remain captives to the turbulent mismanagement that usurps their individual sovereignty.

And it's hard to believe that the government would really limit itself to simply providing retirement benefits to its customers.

With total abolition of the system would come dignity for the individual who seeks to shape his life. Charities would have to aid those who could not successfully stockpile their resources, but such assistance would be within the limits of a free society - and it would be pure help, not submission to a body seeking control in return for help.

The precepts necessary for the establishment of this system had been in place in this country for years before it was begun; the sanctity of human life and property were undermined with the federal income tax in 1913. When the program was first discussed in the early 1930s, the average life was 62 years for an American, and so the proponents had an easy time convincing people that it was a welfare program for the very old. With only a small segment of the whole population eligible for the dole, social security looked manageable.

By January 1937, the payroll deduction was endorsed. As the retirement age stayed constant, life expectancy rose. Social security remained static as employment shifted to primarily service-related industries and people were thus able to work past the age of 65 years without difficulty. When the voluntary feature was removed, the elderly were trapped in a nine-digit, income-limited, benefits-taxed system which offered only the Final Escape as any exit.

Though the system is outmoded even if I accept its original purpose, Washington has not found it acceptable to talk of ending the program outright. Once, the late Senator Barry Goldwater privately confided to Milton Friedman that he thought the system should be terminated. At Friedman's counsel, Goldwater did not publicize his feelings but eventually sponsored a bill to make participation in the system voluntary.

Should we thank Friedman and Goldwater for their thoughtful pragmatism? I should think not; a bold move then would have pushed discussion away from "opt out" and "personal accounts" to individual freedom.

As of late, Representative Mark Sanford (R-SC) has proposed the most radical alteration to the program brought to legislation. Unfortunately, the third-term South Carolinian supports retaining the payroll deduction - but he does go farther than blindly supporting the existing program. He would give the individual two-thirds of their deduction for a personal account to be self-directed, with the other third being applied to restoring the system's financial integrity. No voluntary option is included.

Still, Sanford is heading in the direction of self-determination rather than follow the convoluted program pushed by President Bill Clinton. Clinton confirms the worst fears of those who can predict market fascism's next move. Like the Sanford plan, getting out of the system is not even suggested. Unlike Sanford's proposal, the Clinton plan does not even allow the program's participants to have personal accounts. (If personal accounts are desired, Clinton has a separate bureaucracy in mind for that.)

The presidential plan gives complete investment control to the Federal government, with the individual at the mercy of Joe Bureaucrat's investment decisions. With the plan offered by the White House, the social security system would be investing in American markets directly, which would give the government a role in the economy unprecedented this side of Mussolini's Rome.

Not only does the plan assign to government the reigns of the open market, but it also rests on a projected budget surplus of $4.5 trillion over fifteen years. This surplus is jeopardized by the growth of new programs that Clinton has requested and the Republican Congress has passed. Of that supposed surplus, $2.8 trillion will go to paying of the national debt in the same fifteen years, leaving a suspiciously small amount to fix social security and create the seventy or so new programs the President has endorsed so far this year.

Congress would be wise to reject the Clinton plan for social security and his new programs. As David Walker of the General Accounting Office said of the president's idea, it is "extremely complex and confusing." To that can be added unsound and immoral, in that it cannot possibly work financially and that it will continue to enslave the retired masses.

An even wiser course is guiding social security to its Final Escape. The end of the system may not be discussed frankly by lawmakers, but it is the only thing to do if our society is to become free once more. The total abolition of social security cannot come soon enough to deliver the citizen from financial bondage.

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