When Chris Dodd assailed the ever erudite Bernanke on privatizing Social Security, the banker had no notes on hand so he apologized for the idea instead. America needs to answer Dodd before the government raises Social Security taxes and lowers benefits again. Applying Social Security payroll taxes to primary residences is the way to go. by Paul Benedict
(libertarian)
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
For the thief, the question of stealing can be a philosophic one: is it right that my neighbor has something that I need, while I go without? Aren't property rights simply a conceptual system concocted by the "haves" to continue to oppress the "have-nots"? Is not proximity and possession nine tenths of the law? If my neighbor has the ability to produce something I need, isn't it only socially equitable and politically expedient that I receive it? Isn't the whole notion of right and wrong relative?
However, for victims of thievery, evil is existential; victims have very real experiences of right and wrong. Those who have lost their property know they've been wronged. That's natural law.
Hence, because the tedious diatribes of nature ultimately have their effect on even the dullest students; it is incumbent on the best thieves not to let their prey recognize what they've lost. This is what the cumulative effect of Social Security has been on three generations of Americans. Wage earning Americans, working Americans, are taught with their first paychecks that they are simply the hapless victims of a government that is bigger than they are. Social Security has been a weekly object lesson about how valueless one's personal property is when compared with the invaluably magnanimous motives of government. Since teachings practiced trump even the most lofty sermons, all the lessons on the U.S. Constitution are shown to be quaint relics best left to Sunday schools. Even worse, Social Security's instruction is relentlessly pounded in, paycheck after paycheck. Ultimately, the American psyche has become buried in hopeless dependency on the blessings, not of liberty itself, but of the federal government. Americans have become insensitive to the theft of their belongings; hence, the question of government sanctioned thievery remains only philosophic.
Bernie Madoff only became unpopular because his failure to continue to hide his thefts from his victims was inevitable. Social Security is about to arrive at this juncture. Until, recently, the notion of taking one worker's wages to pay benefits to another was simply an odd metaphysical notion. After all, who was harmed? But the jig is up. It's all over but the crying. The last millionaire will become a communist labor camp wage slave by about 2016. Once this extinct species of golden goose is gone, who else will there be to blame for the failure of the government idols to provide the unlimited financial resources it has promised to Social Security beneficiaries? The problem is that by then it will be too late.
Anyone who can do high school math, and who actually applies this to Social Security, will realize that we can transform Social Security into a national investment. Social Security can be an investment that increases our national prosperity exponentially. Even at a 0% return in an FDIC insured account, taxpayers would be better off. Sadly, though, the government-run destruction of our financial institutions has sent the confidence in Wall Street and in bank executives into a frenzied downward spiral. Consider this recent conversation between the brilliant Chris Dodd and the ever comforting figure of Ben Bernanke:
Dodd: "Did I sense a breath, a sigh of relief that we didn't privatize Social Security?"
Bernanke: "Well we never got that far in that proposal, chairman... I'm going to have to get back to the details..."
After the obvious dodge made the ever optimistic Bernanke a sitting duck, Dodd took the opportunity to pester the old socialist into finally admitting that had the Social Security privatization been tied to the market it "would certainly be a problem."
Saying that free markets have failed is like saying carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The logical conclusion, on the one hand, is that fighting pollution must result in the reduction of the polluters to ectoplasm, and the conclusion, on the other, is a grudging submission to the gulag economics of Stalin, gangsters everywhere, and Mao Zedong. Saying that investment in American business and spirit will never prosper again, so we better keep foolish workers away from such things, is like saying that we need to nationalize health care because many or most doctors are corrupt, selfish people who don't really care about their patients. On the one hand, if doctors are really of this ilk, reforming health care is a useless exercise. On the other hand, if investments will never pay dividends again, why should anyone expect more than a brief and brutish existence just barely above the government definition of poverty?
Even though the Huffington Post is the scholarly rag for philosophic criminals, the reader comments that followed were, sadly, very telling. Despite the lack of farsighted logic, one can hardly blame John Q. Public for wanting to hide their payroll taxes under a mattress rather than invest them on Madison Avenue or Wall Street. Nonetheless, if Social Security is Communism 101 for the masses, those who are persuaded of the efficacy of liberty must counter with a transformation of the system. The time is here. The travesty can no longer stand, but Bernanke's promises notwithstanding, the economic downturn has all the earmarks of government run fiasco that may last well into 2010. Privatizing Social Security by allowing wage slaves to invest their payroll taxes in their private residences (see a detailed discussion of this) will provide all the object lessons necessary to a people aspiring to freedom:
1. hope in this world (outright property ownership within a decade)
2. my right actions have positive rewards (responsibility results in privilege)
3. my government exists to serve me (not confiscate my wealth)
Additionally, capital will be reformed. The housing market will regain strength. America might even be able to use the return on their TARP funds to pay down initial transitional costs Oh, I forgot, the liberals in congress killed that idea with the "Stimulus" package.
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