Thoughts on Social Security

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

--Winston Churchill

One of the Bush Administration's main objectives for the new term is the reform of Social Security. As a member of the sub-30 age group, at least for a couple of more years, I have to say it's about time. From the time I started receiving a paycheck, I have never thought of Social Security as something I could count on. I've always considered that deduction from my paycheck as money lost that I'll never see again.

Since I've always considered the Social Security deduction nothing more than government-sponsored theft from my paycheck, I'm looking forward to at least being able to take a little bit of that money and investing it in a private account. At least that much will be mine. The dirty little secret about Social Security is that there is no account with your name on it. Your deductions just get put in the big communal pot, and if you happen to live long enough, you might see a little of it every month.

The real problem with Social Security is that the money we've been paying in isn't there. It has been appropriated by politicians for uses other than it was intended. It's been happening for years -- politicians in Washington have put forth grand social spending plans, for which funding was not available in the general fund. To make up the shortfall, they simply siphoned the funds from the Social Security trust fund. By sometime in the next decade, all that will be left in the Social Security trust fund is a bunch of IOU's.

That's why reform is desparately needed. With private accounts, you will own your account, and the money in it. The politicians will have no rights to siphon that off for their grandiose spending plans, which is one of the reasons that they will fight tooth and nail to prevent it. Another reason that many of the liberal persuasion will fight any kind of reform is that privatization returns at least some of the control of the people's future to them. In the mind of a liberal there's nothing worse than an individual taking responsibility for their own well-being. When that happens, they are no longer relying on the government for their future, and to liberals, everything should be a function of government. (Never mind the Constitutional limitations on the federal government -- those have been ignored for decades. But that's another topic.)

The frustrating part of the whole Social Security reform business is the stance of groups who ostensibly have the well-being of senior citizens in mind. The AARP is at the forefront of fighting any kind of reform, regardless of the fact that the current system will be bankrupt in 2018. By fighting against reform, they are dooming those who will be alive and relying on Social Security in 2018 to a life with none of the promised support. My belief is that the AARP's opposition is more political than anything else. I base that statement on some of the claims the organization has put forth regarding reform.

The AARP claims that the Bush Administration wants to cut benefits. Not true. Everyone who does not qualify for a private account will receive all of the benefits that have been promised to them. There has been no proposal put forth by the Bush Administration to reduce benefits to current Social Security recipients, or even for those who are rapidly approaching retirement.

It's fearmongering tactics such as the ones being used by the AARP that lead me to believe that they are more concerned with politics than with the well-being of America's seniors. The question for us now is are we going to let them sway us from acting to save a system that is rapidly sliding down the tubes? Are we going to let the fearmongering by liberals in Congress and their lapdog organization the AARP keep us from setting up a system that will provide even better for future seniors than the current system does for current seniors?

The answers to these questions lies in how much backbone the Republicans and conservative Democrats (is there such a thing, now that Zell Miller's gone?) in Congress can muster. Truth be told, I don't have much confidence in Republicans being able to muster any backbone. The chances of that actually happening aren't borne out by history. If anything, the chances are better that the Republican majority will fold like a wet noodle in the face of lies and fearmongering by the left. Unfortunately it happens too often.

In the meantime, I'll be making my retirement decisions without the promise of Social Security. There's no way I'm going to count on a system that will have been bankrupt for twenty years by the time I retire.