Re: Values

["William J. Burrows" <bill_burrows@amecom.com>]

Sir,
I read your book with great care and attention to detail, as I
have made an almost lifetime study of this issue. I respect the
value that you obviously place in the program and what you perceive
that it has done for the retirees of the past. Yet it has enabled
me to do the real calculus of benefits versus contributions. It is
very well to look back and have had a ten or 100 for one return
on your "contributions", but I wonder if you would feel so strongly
if you were at the other end of the deal facing an loss of hundreds
of thousands of retirement dollars that you had rightfully earned,
that were wrongly redistributed to others. How can you not see the
magnitude of the generational inequity? Can you not see the burden
of today's taxes not only relative to those of the past but in terms
of total burden on our incomes. How can you not have some
criticism for the fact that millions of retirees in the
past received benefits that they had not earned (by merit of their
contribution) nor that could have been justified based on a needs basis.
How is such a system  "efficient" in any way? Most retirees are
not nor were the majority ever living in poverty.  They generally
have greater luxury income than younger workers. Our Judeo-Christian
values may inspire us to charity for others in need, and you or I may
feel free to open our check books to that end, but to force
others to do so under penalties of the goverment; to bring an
entire nation into such servitude (and potential financial ruin)
is wrongheaded, unfair, and I believe Unconstitutional. (What do our
shared Judeo-Christian values say about theft?)