RE: Social Security is Anti-Family & Anti-Parenting

[James <jamesk_51@hotmail.com>]

From: Walter Hart

>>>>Neither the single (childless) person's payment of Social Security taxes nor a parent's payment of Social Security taxes does anything to "create a wage earner," the human capital necessary to pay Social Security. A wage earner is a child nurtured by parents who invest their love, time and money in that child.

And who funds public schools?  Why everybody including those who are childless.  And who helps subsidize public universities.  The childless.  And who has money to invest (i.e. add capital to the market) to create new jobs for future generations.  The childless. Indeed, the childless bear a greater burden of the tax bills in relation to their 'consumption' of government services.

>>>>The single (childless) person pays no more and no less in Social Security taxes than the parent, but the parent bears the expense in time and money of creating the productive asset - a child - who will grow up to be the wage earner who pays Social Security benefits. 

I don't know of one parent who views it as 'bear[ing] the expense in time and money of creating the productive asset'.  But any who think that's what it is were free to choose not to do so.  And, indeed, most singles or childless couples I know would love to opt out of SS.  Don't think they would feel that way if they were truly being subsidized.  Indeed, read the comments of the single Gen-Xer.

>>>>Social Security gives an economic advantage to those who chose not to rear children by paying benefits to those who did not create the human capital necessary to pay those benefits. In doing so, Social Security favors a single person's choice of childlessness over the choice to form a family and rear children.

Not anymore so than any other economic activity.  Indeed, less than most.  Singles pay less than families for HMO membership.  But who is 'raising the future doctors'?  The 'family' eating at McDonalds 'favors a single person's choice of childlessness over the choice to form a family and rear children' (i.e. the cost for the family with children is much higher).  That is the nature of life in our current society.  SS is one of the few programs that actually FAVORS families!

>>>>In short, the childless person's payment of payroll taxes is not the source of that single person's Social Security check in retirement; the source is a parent's investment in a child.

But the childless person's payment of payroll taxes benefits others to a much greater extent than he will benefit himself.  That is an unavoidable fact!  He is not in any sense being subsidized!  He has not forced anybody else to have children for his benefit.

>>>>And so you support my position that the parents' investment in rearing children should not be used to subsidize wealthier persons who chose not to rear children?

Not at all.  My point was that people don't necessarily decide not to have children merely because they do not have some arbitrary amount of prosperity, that would be corrected by the removal of the payroll tax. Indeed, the statistics point the other way.  

The whole notion that people with children somehow subsidize others in this manner sounds very dangerous in terms of gov't policy. Do we deny health care to the childless elderly because they didn't 'invest' in raising a new generation of medical workers?  Do we want the gov't deciding the 'correct' lifestyle, or how many children we each need to 'invest' in?  That sounds like Big Brother to me.  I pity the children raised in an environment like that.

James