Subject: Re: Reply to Ken Diamond re: SS and Parents
Ken Diamond wrote:
"This argument of children as productive, capital assets belonging either to the family or society is interesting yet not really a view that I'm that comfortable with. While family is important, we are also part of a larger society. . It's not as if there aren't provisions that help families financially in their child rearing task. Perhaps that larger society isn't giving adequate support to families raising children given the realities of the world. I much rather look at that directly rather than to try and fit the question in with the SS program.
I do wonder what would happen if there was some way to link how productive children became to society with the financial well-being of their parents. It certainly would link the incentive of parent with that of the larger society."
My reply:
Actually, the idea of children being "productive assets" did not arise with me, and the language pertaining to them as such is something that evolved in the course of an online debate with another poster, Martin Brock, at the NPR Your Turn forum discussion on Social Security Reform.
Mr. Brock found some historical support for the idea that Social Security was intended to be a replacement or substitute for the natural order whereby children support their parents in old age. Mr. Brock's argument was essentially that parents "invest" in children, whereas childless persons invest in stocks and bonds. Mr. Brock pointed out that the "return" on the parent's "investment" is shared with the childless person (i.e., in the form of SS benefits funded solely with payroll taxes on the child's wages alone), whereas the childless' person's return on his investments were not taxed to fund Social Security benefits. Mr. Brock wanted to establish a system, less social in nature and more true to the natural order, whereby a parent's Social Security benefit was tied to the payroll taxes of his or her own children.
I differed from Mr. Brock in that I did not favor either the current system or a system that required a child to support his parent regardless of the parent's need or the child's ability to pay. Rather, I favor a system that allows the child to keep the "return," i.e., the child's payroll taxes, himself or herself. Whatever a child gives to a parent - beyond keeping a parent out of poverty - should not be a matter of legislative concern.
It is the current Social Security system that treats children as productive assets. I much prefer the bonds of child and parent to be governed by love and mutual respect rather than by legal and economic characterizations.
