Re: Question on Charity

["Al Abbott" <al_abbott@csi.com>]

Bob,

1) I am for 100% privatization of retirement funding. There is no moral
justification for coerced income redistribution. A plan that requires the
imposition of government force is not, for the participants, a moral act.
When human choice is not required or is prevented, there is no possibility
of an ethical choice. That actually removes morality as an issue. That said,
should we as individuals offer assistance to the unfortunate? Sure.
Voluntarily. There are many private possibilities for assisting the elderly
who need the help. Also, the increased savings rate will benefit the capital
markets and will help finance many of the productivity advances of the
coming decades. In this sense, the American poor today are
wealth-equivalent to the American middle-class of a few decades ago.

2) Those choices afflict us all today. We all have limited resources that
are exceeded by our desires. A privatized retirement system that will offer
2 or 3 times the current benefits (or even more) on average will make it
easier to handle those choices. Tax financed plans are continually rationing
the benefits. But, the market is incredibly better and fairer at rationing.
The entire Medicare program needs privatization for the same reasons as
social security.

3) Government programs are structurally incapable of charity. They eliminate
individual choice, they demean the recipients, they are arbitrary, and they
discourage private initiative. Only a government plan, for instance, would
penalize a retiree for working when the additional work may be needed to
supplement the retirement benefit. Means testing requires the recipients to
become abject victims and forces continual victimhood as a requirement to
receive benefits. Many people supporting government involvement in these
issues have good intentions, but the fact is, government does these things
in a way that actually causes more harm than good or costs an inordinate
amount for the bit of good they might do.

Our first priority should be to encourage every citizen to be
self-sufficient, to be productive, to manage their own lives. Fully
privatized personal retirement accounts, private catastrophic disability
insurance, privatized medical savings accounts, and such are ways to give
each individual control over their lives and the ability to help themselves
and others.

Al Abbott