RE: Don't Blow Away Social Security

[Dan Matheson <dmatheson@clevegrowth.com>]

After posing three questions (What's Wrong with Privatizing Social
Security?, What's Wrong with Investing the Social Security Fund in
Stocks?, and  What's Wrong with Raising the Retirement Age & Other
"Popular Ideas"?) and then providing valid responses, I assumed
that Mr. Hoyt would provide a response to one more question:  What
is wrong with phasing the program out entirely? Mr Hoyt would
reassure us that the program is actually doing fine, that nothing
need to be done about it, and that our government is perfectly
justified in continuing to rob from the working poor to give to
the retired rich.  I am 21.  The fact that some people (who I do
not believe) claim that the current system can survive for 34 years
is oh so comforting.  Great.  I'll be 55 when the system folds,
not 40 like I thought.

If people are truly indigent or disabled, I have no problem paying
a percent of my income to help them.  If we do that, though, let's
stop pretending it is some sort of "entitlement", and just call it
charity.

What bothers me is that I'm paying the majority of my tax burden
for large numbers of people to live in their houses, travel, and
drive their Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles, while I live in a crummy
apartment and can't afford to take a vacation.  I honestly cannot
comprehend why I am forced to pay for someone to live in a nice
little house, when they could sell the house, put the money in the
bank, and move into my cruddy apartment.  If I wasn't being forced
to cough up exhorbitant amounts of my income in payroll taxes,
maybe I could afford to move into their nice little house.  Most
retirees are not indigent.  If anybody has paid off a mortgage on
a house worth $100,000, how am I supposed to feel sorry for them?
As far as I'm concerned, they can sell that house to me, and live
off the combination of the interest and the lump sum payment.

And why am I compelled to pay these people my hard-earned money,
when I never agreed to participate in this absurd program and don't
expect to get a nickel out of it?  Because they have managed to
survive to the age of retirement.  Not because they have done
anything special, not because they have paid in anything close to
what I'm paying, just because they survived.  The Social Security
system is the most unjust, poorly thought out, and pernicious
program ever enacted by the United States (and that includes the
Viet Nam War).  It is dooming the economic future of our country,
as the old bury the young in a mountain of debt and unfunded
liabilities.  It is also generating real tension between generations.

I don't think most old people realize how much many young people
really despise retirees as a group.  Retirees may think that the
young are violent, amoral, lazy, and stupid, but many young people
think the old are selfish, shortsighted, hypocritical, and worst
of all...rich.  I personally think the AARP is a lot like the Mafia.
Both groups extract money with threats of violence (the AARP might
not break your legs, but they'll sure destroy a politician's career
at the first hint that he or she might have enough spine and
intelligence to try to solve the greatest crisis that has faced
our nation since the Civil War).  If the government allows the AARP
a position of respect and a voice in the Social Security debate,
why not invite the Corleone family and the Medellin drug cartels
in next? The AARP may be a little less violent, but they are a lot
more dangerous and equally detrimental to society.

I believe that the only answer is an immediate and sharp cut in
benefits paid to those who do not need them.  Continue payments to
those without enough to support themselves (and all wealth, whether
in the form of a house, the family china, or a mututal fund should
be counted).  Cut off the rest.

Means test Social Security based on total lifetime income.  If you
made a good living for 40 years and were too stupid to save for
your own retirement, my heart goes out to you, but don't come around
asking me to help with the rent.

Dan Matheson