28 March 2010 By
Jacob G. Hornberger Yesterday, the New York Times
published an article detailing another statist crisis
involving the U.S. welfare state. This time the crisis
involves the crown jewel of America’s socialist
programs, Social Security According to the Times, “This
year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it
receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it
was not expected to cross until at least 2016,
according to the Congressional Budget Office.”
But what difference does that make?
Isn’t there a Social Security fund, one in which
people deposit their money, which then earns interest,
and which they can later withdraw when they reach old
age, like a private savings or retirement account?
Isn’t that what so many Americans convince themselves?
“I put it in and I have a right to get it back!” they
exclaim. Historically it’s been primarily the
libertarians who have had the courage to pierce
through the lies, deceptions, and delusions of this
socialist program and confront directly the ugly
reality of this anti-family socialist program.
The truth is that Social Security is
just like food stamps and every other welfare-state
transfer program. With food stamps, people are taxed
and the money is given to poor people. There is no
food stamp trust fund. It’s no different with Social
Security. There never has been a Social Security fund
any more than there has been a food-stamp fund. And
nobody has “put in” to Social Security. Instead,
they’ve simply been taxed over the work lives, with
the money put into the overall general fund that pays
for food stamps, Social Security, the drug war,
foreign wars of aggression, and other socialist and
imperialist programs. What was astonishing about the
New York Times piece was that it actually
acknowledged reality: “Although Social Security is
often said to have a ‘trust fund,’ the term really
serves as an accounting device, to track the
pay-as-you-go program’s revenue and outlays over time.
Its so-called balance is, in fact, a history of its
vast cash flows: the sum of all of its revenue in the
past, minus all of its outlays.” When young people lament that Social
Security might not be available for them when they get
old, what they’re really expressing is a concern that
officials won’t be able to collect sufficient taxes to
fund their retirement. But why not? Couldn’t U.S.
officials simply continue to increase taxes — say, to
90 percent of people’s income — to continue this Ponzi
scheme indefinitely? Well, possibly. But young people
might start wondering how valuable life is if 90
percent of their work life is enslaved to government.
Moreover, at some point the entire debt and tax burden
of the welfare state can get so heavy that it caves in
on itself, as it has now done in Greece. By the way, since Greece’s welfare
recipients are refusing to let go of their largess,
Greek officials have been looking to Germany to bail
them out. However, hard-pressed German taxpayers are
saying, “No way!” So, Greece is now considering asking
the IMF for a bailout and, coincidentally, President
Obama has just asked Congress to approve an emergency
$108 billion credit line to the IMF. How compassionate! One welfare-state
deadbeat helping another. Jacob Hornberger is founder and
president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Comments 💬 التعليقات |