A Green take on the Social Security debate 

A GREEN TAKE ON THE SOCIAL SECURITY DEBATE

[with responses and comparisons]

5/31/05

The idea of Individual Retirement Accounts derives from the Rightist/Libertarian paradigm, which is based on hyper-individualism.

The idea of Social Security derives from the Leftist/Liberal paradigm of reliance upon government programs.

Naturally, we don’t want to see a sudden abandonment of the government programs that millions of people at the moment depend upon for sustenance. And we don’t want to see policy go in the direction of hyper-individualism. In the immediate debate between strengthening Social Security vs. Individual Retirement Accounts we defend the former.

But I don’t think Greens should be taking the same defending posture as Liberals and Social Democrats. Greens can say that Social Security is preferable to Individual Retirement Accounts - and at the same time broach the idea that reliance upon big government programs is long-run problematic and inadvisable.

Here’s a case where neither the Leftist solution nor the Rightist solution is ultimately acceptable.

There is a third alternative. Rather than reliance upon centralized governments/mega-corporations or atomized individualist “self-reliance,” Greens can talk about communitarian self-reliance.

Personally I hate sending my money to the centralized federal government via income taxes, Social Security taxes, etc. The enormous sums of money funneled to Washington slosh around in huge vats somewhere under the Capitol building and get siphoned off into god-knows-what-kind of pork and waste. I don’t trust that remote, opaque entity called the U.S. government for a second to, in general, do the right thing with my money. The legislators love armaments and roadbuilding. I dislike both. I think we lose a lot more to waste than we gain in economies of scale. The scale of the federal government is too large by several orders of magnitude.

Liberalism has become a bad word by becoming identified with Big Government solutions to problems. Green politics should avoid that mistake.

So when we say that Social Security (and single payer health care) are the better among the currently on-the-table options, we also should distinguish ourselves by indicating that they are not ultimate long-run ideals - because of the fact that they foster reliance upon the federal government.

Our motto should be: Neither Big Business nor Big Government. Corporations are unaccountable, irresponsible power centers. To only a slightly lesser extent centralized governments are also unaccountable, irresponsible power centers.

Greens should be advocating that power devolve back to more-local entities. This is what some of us mean when we say that Green solutions to problems are “neither Left nor Right.”

Steve Welzer

------------------------------------------

MARK DUNLEA RESPONDS

6/1/05

Steve Welzer wrote:

> Personally I hate sending my money to the
> centralized federal government via income taxes,
> Social Security taxes, etc. The enormous sums of
> money funneled to Washington slosh around in huge
> vats somewhere under the capitol building and get
> siphoned off into god-knows-what-kind of pork and
> waste. I don’t trust that remote, opaque entity
> called the U.S. government for a second to, in
> general, do the right thing with my money. The
> legislators love armaments and roadbuilding. I hate
> both. I think we lose a lot more to waste than we
> gain in economies of scale. The scale of the
> Federal government is too large by several orders
> of magnitude.

Just for the record, I have many concerns with this email as it relates to Social Security.

There are many merits to decentralized control of government.

Social Security however is a tax that is imposed to provide welfare to seniors, the disabled, and certain children. It has been remarkably effective in reducing poverty among seniors. Its effectiveness is the reason that the Bush administration is going after it. They want to reinforce the notion that “government” is bad - that society works best when the rich and corporations are able to do what they want. Social security undercuts that notion. In addition, government service programs are bad because they promote dependency upon the masses,

I think the greens also have to very careful to distinguish between attacks on “government” vs. “big, undemocratic government.” We should argue about how government needs to be more democratic and more subject to local control, but that government is better than corporate control. We are not libertarians. And we should speak clearly to what our vision in, what we want, rather than being caught in the trap of allowing the right to frame the debate - the trap that the democrats always fall into.

Greenly, Mark Dunlea

------------------------------------------

STEVE WELZER REPLIES:

6/3/05

Mark Dunlea wrote:

> I think the greens have to be very careful
> to distinguish between attacks on “government”
> vs. “big, undemocratic government”

Yes, I agree. The Libertarians are wrong to take a blanket “anti-government” position. Greens should not. On the other hand, Liberals are wrong to put too much faith in centralized government programs.

One thing that distinguishes Greens is our understanding of the need to devolve power - from the governments that are too remote to be accountable back to a level where a deeper form of democracy, a participatory democracy, is possible.

There are some good federal programs. Social Security is among them. Yet we see that Social Security taxes, like just about all federal taxes, are problematic to the extent that they are regressive in nature.

You can be sure that, no matter how enlightened the original impulse, the majority of federal government programs will wind up benefiting the power elites more than the people. If we understand that the federal government is ultimately an INSTRUMENT of those elites, then we can predict that in the long run they will find a way to corrupt or decimate whichever programs DON’T primarily benefit them.

There is a division among the elites which corresponds roughly to the Republican vs. Democrat (and Conservative vs. Liberal) division. The Democrats/Liberals have, over the decades, tended to be the more enlightened wing, in the sense that they understand the net benefit of legislating accommodations for the masses - in order to foster consent and systemic stability. Republicans/Conservatives tend to rail against such accommodations as “distortions of the free market.”

It’s fairly well recognized among Greens that the Franklin Roosevelt administration was a great savior of the American capitalist system, which was in crisis and under attack during the early 1930s. Social Security was a reform that helped to deflect those attacks. If there had been a Green Party at the time it would have been correct for us to support that reform - as we should support every reform that enhances the quality of life for common people - regardless of the underlying motivation of the establishment representatives who pushed for the legislation.

We can support an immediate reform while at the same time critiquing the paradigm it exemplifies. My article said that we should currently be defending Social Security in the immediate situation where the unenlightened wing of the power elites is trying to decimate the program. At the same time, at a more macro level and as a general theme, we can point out the undesirability of fostering dependency upon the mass-collective-state (which tends to be long-run irresponsible and unsustainable in its practices).

The vast majority of federal government programs that start out benefiting the masses will either be modified over time to benefit the elites or be gradually drained of funding. The money sent to Washington is, in general, not spent wisely or humanistically. The Green Party would be wrong to foster illusions about or encourage too much faith in centralized government programs and remedies.

Whereas Conservatives advocate constrained government, Liberals advocate expansive government, and Libertarians advocate minimalist government, Greens should insist upon government of, by, and for the people - which can only be realized when government is CLOSE ENOUGH TO the people, such that the people can truly own and control it.

Steve Welzer

------------------------------------------

FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY WEB SITE

Eliminate - don’t privatize - the plundering

by Anthony Gregory

George W. Bush wants to “reform” and “fix” Social Security, and “privatize” aspects of it. Certain “free market” groups seem to like this idea, though they admit that such reform will be costly, entailing transition costs estimated at between $7 trillion and $8 trillion total before the transition is completed in mid-century.

How benevolent of the president to begin reforms that will only take 50 more years to complete! If something goes wrong by the time I retire, I wonder how many of today’s Republican lawmakers will still be around to hold accountable.

Social Security is among the most tyrannical government programs under which the average wage earner must suffer. And I don’t know who is more pitiable, the average employee who pays about 14 percent - half of which is hidden because his employer must fork it over, and therefore deduct it from what the employee could otherwise earn - or the self-employed worker, who has to cut the check for that much himself. 14 percent. And we all know it won’t be there upon retirement, maybe not even for my parents’ generation, and almost certainly not for mine. 14 percent. That’s three-fourths of every typical worker’s Monday, spent working for a fraudulent system. This is time that parents could spend with their children, teaching them good values and academics or playing ball with them, or time that could be spent working to build up wealth to save or invest in a way that actually produces good for the economy, rather than be thrown down the drain of the largest government agency in the world.

For the American struggling just to make ends meet, who buys groceries only when they are on sale and goes to Wal-Mart for its heroically inexpensive quality goods, it is maddening to have to surrender 14 percent of every dollar earned, just to prop up one of FDR’s many enduring legacies.

Social Security is “regressive,” in that the poor pay proportionately more, or, at least, more than the super rich, whose payroll taxes are capped at a certain amount. I don’t like “progressive” taxes, but I might even hate “regressive” ones more. Maybe I’m a bleeding-heart libertarian?

Why is Social Security in such dire straits?

Fifty years ago, the ratio of workers to retirees (those drawing Social Security) was 16 to 1, a ratio that has dropped steadily over the years. Today, only 3.3 workers pay into the system for every person drawing benefits. By the time today’s new workers are ready to retire, the ratio will have shrunk even further, to about 2 to 1.

For all the talk about how my generation [those under 30]is uncouth, impatient and unappreciative, it’s the older generations that must answer for allowing this harrowing institution - one of the most immoral in America - to continue and grow. My generation didn’t condemn millions to involuntary servitude in this fashion! I apologize if my fellow young Americans are rude at times (or if I am), but it’s quite stressful having 14 percent of our money stolen just so the government can maintain this corrupt program of intergenerational plunder. Do I blame my elders? No. Do I wish them ill and suffering? Of course not. I am not a sadist. They, too, would be better off without the socialist retirement system.

But they’re the ones lobbying to keep it afloat! If economic collapse comes, we all must face the reality that Social Security might fall with it. And good riddance. The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned. The vital flaws in Social Security could be a great issue for libertarians to focus on; nothing better demonstrates the pure evil of the welfare state, as it attacks the poorest and youngest Americans and distributes money to the wealthiest demographic in the country. Instead of pointing this out, too many “free market” thinkers devise ways to keep the system afloat.

Ask many people my age and they’ll tell you they understand the system stinks. Bring it up to older generations, and they seem to want to keep the rotten racket going, at least until they’re done “benefiting” from it. When I talk to my elders about politics, my stand on Social Security often upsets them more than anything else I have to say. What’s the solution? Scrap the whole system! Let’s not “privatize” plunder, the way so many free market socialists want to. I don’t want an opportunity to give 14 percent, or some fraction of it, to whatever corporations the Bush administration thinks can be trusted with my money better than the government can.

Instead of the privatization schemes we usually hear about, I think the best “gradualist” reform would be to reduce the payroll taxes, by whatever amount we can. Just cut them down, and keep cutting until there’s nothing left to cut.

The older people perhaps deserve something for all they’ve put into the system, and may indeed have a claim on government assets. The only trouble with this is that if you took all the victims of the U.S. government - people unjustly imprisoned, people who have had their homes and businesses confiscated through the totalitarian asset forfeiture laws, people who have been regulated into poverty, people killed accidentally by federal cops, not to mention those who have lost property and loved ones to U.S.- led wars of aggression - I would expect the liabilities would far exceed the assets.

Even counting only those Americans who have had to pay taxes all their lives, the government couldn’t currently repay them all that has been stolen. The entire U.S. economy couldn’t handle it. Maybe Americans who have paid all their lives into the corrupt Social Security system should get close to first dibs on government property to be liquidated, but there’s a long line of victims of the U.S. government, and there’s no totally fair way to compensate them for even a fraction of what they deserve.

What’s most important is to stop the stealing. Isn’t it? Can any champion of liberty or free markets really justify continuing this mass theft of working people’s meager wealth?

The first Social Security victims didn’t even have to pay 14 percent, and if the miserable pyramid scam continues my generation will be paying 20 or 30 percent before we know it.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh one day when Bush’s tax cut was in the news. I always find it quite annoying when liberals whine about the “top 1 percent” of all Americans getting the biggest income tax cuts. Why shouldn’t they, when they pay the most in income taxes? This time, the caller actually had a good question, one worth serious consideration. He asked why the administration cut income taxes instead of payroll taxes. He wasn’t complaining about the rich getting tax cuts, as much as he was arguing that the poor should get tax cuts. This is a reasonable matter to discuss, isn’t it? Libertarians and fiscal conservatives should give it serious thought, shouldn’t they? Limbaugh mumbled something about why payroll taxes couldn’t be reasonably cut and how people shouldn’t demonize the rich, blah, blah, blah.

I’m starting to see why some people think Republicans care more about cutting taxes for the rich than for the rest of us. Maybe they do. Some Republicans even think the poor are “under-taxed.” Maybe these are the same folks who think that Iraq has been under-bombed. How could anyone be under-taxed? If they are under- taxed, let us not blame the great individualist Ronald Reagan, who raised the payroll tax. Without him, the poor would be extremely under-taxed.

Social Security has to go, and soon. If I could push that magical button that Murray Rothbard used to talk about, and get rid of the system immediately, you couldn’t keep my finger from it without a fight. Do you think the Republicans would push that button? Would the “free-market” conservative organizations? Would even most Libertarians do it?

I say the Ponzi scheme should go, as soon as possible. It’s racked up enough unfunded liabilities for 100 governments, and it’s at the top of the list of America’s worst welfare state programs. End Socialist Security!

Am I selfish? Perhaps. But only because I think we should cut taxes for the rich and for everybody else, maybe even starting with the tax that attacks the wage earner who has to work almost all of Monday just so FDR’s vile progeny can feel like they’re being compassionate.

Anthony Gregory is a writer and musician living in Berkeley, Calif. He was president of the Cal Libertarians at UC Berkeley, where he earned his bachelors degree in US history. He is an intern at The Independent Institute, a policy advisor for the Future of Freedom Foundation, and a contributor to Strike the Root, LewRockwell.com and other publications. See his Web site: http://www.anthonygregory.com. This column first appeared on LewRockwell.com.

Comments