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by Hugh Mann

Created on: July 10, 2008   Last Updated: September 26, 2010

Social Security: A Full Disclosure


This question postures as invitation to an open, democratic forum of thought and debate concerning the revision of Social Security.  Yet, despite appearing as impartial as a judge, quite the opposite is true, for it is toxic.  Its court is tainted because, paradoxically, any answer regarding how Social Security should be reformed will satisfy the question's true, veiled agenda.  As posed, the question cleverly confines our attention to responding to "how" Social Security should exist, thus effectively evading the question "why" Social Security should exist.  It insinuates, "You are free and capable amongst yourselves to debate and alter the inscrutably convoluted, economically, socially, and politically intertwined institution that is Social Security, but not in such a manner as to actually eliminate it".   By analogy, it implies that we have the qualifications to understand and modify how a bomb works, but no right to dismantle it.  Make the bomb bigger, make the bomb safer, change its detonator, or give it a new name, but under no circumstances is anyone permitted to diffuse and disassemble it.


This question is a subversive instrument of statist socialism.  Therefore, rather than protracting its debate over what is metaphorically the "re-arrangement of chairs on the deck of the Titanic", we must turn its rostrum squarely into the face of this apocryphal, imploding $800 billion institution and answer the fundamental, unasked question: should social security exist at all?


When FDR signed The Social Security Act on August 14, 1935, he further tilted America down the slippery slope of taxation and deficit financed social and other programs.  In 1940, benefits paid totaled $35 million, rising to $32 billion by 1970, to $650 billion in 2008, and $800 billion in 2010.  The system is now literally stalling, starved for cash flow as the accelerating rate of retirees overwhelms the tax base provided by a shrinking number of earners as unemployment climbs to 10%, an optimistic figure, considering it doesn't include the millions who have given up looking for work, and the millions more who are living on food stamps.  Social Security is now as financially bankrupt as the socialist Ponzi principles upon which it is founded.


What happened to America?  Is this not the same nation that once was the most ardent opponent of the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cuba due to the financial, intellectual, and moral bankruptcy that their inhumane socialist systems ravaged upon them?  Is this not the same America to which the beleaguered and oppressed around the world have turned for generations as the arbiter of individual liberty, self-responsibility, and capitalism?  Why did intellectual luminaries like Albert Einstein, Ludwig von Mises, and Ayn Rand flee to no other country in the world, but the one before FDR's Social Security, an America without social guarantees?


Despite an abundance of the aforementioned nations’ tragic history lessons, unfortunately experience really appears to be the only teacher.  The question then is, to what abject depths of depravity must America itself descend before it calls the bluff on its own socialism?


In order to avoid fully collapsing under socialist policies America must address the question of how it will dismantle social security before it's too late.  Of course, after three generations since its inception, most people are conditioned to summarily dismiss any such notion as preposterous because it would presumably not only be impossible, but "unfair", especially to those who had already contributed to it all of their lives.


So, how exactly would America undertake the seemingly insurmountable task of ending social security?  By weaning.  First, to equitably compensate them, all contributors heretofore would be refunded their contributions first, and this can be readily accomplished across two to three administrations if Washington terminates its bellicose foreign policy today.  The multi-trillion dollar cost savings that recalling most of its forces from the 130 nations America occupies today would not only support the weaning of terminated Social Security, it would also support the weaning off from the termination of over half of all government programs.  Moreover, it would also extinguish the need for either personal or corporate federal taxes and still leave a surplus with which to pay down the deficit.  Isn't it about time to repeal the "temporary" imposition of levies and taxes to support first the Civil war in 1862, and then the Spanish American war in 1898?  Isn’t it time to relegate taxes, socialism, and slavery to the Museum of Prehistoric Inhumanity?


But what if such a proposition were completely wrong?  Well, if nothing else, it would eliminate the impetus for potential retaliatory military responses from 130 nations.  Now, that's what I call homeland security.  Can we seriously expect 130 nations to continue tolerating U.S. military occupation, generation after generation, in perpetuity?  Eventually, some government in one of them will ascend to power and amass enough nuclear grade weaponry to issue a reply in the language we have been communicating with them all along: military.


Imagine a hypothetical, alternate line of history that finds a nuclear mighty Iraq occupying America militarily for 50 years, and then America secretly acquires nuclear weapons.  Do you think America, or some rogue faction within her, might be tempted to make a statement with them?


Back in the reality facing us, let's take a cue from none less than the federal government itself.  By its own tacit admission, by way of the 2008 Economic Stimulus package, apparently the economy stands to be stimulated when some portion of the taxes collected is returned to the taxpayers' pockets.  So, to extrapolate their epiphany, if restoring some money to its rightful owner is deemed good for the economy, would not restoring all of it be the best?


With all of our money back in its rightful possession there would be no need for parasitic government agencies to oversee wealth redistribution through specious, obsolete, socialist programs like social security.  As was the case with the former USSR, with socialism it is an all or nothing proposition.  There is no such thing a small, tolerable amount of socialism in human society, just like there no such thing as small, tolerable amount of cancer in the human body, because it is almost impossible to stop the growth of either until the host is dead.  Nobody mourns the death of parasitic cancer cells and nobody should mourn the death of parasitic socialists.


Until eradicated, I predict extreme social insecurity and a near death experience for America as she combats her socialist cancers.


References:

1. http://www.mises.org
2. The Revolution: A Manifesto, by Ron Paul
3. John Adams: A Life, by John Ferling
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Act#Creation:_The_Social_Security_Act

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