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,

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