Honesty About Social Security

If I were talking about this in a speech as a candidate for office, I suppose it would help guarantee my loss.  Because apparently in modern America, telling the truth about Social Security just isn't done.  Remember when George W Bush first took office and proposed a modest change that would allow folks to elect to control the investment of their own Social Security contributions?  Democrats screamed bloody murder, and the proposal faded away.

Let's start with what Social Security actually is, and always has been.  A welfare program for seniors.  It was sold in an outrageously fraudulent way.  My own parents and grandparents believed the lie, and any attempt to inform them that they're not receiving their own money back in retirement that they paid in during their working lives, but simply getting the money our generation is paying in taxes.

For the most part, my parents and grandparents were proud people.  If they actually understood that their monthly Social Security checks were in truth a simple welfare scheme, I believe some of them might have sent their checks back.

Just think about it for a minute (please!).  Look at your lifetime earnings, and calculate what you've paid into Social Security over the course of your working life.  Compound that over 35 to 40 years at a modest annual percentage rate of return at 5 percent, and find out how much money you would have had at retirement if only the government wasn't squandering it.

Most of us who work for a living will have plenty of money for a comfortable retirement after we turn 65, and would never need anything from the government.  Those folks who didn't work for a living won't have anything to use in retirement.  But seriously, isn't that a different problem?

Let's consider Democrat arguments against privatizing retirement accounts.

Greedy bankers will take advantage of Americans to make obscene profits on our retirement accounts.  Well, no doubt some will try.  But if their fees get too high, won't they be guilty of fraud?  Aren't there already protections for consumers against predatory banking practices?

Too many irresponsible people will choose bad investments or blow all their retirement money in their first year.  So?  Once again, if a retiree becomes destitute due to their own bad decisions, isn't that a different problem?  I struggle to understand why that justifies the government confiscation and waste of 15 percent of the earnings of every single citizen.

What about additional benefits like Disability and Minor Dependents benefits received upon the death of the family's wage earner?  Indeed.  Don't you think bankers and insurance agents will design products for people's retirement investment money that could provide exactly those protections?

I do wish I'd saved 15 percent of my earnings every year since 1980.  My retirement accounts would be much healthier today had I done so.  In fact, I probably would have enough in those accounts that I could realistically retire early.  Unfortunately the government confiscated and wasted all that money and there's nothing to show for any of it today.

Privatization will never happen, not because it's a great idea.  But because Democrats will successfully instill so much fear in most Americans that they will oppose it without really understanding what they're opposing.