You’ve no doubt seen the headlines about President Bush’s efforts to make private investment accounts a part of the Social Security System. It’s “faltering,” said one. Pollsters “find little support in focus groups” for reform.
Then, of course, there are the “reasonable” criticisms: It’ll cost too much. The risk is too great. The Social Security system really doesn’t have any major funding problems.
All of these arguments—as debatable as they are—have an underlying premise. The premise is one that those who make the arguments don’t want to talk about. If individuals are given more control over their finances and therefore their lives, they would look less to government for assistance. And that scares the hair off the inside-the-Beltway crowd, whose livelihoods have been made on building that government dependence.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, he set in motion a culture of dependence that has only grown stronger over the decades. Consider that the original tax rate workers and employers had to pay was a combined 6 percent. Now, it’s 12.4 percent. Originally portrayed as a supplement to an individual’s own retirement savings, Social Security is now the only retirement income for some 7 million senior citizens. And with an average yearly “benefit” of about $17,000 for a married couple, less for widows and widowers, this is little more than indentured servitude.
By defending and promoting the culture of dependence, organizations like the AARP have turned the country’s seniors into a group afraid that President Bush and Congress will rob them of their benefits—even though everyone involved in the process knows that neither seniors nor those near retirement would be affected by any Social Security reform plan being seriously considered.
So as all the naysayers and their shills in the press pick at President Bush’s Social Security plan, keep in mind that if a plan with large personal retirement accounts passes, financial freedom and personal responsibility would explode, undermining the culture of dependence the critics have worked so hard to create.