Can We Talk Openly About Sunsetting Social Security?
Only a grassroots moral groundswell will rid us of this massive individual rights violating program
This week I’m taking another look at Republicans’ reluctance to champion a long-term plan for sunsetting Social Security and allowing Americans to be fully in control of planning and saving for retirement. Am I too hard on them? Let me know in the comments.
Cheers!
A few weeks ago, I wrote about why Republicans’ allegiance to altruism makes the party a Democrat pawn. As an example I offered the party’s reluctance to come up with a plan to liberate us from the dependency on Social Security and Medicare in old age. Low and behold, last week’s State of The Union gave us a perfect illustration. Here’s the slightly edited one-act tragedy version:
POTUS: “Some Republicans would like to see Social Security and Medicare sunset.”
REPUBLICAN CHORUS: [Booh-ing]
POTUS: “Look folks, the idea is that we're not going to be moved into being threatened to default on the debt if we don't respond. So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare are off the books now, right? All right. We got unanimity.”
REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRAT CHORUS: [Cheering in unison]
You could argue that comedy rather than tragedy would be the better label on this exchange, but it’s definitely tragic for the hundreds of millions of Americans who are trapped like serfs in the current system with nowhere else to go.
Criticism of their meek attempts to address the $40+ trillions (yes, with a “t”) Social Security unfunded liabilities (I’m leaving Medicare for another day) is like Kryptonite for most Republicans. Faced with accusations of pushing Granny off a cliff, they try to outdo one another in ensuring that the program will be protected for the future. It doesn’t seem to matter that the entire system is heading for that cliff edge, taking Granny with it. Case in point, Florida Senator Rick Scott backtracked his previous proposal after the SOTU, launching a watered down “Protect Our Seniors Act” that does nothing to solve the problem.
No doubt most conservatives know that something has to be done. Rick Scott aside, there are efforts outlining solutions to address the looming disaster of Social Security. For example, the American Enterprise Institute under Paul Ryan’s leadership recently released American Renewal: A Conservative Plan to Strengthen The Social Contract and Save The Country’s Finances. And The Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) Blueprint to Save America Fiscal Year 2023 Budget (p. 79) also has a plan to address the solvency of the program. Both contain suggestions to “save” the program such as preserving benefits for current retirees, gradually increasing the retirement age for those who are younger, means-testing social security, and allowing individuals to save more of their income tax-free for retirement.
However, both take Social Security for granted, assuming that government should play a role in saving and planning for retirement. Even the libertarian CATO Handbook for Policy Makers appears to assume a role for government, although it goes the furthest in outlining a path to relative retirement freedom.
Nowhere to my knowledge are conservatives addressing the fundamental immorality of Social Security: that employees and employers are forced to contribute 12.4% of every paycheck, not to be deposited in a designated retirement account, but to pay for Granny’s retirement benefits today. A classic robbing Peter to pay Paul scheme if there ever was one.
Unfortunately, nothing is going to change until the moral groundswell for retirement freedom is set in motion. Washington politicians—Republicans and Democrats—won’t change their moral outlook unless you and I give them the right signals by expressing our moral outrage at the current system. They are primarily concerned with their election/re-election prospects. As sunsetting Social Security does not show up as a priority in voter polls and focus groups, they are not making it one.
(Why am I focusing on Republicans when Democrats are equally to blame? Because Republicans should know better. Democrats are in a way more honest about openly championing their goal of more government intrusion in our lives, while Republicans pay lip-service to individual freedom and responsibility).
No, it’s up to us to force them to move sunsetting Social Security to the top of the list. If you’re in the employee/employer category that pays 12.4% Social Security taxes to finance Granny’s retirement, you have to be vocal about feeling betrayed. You have to speak up for your individual right to plan and save for retirement without government interference.
And if you’re Granny (or Grandpa), you need to tell your elected representatives that it’s morally reprehensible to saddle your children and grandchildren with the cost of your retirement. As I write in Think Right or Wrong, Not Left or Right:
You may depend on the current “pay-as-you-go” system for the rest of your life. But you owe it to yourself to fight for reforming the system to give those coming after you the opportunity to be in control of their own savings in retirement, without being at the mercy of taxpayers and the heavy hand of government.
Admittedly, it’s a tall order, but there is unfortunately no other way out. We can’t sit around and just expect Republicans to grow a spine. Sunsetting Social Security has to start with you and me.
Your key point - that reform must come from a bottom-up, grassroots movement - is worth emphasizing. The "grass-roots principle" applies to most economic challenges today. This quote from Ben Hunt (Epsilon Theorry) says it well (with some reservations about his use of "tribe").
"Like everything else worth saving from this idiotic period in history, the solution will not come from the top down. It will come from the bottom up. Not by trying to convince the tribalists that they’re corrupting or conflating a good thing with their tribal aims, but by forging a new tribe built around the ideas worth saving."
Anders,
You and I know how vitally important it is to get off of Social Security, the sooner the better. Unfortunately, the problem is far more fundamental than just getting off social security, and that makes an intractable problem all the more impossible to solve. The fundamental problem underlying all of our problems, including social security, is an inability by all but a small percentage of people to conceptualize and integrate the facts of the world around them. When even our leaders, the supposedly best and brightest among us, can't understand the train wreck looming in front of us. Or worse, if they do understand it, but are willing to ignore it to win an election that keeps them in power for at most 6 more years, imagine how little the vast majority of the population understands about the problem. You and I again understand that the reason for this inability to think is a government education system that has purposely taught people how not to think for many decades. We have two hopes for averting the coming financial disaster - one if some leader is confident and strong enough to be able to explain the problem and advocate for the proper solution to a population that still must rely on it's conceptual faculty no matter how stunted, or - two, if the education system can be reformed enough to start producing thinking human beings again. You are, admirably, trying to provide the former though without the celebrity or platform to accomplish it. I don't see any such figure on the horizon in the next ten years though we could get lucky. Unfortunately, even though there are many good signs in education right now it would still take at least 20 years before even a dent could be made in the fundamental problem. The only real question right now is how much we can mitigate the coming disaster, and whether it will be bad enough to completely destroy the fabric of American society, which is to say the American experiment in freedom and self-government. The only good news for me is I probably won't live long enough to see it, but if I'm lucky (and we are all lucky) maybe I will be able to see the American renaissance because of people like you.