September 3, 2004
REACTIONARY RIGHT WRONG:
The Ownership Society (Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., September 3, 2004, Mises.org)
Are you already fed up with hearing about the "Ownership Society" that Mr. Bush wants to create? [...][T]he Ownership Society is a massive effort at question begging. It says nothing about the main debate over private property. It does not limit the government's control over what you own, or even suggest there ought to be limits.
Nor does it establish a principle concerning the justice of ownership, as is
clear from the first application cited by Bush administration spokesmen:
housing. The idea is that everyone should own a home. And if a person can't
buy it? The government will take money from others and give it to him. Thus
is one person's ownership secured only by robbing other people.Consider the words from a White House Fact Sheet on the topic from June 17,
2002, as discovered by James Bovard. "The single biggest barrier to
homeownership," it reads, "is accumulating funds for a down payment."And thus does the Bush administration support every manner of housing
subsidy and free-credit scheme to guarantee that all people can own right
now the most expensive good that they will ever purchase. Might this be one
reason we face a mortgage bubble, rampant delinquencies, and a housing
financial crisis?Or consider another Bush-promoted piece of "ownership": your retirement
funds. No, he is not planning to give you back the money the government has
already taken, except through a continuing promise to put you on the dole at
the age of 65. Instead, he wants to give you "ownership" over non-existent
funds by permitting the government to channel Social Security money into
stocks (while incurring trillions in new debt). It's a financially unviable
scheme to avoid the only real solution to the Social Security crisis: cut
the liabilities and end the program.
Real conservatives should shudder at privatizing social security (Froma Harrop, 9/03/04, Jewish World Review)
The "ownership society" is the new domestic message at the Republican National Convention. It includes a proposal to let workers put some of their Social Security taxes into personal stock accounts. According to theory, these investments would grow handsomely over the years. Workers could then retire with more money than that boring old Social Security program would have paid out.Liberals squawk loudest at any plan to privatize Social Security, but conservatives are the ones who should be screaming their heads off. Do conservatives really want the federal government getting involved in the investment decisions of American workers?
No, they want to keep the current system where the Feds take your money and sit on it. That's the reality because Mr. Rockwell's desire to end the system entirely is a non-starter.
The Old Right fought the good fight when it opposed Social Security and the New Deal in the first place, but their borderline psychotic belief that they can still get rid of the massively popular social safety net makes them risible.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 3, 2004 9:06 AMI am personally unsure about new government
programs to create an "Ownership Society."
However the fact that libertarians can't recognize
the significance of govt. force in acquiring and securing property over the centuries shows what
a "cloud-cuckoo" land they inhabit.
I don't fool myself that I am not living on top
of someone else's homeland and I sleep better
at night for it.
Oj-
The system either reforms peaceably or we reach the point of crisis where the solutions are limited and unpleasant. Democrats, presumably, would be more than happy to tax payrolls in the range of 40-50% in order to maintain the social "insurance' system as the vote buying machine it has become. The problem is the perversion of liberty into the sense of entitlement. Either the values of ordered liberty and personal responsibilty are worth preserving or they are not. Maintaining the fraud of social security so as not to upset the status quo is a bad strategy and a longer term disaster. The system can be reformed only when its contradictions are squrely faced. The tax,tax, spend,spend,elect,elect days of FDR and his brain trust will come to an end or the rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness will share the same fate as the right to life: as absolutely subserviant to the rights of a poorly led, miseducated and venal majority. Hayek's phrase, "The road to serfdom", sounds melodramatic, I suppose, but to the majority of Americans it has also become meaningless. If we wish to be at the mercy of the state as the embodiment of the general will than so be it, but it is serfdom for all but for those with great wealth and it would be nice to see the American people acknowledge what they are getting themselves into and are doing it freely and willingly. The procedures for amending the constitution would be a good place to start.
Trying to end the discussion by categorizing the cautious as psychotic accomplishes nothing. The "Old Right", as you put, was correct then and may just be correct now.
If I recall my history correctly, many in the Roosevelt administration favored making Social Security an entitlement, and funding it from general tax revenues. Roosevelt refused. He wanted each worker to have a stake in the program. The implementation of the program (the illusory trust 'fund') was destined to conflict with the founding psychology. Bush is simply returning to that principle in a much more concrete way: workers will have an individual stake because each will have an individual account.
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at September 3, 2004 12:25 PMSocial security is not all that difficult to reform. It is a mathematical problem. In 1938, there were 16 people paying for every recipient. Today it is about 3.
Let me give you Dr. Bart's quick cure for the Social Security mess.
1. Move the retirement age to one which more accurately reflects the society, say 70.
2. Eliminate the entire tax structure and replace it with a National Sales Tax.
3. Give everyone the same amount at retirement age, except for a compensating amount for people who have already paid more than minimum into the system. Again a simple mathematical formula.
Posted by: Bart at September 3, 2004 12:56 PMBorderline psychotic? We Libertarians pride ourselves on that.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at September 3, 2004 1:04 PMThe "massively popular" SS safety net will get rid of itself; it always has as it is untenable. The trends are in place and the demographic time bomb is ticking.
The fact SS revenue is mixed in with general fund is not its main problem so pushing to make it separate by law or something will not fix it. It is broken because the liberals have shifted the old welfare system to the SS system. It is so bad one can now get disability with back pay for being an alcoholic! An even easier way is to get a psychiatrist to diagnose you as mentally disabled. This is why the current system cannot be turned into one's own personal retirement bank account. The money is not there and it is already spoken for through welfare system.
So taking some funds with an "IRA" flavor is a great idea and over time it could become main retirement vehicle and the fraud in SS system can be exposed for nothing but another old style welfare program and eliminated.
Do we have 'rampant delinquencies'?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at September 3, 2004 1:42 PM