WHY I’M AGAINST BUSH’S SOCIAL SECURITY PLAN
You might think that because I’m a fiscal conservative, I’d be for Bush’s Social Security plan. That because I am an avid buy-and-hold investor, a true believer in “stocks for the long run,” that I’d be all over personal investment accounts. That as a thirty-something with thirty-plus years left for my investments to grow, I’d be in favor of carving out a piece of my paycheck that used to go to the government and letting it accumulate for my golden years.
You’d be wrong.
But my reasons are for both conservative and liberal reasons. You have to first decide, as Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Andy Cassel noted, what Social Security is for. Is it a safety net for society or a savings account for individuals? It was first envisioned as the former, and it does a pretty good job. In fact, one huge population that isn’t being talked about, save the bottom flap of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer front page, is the non-elderly and non-retired who are receiving Social Security: the disabled, of which there are eight million, and children of retired, deceased, or disabled parents, of which there are more receiving checks than from TANF. In fact, of the 48 million checks that Social Security sends out every month, over thirty percent are to people who aren’t retired or elderly. Where are they in the current debate over whether a sliver of your paycheck goes to today’s retirees or tomorrow’s?
As I’ve shared in this space before, I am a firm believer in free markets. But free markets fall short because they inefficiently account for the long-term, the moral, and the communal. And where they inefficiently account for such important things, the government should get involved. And so I believe that Social Security should remain in its current form, because it is a safety net that market forces would not create on its own, a safety net that is the right thing to do in a nation where there will always be people who need financial help because they cannot work for themselves. Maybe that makes me a liberal. Or maybe that makes me a conservative who understands the limits of being conservative.
But what of the allure of swapping safe government investments for the possibility of higher returns in the open market? Especially for younger folks, who have more time to allow short-term ups and downs to even out, playing the market is by far the more prudent way to stay ahead of inflation. There you will find no disagreement from me, President Bush. But why is the government meddling in what I can already do, and do in fact already do, in the private markets? Why not let me have that sliver of my paycheck back and let me invest it by myself? For the best ownership is not government-mandated choices, but government-free choices. So the conservative in me says stay out of the retirement savings business and keep taxes low so I can do whatever I want with my money.
Of course, the debate on Capitol Hill is much more complicated than what I’ve just parsed out in the few paragraphs above. The furor over Social Security isn’t fundamentally about retirement savings or actuarial tables or budget deficits. It’s about political ideologies and political blocs and political wins. I guess the reason why I’m sharing my viewpoint on President Bush’s Social Security plan is that it’s a good illustration of where my conservatism looks liberal, and where my conservatism supports liberal ideas.
You might think that because I’m a fiscal conservative, I’d be for Bush’s Social Security plan. That because I am an avid buy-and-hold investor, a true believer in “stocks for the long run,” that I’d be all over personal investment accounts. That as a thirty-something with thirty-plus years left for my investments to grow, I’d be in favor of carving out a piece of my paycheck that used to go to the government and letting it accumulate for my golden years.
You’d be wrong.
But my reasons are for both conservative and liberal reasons. You have to first decide, as Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Andy Cassel noted, what Social Security is for. Is it a safety net for society or a savings account for individuals? It was first envisioned as the former, and it does a pretty good job. In fact, one huge population that isn’t being talked about, save the bottom flap of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer front page, is the non-elderly and non-retired who are receiving Social Security: the disabled, of which there are eight million, and children of retired, deceased, or disabled parents, of which there are more receiving checks than from TANF. In fact, of the 48 million checks that Social Security sends out every month, over thirty percent are to people who aren’t retired or elderly. Where are they in the current debate over whether a sliver of your paycheck goes to today’s retirees or tomorrow’s?
As I’ve shared in this space before, I am a firm believer in free markets. But free markets fall short because they inefficiently account for the long-term, the moral, and the communal. And where they inefficiently account for such important things, the government should get involved. And so I believe that Social Security should remain in its current form, because it is a safety net that market forces would not create on its own, a safety net that is the right thing to do in a nation where there will always be people who need financial help because they cannot work for themselves. Maybe that makes me a liberal. Or maybe that makes me a conservative who understands the limits of being conservative.
But what of the allure of swapping safe government investments for the possibility of higher returns in the open market? Especially for younger folks, who have more time to allow short-term ups and downs to even out, playing the market is by far the more prudent way to stay ahead of inflation. There you will find no disagreement from me, President Bush. But why is the government meddling in what I can already do, and do in fact already do, in the private markets? Why not let me have that sliver of my paycheck back and let me invest it by myself? For the best ownership is not government-mandated choices, but government-free choices. So the conservative in me says stay out of the retirement savings business and keep taxes low so I can do whatever I want with my money.
Of course, the debate on Capitol Hill is much more complicated than what I’ve just parsed out in the few paragraphs above. The furor over Social Security isn’t fundamentally about retirement savings or actuarial tables or budget deficits. It’s about political ideologies and political blocs and political wins. I guess the reason why I’m sharing my viewpoint on President Bush’s Social Security plan is that it’s a good illustration of where my conservatism looks liberal, and where my conservatism supports liberal ideas.
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