It is time we realized that there is no fair way out from government Social Security commitments that exceed the funds available.
Social Security
Since the things man needs for survival have to be produced, and nature does not guarantee the success of any human endeavor, there is not and cannot be any such thing as a guaranteed economic security. The employer who gives you a job, has no guarantee that his business will remain in existence, that his customers will continue to buy his products.
If you surrender everything to the government and give it total power to plan the whole economy, this will not guarantee your economic security, but it will guarantee the descent of the entire nation to a level of miserable poverty–as the practical results of every totalitarian economy have demonstrated.
Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t. There can be no such thing as the right to enslave, i.e., the right to destroy rights. – AYN RAND
The Way Out of the Social Security Mess
A plan to shut down Social Security without cutting benefits to existing retirees or raising payroll taxes on existing workers, leaving everyone better off.
Planning An Escape Hatch In Case Your Government Goes Full On Socialist
Escape hatches are crucial when things go wrong. When rule by the people becomes rule over the people, when slight authoritarianism becomes tyranny, you want a way out.
Social Security: There is No Trust Fund, Only IOU’s
On Tuesday, President Bush had the most bizarre cabinet meeting any president is ever going to have. It was a meeting with an actual cabinet. A filing cabinet. A filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W. Va., to be precise. Strange? Yes. But then again this is a very...
Debating Social Security
In a romantic mood, I was reading “Anna Karenina” flying down here and stumbled across one of Tolstoy’s brilliant insights. At a party at the home of his friend Prince Oblonsky, Konstantin Levin, the philosophical farmer, muses about the futility of...
A Giant Step to Improving “Social Security”
Last April, I had the opportunity to sit across a table from President Bush and discuss his plans for the economy. I asked him what his most important policy priorities were, and he gave me a refreshingly simple and direct answer: “In the first term we’re...
Social Insecurity: 401(k)s Under Attack
401(k) retirement plans — those marvelous engines of empowered financial liberation, in which an employee decides how much to contribute toward his own tax-advantaged retirement account, and directs the account’s investment himself — have come under...
Interview of Wade Dokken: The Social Security Crisis and What to Do About It
“By creating private accounts, you’d create private assets and private assets could be passed onto another generation as capital. And I think that would change the lives of millions of people,” says Wade Dokken. And Wade would know. A former advisor...
Enron and Social Security Reform II
Today I’m going to revisit a theme that I believe is the most important of all — the revolution in the empowerment of the individual investor to make his own decisions and take his own risks. It’s critical that we look at this now, because with the...
Enron and Social Security Reform
Everyone with an axe to grind is using the example of Enron to grind free markets. And Paul Krugman is doing no less in a December 4, 2001, New York Times op-ed, “A Defining Issue.” Krugman is using Enron to demonstrate the terrible dangers of...
The Social Security Debate: A War of Lies
The battle over restructuring America’s Social Security system into individual, privately managed accounts is heating up again. So the winds of change keep blowing, foreshadowing what may be the most profound economic transformation since the Reagan tax cuts of...
Questions & Answers On Privatizing Social Security
Aren’t most people too unsophisticated to manage their private account? This is a valid concern, but there are simple solutions that have worked well over twenty years with 401(k) plans, and they could easily be applied here. First, rudimentary investment...
A Cost Benefit Analysis on Privatizing Social Security
In my commentaries this week, I’ve discussed the transcendent importance to the economy and the markets of the potential for restructuring Social Security, to include individually managed private accounts. I’ve talked about some of the myths about Social...
Lessons from Chile on Social Security
This week I’m focusing on the myths that will keep investors from grasping the risks and opportunities on the road ahead as President George W. Bush pushes for restructuring Social Security — probably with the introduction of private accounts that could be...
Privatizing Social Security is Good for the Economy
We may be on the brink of a once-in-a-decade investment opportunity, a rare chance to catch a huge environmental change in the economy and the markets. And it’s still early on this one — you can still catch this one before it becomes part of the...
Subscribe for free.
Latest pro-Capitalism goodness sent weekly to your email box.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.