I'm sure many of you will disagree with much of what I'm saying here, but that's fine. I'm very libertarian. What? I said it! Also, you'll find that some of this was written for entertainment value. My AP Government class is ridiculously pathetic and, believe it or not, I have 10 times the ammount of intellectual thought in this paper alone than what most of those students are even capable of. I'm a tad bitter. Actually, I just hate stupid people. In any event, I hope you enjoy this little essay I put up for you enjoyment. There are some good bits of legitimate argumentation as well as entertainment. Also, please note that there are quotes from articles that I haven't sited here, sicne we had a packet of articles to go off of. If you're really interested in reading any of the articles, try googling some of the quotes; most of the articles are from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, if I remember correctly and shouldn't be hard to find.

Socialist Security

Social Security: One of the many socialistic evils imposed upon Americans through the exploitation of fear of instability and the comforting thought that the government holds the cure for what ails us. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but this escapes the minds of those who let others do the thinking for them. A country free of government regulation (coddling) is not an anarchic state or a state of chaos. Rather, it’s the ideal form of human existence. It is natural for man to work for himself and reap all the resulting benefits. Altruism is neither natural nor necessary, for when man works for himself, he intrinsically benefits those around him due to the required relationship for success. Thus social security impedes on freedom and heightens dependency on government, two impositions that helped spark the American Revolution. America needs to return to a more "natural" state and the slow deconstruction of the social security system is a step in the right direction.

To understand where this position on social security is coming from, it’s prudent to look at where the system came from. The 1930s was a great period for economic reform to help sustain the American way of life for future generations, right? WRONG! Franklin Delano Roosevelt was worse at economics than he was at walking. The creation of social security was meant to help Americans by allowing them to save money for their retirement by giving the money to the government until then (which isn’t just bad economics, but also infringes on the rights of every tax-paying citizen). Unfortunately, social security was posed as a program that would remain a sure thing, as if it didn’t rely on predicting the future. In fact, the system relied heavily on the unpredictable future because there was no way to know how well the return would wind up being years down the road. Now there’s statistical data showing that it won’t be long before the generation paying the majority of the taxes won’t be able to handle the burden of paying social security for the baby boomers hitting the age of senior citizenship.

Today, the left wants to make it seem as if Bush is going to completely dismantle the system our senior citizens have become so dependent on, therefore creating some sort of economic crisis that will amount to trillions of dollars down the drain, increasing the debt exponentially; and some probably even believe it’ll bring the world that much closer to Judgment Day. Of course, "God helps those who help themselves," so I’m fairly confident that God is in favor of privatizing social security as well, to help people become more self-sufficient and less of a drain on society. In any event, Bush wants to allow "workers to divert up to 4 percent of their payroll taxes into private, individually controlled retirement accounts" (3). This will hardly "make things worse" (5), as Paul Krugman— everyone’s favorite dope in the economic field —hypothesizes. Four percent is hardly enough money to hurt the system, as it allows for investment and money from the government. The investment of that savedfour percentdoesn’t even have to be in stock, it can be in government bonds which are much more reliable than the stock market.

Some of the more foolish people want to argue that there’s nothing wrong with social security as it currently stands. The system can be sustained on excess money all the way through "2052" (5) (though 2042 is more universal). Wow! That’s almost five decades of pushing off an unavoidable problem. Furthermore, the longer the government waits to get rid of social security, the more expensive the problem is going to be to fix. There’s even theory out there that states there will be enough money "to finance about 70 percent of benefits through 2078" (3). Some want to pretend that the system isn’t going bankrupt, but what do you call a person who can only pay only 70 percent of his bills? The government considers him to be bankrupt!

Economic freedom is something that this nation has been lacking in for quite some time. The US, for the first time, has fallen out of the top ten freest economies in the world according the Wall Street Journal’s annual report. "Today the US sits at 12th, tied with Switzerland" for economic freedom, Mary O’Grady explained in her article Hail Estonia! If ever there was a situation to describe the word "sad," surely this is it. Even if Marxist theory appears to be a utopia to some people, the fact that it runs contrary to human nature makes it bad economics. Unlike Adam Smith’s philosophy, Marxist theory has failed time and time again because human nature cannot possibly allow it to exist. People need their choices, their freedoms. Forcing various programs upon a population, especially programs as horribly run as social security (Chile has a better social security system, which is successfully "run completely by private companies" according to "Chile's Social Security Lesson For The U.S." by José Piñera), is not good economics. The Democrats are even solidifying their defeat for the next couple decades by taking such a hard turn to the left and wanting to deny more options to a generation that has grown up in a society with more options than perhaps any other in the history of the world. As George F. Will put it, "Try denying social security choice to a coffee drinker who orders a venti decaf nonfat extra-hot no foam with whip three-pump vanilla latte" (4). Not having a choice doesn’t seem very appealing. Soon social security will have to drastically cut benefits if not reformed, and cutting benefits isn’t the most beneficial thing for Americans. Why should workers be "forced into a government retirement program that will, very soon, deliver unto them a rate of return that is barley visible?" (2). This is a good question. Some like the idea because it keeps the control in the hands of the government. Take a look at those people and then it will become abundantly clear who lets others do the thinking for them.