Fed chairman Alan Greenspan says the government may not be able to make all the Social Security and Medicare payments it has long promised the baby-boomers: “If we have promised more than our economy has the ability to deliver to retirees without unduly diminishing real income gains of workers, as I fear we may have, we must recalibrate our programs.” Recalibrate is a euphemism for breaking promises
Will this be the beginning of mass disillusionment with government? Will Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson cease being highly rated presidents? (After all, they set up these programs without regard for demographic considerations.) Will their birthdays feature mass protests and hangings of effigies? What will it take?
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It won’t be, so long as the mass media and public schools continue to extol the virtues of FDR, Lincoln, and Big Mommy government as the saviors of the human race.
It is drilled into kids that the Great Depression was caused by an excess of freedom in the market, by the greed of the Robber Barrons (move over Bill Gates!), and by the lack, LACK, of governmet intervention for the good of all.
What will it take? It will take a collapse. It will require the United States to die as did the USSR, to break up into several different autonomous “states”, and a few of them will be relatively free market.
The Nevada Free State, for instance. Or maybe the North Pacific Coalition. Or, where the Ludwig Von Mises Institute will be located, the Confederate States of America.
Or maybe just the collapse or abandonment of public schools. My wife thinks I’m irrational in my blaming so much “bad” on the public schools. But I see around me every day the results of the brainwashing, the miopathy, the curriculum designed and delivered by members of a single labor union. It’s easy to trace most of the erroneous preconceptions back to what I remember them trying to tell me 25 years ago. It’s all the same trash.
It will take the Libertarian revolution in thought. It will take whatever it takes to foster that revolution, and by Cromm I have no idea what that will be or I would be pushing for it with my every waking breath.
Curt-
I think it’s more likely that we’ll see a solution consisting of higher taxes and restricted beenfits. People will gripe but the system will churn on as usual.
The population is aging, and it’s difficult to see a “mass dillusionment” with government forthcoming when most of them will have their primary source of income and medical bills provided by the government.
IOW, expect more of the same.
- Josh
Maybe Greenspan’s wakeup call will force Americans to realize that Social Security never was a promise by the government to save money for Americans. Instead it always has been a wealth transfer, it is just that American politicians have never been truthful about it.
Ultimately libertarians/ Austrians have 2 choices when it comes to the American Social Security problem:
1. Reform: President Bush supports Privatizing parts social security. This would mean that Government would use its coercive power to force savings.
2. Do Nothing: Kerry is operating under the theory that if you say there is nothing wrong enough times, it will magically become so. Ultimately, given what he has said payroll taxes will have to be raised by 50% or (if the public refuses to support such a drastic increase) the Social Security system will go bankrupt. See: this post for the math.
This presents a difficult problem: Support a slightly better use of government force or support the status quo with the hope that it will completely eliminate the problem (but with massive costs involved).
Or look at it a different way: Does supporting the idea that we must privatize social security, reinforce the concept that “Government itself is not the problem, it’s just that our good government has bad policies.”
Once again those who value true liberty must choose between two evils.
It will take the rise once again of Aristotlean philosophy and the rejection of Plato and Kantian teachings to rescue the Republic.
In today’s philosophical environment where collectivism, altruism and ethnicity rules supreme a country such as the United States, could not be founded.
A Constitution is Aristotlean.
Three branches of government are Aristotlean.
The influence of Aristotle and Rome is blatantly evident. Without Aristotle there would be no capitalism because essentially after his move away from Platonic thought, the irrational idea of “supernatural world” out there was rejected.
Capitalism is opposed by religions such as Christianity and Islam. Just reading the encyclicals of the Vatican provides strong enough evidence.
Combined, the social altruism and religious altruism, are powerful forces that reject individualism and therefore the principles upon which America was founded.
The Bush Administration and majority, made up of older type Republicans, the Straussian neo-conservatives and the evangelical conservatives, ensure capitalism is a pipe dream.
Alan Greenspan a long time ago rejected his capitalist values.
The sole legitimate function of government is the protection of individual rights through defense, civil and legal. Otherwise anarchy results – libertarianism is irrational and allows brutes and tyrrants to rise to power.
It was upon a system of the protection of individual rights that America was founded, the only right that there is being the right of an individual to their life – everything else is a consequence or corrollary -
David: Libertarianism DOES allow tyrants and brutes to rise to power. So does everything else that has ever been tried. That is why–old as mankind is–we still have tyrants and brutes who are risen to power. Libertarianism is only the form that is *least likely* to coexist with tyrants and brutes risen to power. Were very many people wise enough to favor libertarianism, it could not happen that tyrants and brutes would rise to power.
Curt Howland, I could not agree with you more. I think you show that you DO know what it would take: Any blow against any government school is a blow for freedom. Government schools are staggering and reeling now. Let us not allow them to recover.
Any blow agaisnt the governments income. In all honesty, if its true that only the rich got tax cuts, id be happy! We sould take anything we can at this point because there is no voice of logic or freedoms in our representitives.
(small l) Libertarianism does not allow tyrants, they creep in on cloven hooves promising a better way. People believe in the free lunch, so a promise to take from the 1 and give to the 9 will be believed and promoted – for a good cause. Every shredding of the constition was “for a good cause”. But once the windows were open, after the initial puff, instead of air coming in, we got smoke as the power was corrupt, corrupted, and corrupting, and people still hoped for good forgetting why that power was locked away in a Pandora’s box in the first place.
But the posters are right – we are not immune to the fragmentation the Soviet Union experienced when it collapsed. Our goal should be to restore liberty after the collapse, much like bringing relief to those who have lost their homes due to a flood – help them immediately and teach them to build proper dams and houses on stilts. To put the evil back into Pandora’s box and weld it shut.
I take it as a given that a program named “Social Security” will be around for as long as there is a “U.S. Government” around. What will change will be the number of people receiving the benefit and the amount of that benefit. This will happen at various degress from two primary fronts: (1) those that can will elect to work further into their “retirement” years, and (2) our rulers will determine who is deserving of the ill-gotten booty.
The message of point #2 is that if you are responsible and have sufficient (of course a subjective term to be defined by a politician) means, then you will get less [if any] Social Security money.
The precedent already exists in old-age nursing home care. I have a 90+ year-old grandfather in assisted-care living. He saved money his entire life, so he is able to pay the monthly bills (for now). But not to worry–when he runs out of money the State will step in and pay. They would have stepped in and paid from day one–but they have to bankrupt my grandfather first.
I look for SS to follow-suit eventually. Its well-earned and well-deserved death, while pleasing to think of, is folly… lest we care to revolt…. again.
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