The 108th Congress should:
- allow young workers to redirect
their payroll taxes to individually owned, privately invested
retirement accounts.
- sell federal assets which do not
assist the government in fulfilling its Constitutional
obligations to pay promised vested benefits until all
Americans are out of the Social Security system.
Social Security faces crash
Such headlines -- common enough -- are just the tip of the iceberg.
The Social Security system is a fraudulent and unethical system.
Even Enron officers are not as unethical; if they administered a
private pension or insurance program in the way the Social
Security system is administered, they would already be in jail.
The system is an insult to the elderly and
an infringement on the liberties of those who would rather provide
an adequate future for themselves and their posterity.
Every penny you have "contributed" to Social Security
has already been spent by the government on other projects.
The Social Security Fraud
A privatized retirement program would allow Americans to invest
in America. Putting money in stocks capitalizes American business,
increases the productivity of labor, and lowers prices. Private
retirement accounts can be passed on to one's heirs, unlike all
the money put into Social Security. Instead of receiving checks
for $1200/mo, the elderly could receive checks of three-, five- or
even ten-times that amount. This would mark an end to the
"prescription drug" crisis. Even
during the Great Depression, the stock market yielded better
returns than the Social Security system does.
The recent Enron scandal and stock market decline does not
change the long-term historical fact that Americans
know how to invest better than the federal government, and should
be permitted to do so.
Still don't like the Stock Market (in spite of the facts)?
Invest in annuities, which still pay three times as much as Social
Security. Civil workers in Galveston County, Texas enjoy much
greater benefits than they would receive through Social Security,
with no retirement funds invested in stocks:
Foundation for Economic Education
next: Cultural
Agencies
- Senator
William Proxmire: "...there are 37 million people, is
that right, that get Social Security benefits?"
- Social Security Commissioner
James Cardwell: "Today between 32 and 34
million."
- Proxmire: "I am a
little high; 32 to 34 million people.
Almost all of them, or many of them, are voters. In my state,
I figure there are 600,000 voters that receive Social
Security. Can you imagine a senator or congressman under those
circumstances saying, 'We are going to repudiate that high a
proportion of the electorate?' No.
"Furthermore, we have the
capacity under the Constitution, the Congress does, to coin
money, as well as to regulate the value thereof. And therefore
we have the power to provide that money. And
we are going to do it. It
may not be worth anything when the recipient gets it, but
he is going to get his benefits paid."
- Cardwell: "I tend to
agree."
(The Social Security System, Hearings
Before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States,
94th Cong., 2nd Session, May 26 and 27, 1976, pp. 27-28. Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1977.)
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