The 109th 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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