If we really want to have the Social Security conversation, it always helps to define our paradigm up front. Are we looking at SS as a retirement savings program, like a corporate defined benefit pension plan? Or are we looking at it as an income redistribution program, shifting some income from workers to retired people?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're using the second model.
If not, and we want to talk about SS as a defined benefit pension plan, the fundamental issue is not the exact level of risk or control, but whether it's real money or imaginary money in the trust fund/investment accounts. Corporate defined benefit pension plans are required to actually have sufficient assets to meet future liabilities. If they don't, they are required by federal law to make up the shortfall now. By standard actuarial accounting rules, Social Security has a net present value shortfall of about a gazillion dollars. If you want to claim that the contributions workers are making now are funding the distributions they are going to receive at retirement, there's a whole lot of missing money.
If we want to treat it as an income redistribution program, and not treat the promises as actual liabilities, then that whole line of argument really doesn't apply. But if we want to consider it as a redistribution program/safety net, it's a really really bad one funded by a regressive tax, paying more to the wealthy than to the poor, and overall giving money to people who on average have three times the net worth of the people it's taking the money from. If we want to make a safety net, don't have it take money from minimum wage workers and give it to millionaires.
Unless you're a loony libertarian who wants to put North Dakota up on eBay, you're not opposed to the concept of redistribution and a safety net. Nobody wants people starving in the streets. What I object to are programs that hand out billions of dollars to people for being old or for being farmers, when what they should be doing is giving money to people who are poor.
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If we really want to have the Social Security conversation, it always helps to define our paradigm up front. Are we looking at SS as a retirement savings program, like a corporate defined benefit pension plan? Or are we looking at it as an income redistribution program, shifting some income from workers to retired people?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're using the second model.
If not, and we want to talk about SS as a defined benefit pension plan, the fundamental issue is not the exact level of risk or control, but whether it's real money or imaginary money in the trust fund/investment accounts. Corporate defined benefit pension plans are required to actually have sufficient assets to meet future liabilities. If they don't, they are required by federal law to make up the shortfall now. By standard actuarial accounting rules, Social Security has a net present value shortfall of about a gazillion dollars. If you want to claim that the contributions workers are making now are funding the distributions they are going to receive at retirement, there's a whole lot of missing money.
If we want to treat it as an income redistribution program, and not treat the promises as actual liabilities, then that whole line of argument really doesn't apply. But if we want to consider it as a redistribution program/safety net, it's a really really bad one funded by a regressive tax, paying more to the wealthy than to the poor, and overall giving money to people who on average have three times the net worth of the people it's taking the money from. If we want to make a safety net, don't have it take money from minimum wage workers and give it to millionaires.
Unless you're a loony libertarian who wants to put North Dakota up on eBay, you're not opposed to the concept of redistribution and a safety net. Nobody wants people starving in the streets. What I object to are programs that hand out billions of dollars to people for being old or for being farmers, when what they should be doing is giving money to people who are poor.