Is sending Social Security checks to millionaires a “waste” of government money?
Heritage Foundation budget economist Romina Boccia thinks so.
“Any Social Security check going to a millionaire, I call that government waste,” Boccia told dailycaller.com [10/18/14]. “If we decide that the government has a role to protect the elderly and disabled from destitution, if we think that a federal role is required there, then sending Social Security checks to millionaires is a waste.”
What she’s basically saying is: If Social Security is really a charity program, then it’s a waste of charity dollars to give them to people who don’t need those charity dollars.
But think about it. The whole premise of Social Security is that it’s a savings program. It’s a mandatory savings program, in which participation is required by the federal government; but it’s supposedly a savings program — not a charity program.
Let’s say we do what Boccia suggests. We stop giving people above a certain income level Social Security benefits, regardless of how much they paid in payroll taxes. What should that income limit be? A million or a billion? There aren’t enough millionaires and billionaires to deny Social Security benefits to, and thereby save the program. So how low do we go?
Of course, the federal government would never permit anyone to stop contributing to Social Security, even if they were no longer to get the benefits. Those suggesting that the rich and well off (generally defined by Obama as those making $250,000 or more a year) should not get Social Security are by no means suggesting that the rich and well-off stop contributing payroll taxes.
This is the moment that the pretense of Social Security as a savings program is dropped. And I believe that time is coming. If conservative Republican analysts at the Heritage Foundation are suggesting this, then how long before Democratic politicians, who still control the White House and nearly all of the legislative agenda, do the same?
“Paying government benefits to people who shouldn’t receive them, and creating bad incentives for people to work less and retire earlier — that is really what we think of as waste,” Boccia told The Daily Caller. “The baby boomers who don’t need their Social Security checks still take them, and they’ll live off of them, and they’ll just leave a greater inheritance to their children, who are also well off.”
Economically, there’s nothing wasteful or unsound about this. Baby Boomers and others with more money to spend or invest provide more life to the private economy, creating more jobs and economic growth. Republicans, at least, used to understand this.
The issue here is morality, not economics. A rational idea of morality tells us, “If someone contributes a lot of money to a retirement program, they should get it back.” This is the idea of morality politicians going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt (who started Social Security) have been counting on in selling this program: that it’s a personal investment you get back.
On the other hand, if you accept the premise that the purpose of government is to impose obligations on those who have more to pay benefits to those who have less, then you’ll conclude just the opposite: Those who have more get less (or nothing); while those who have less get more (or all of it.) This requires viewing Social Security (and Medicare too, for that matter) as outright welfare programs, not “insurance” programs.
If none of us really own our money or property, and — at least after a certain level of income, it now belongs to the government — then of course the government should be distributing it in a way that moves people towards equality. Of course Social Security and Medicare should be welfare programs, not entitlement or retirement programs.
This is the premise of socialism, that we are all our brother’s keepers and that government owns all (or much) of private wealth created. Contemporary socialists prefer to call it “progressivism,” but it’s still socialism whether you rename it, or not. And it’s just as socialist when a conservative Republican think tank says it as when anyone else says it.
Do you see what I mean when I claim that America needs a second political party and movement — not a third one?
If government starts to move in this direction — and I believe that it will, particularly as Social Security’s bankruptcy becomes more of a crisis — then we should at least require the government to stop claiming Social Security is a “retirement program.” Because it’s not. It’s something that you’ll be forced to pay into — whether you get anything back from it, or not. And it’s something you will get money out of — even if you never paid into it, so long as government deems you needy enough. That’s what social welfare — and, ultimately, socialism — means: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
This is, apparently, where both conservatives and “progressives” intend to take us. And with these programs facing inevitable bankruptcy, how can you argue with them — economically?
This is why the looming crisis with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will never be solved by economics alone. The issue here is moral rather than political or economic. Either we’re a free country, where people own all that they earn, or we’re not. Keep in mind that in a free country, there are no laws against private charity. In fact, you can give away all of your money, if you wish. But in a free market economy, the government stays out. It focuses only on providing physical security for body and property. This is a lot less expensive for the government than the kind of wealth redistribution both Democrats and Republicans are constantly dreaming up.
How rich is too rich for Social Security? A lot of people who make $250,000 a year are still counting on that Social Security in retirement to supplement their retirements or old age. Aren’t they entitled to get back what they were forced to pay in? People are now routinely living into their 80s and 90s, while still retiring in their 60s or 70s. To some people these are “the rich,” but I don’t think they will take too kindly to not receiving their Social Security once they turn 65, after decades of being forced to pour money into that program via payroll taxes. I’d wager a guess that even the most enthusiastic of Obama supporters, many of whom are reasonably well off if not rich, would not take kindly to this, either. How do politicians plan to justify this?
It’s easy for some wealthy Warren Buffett to say, “Hey, take my Social Security. I don’t need it,” and then feel like he’s such a good person for saying so. But there are lots of people who aren’t as rich as Warren Buffett who will have to forego the benefits they were forced to finance in order to honor this principle of socialism now advanced by Democrats and Republicans alike. There aren’t enough truly rich Warren Buffets who can be dropped from Social Security and Medicare to even begin to make those programs solvent and sustainable.
You see, economics follows morality. The morality of socialism is unjust and unfair. It treats everyone as equally deserving regardless of what they produce or contribute. You can refuse to work at all, but you’re entitled to an income simply by having a body that breathes, according to the morality of socialism or “progressivism.” The ideology of spreading the wealth steals from those who have and transfers to those who have not — for those reasons alone, and in a way they disguise as “morality” rather than the legalized theft that it is. The wealthy who have their money stolen might not “need” it, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s theirs, and that they will most likely use this money either to invest in the private economy, or buy things for themselves that only stimulate business and expand the economy further. It’s arrogant and absurd to think that the types of people who become career politicians can more wisely and morally utilize that money than the people who actually produced it, or are responsible for owning it.
You cannot legalize and institutionalize such an approach to morality without eventually getting fiscal and social calamity. That’s where we’re arriving, and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
Should “the rich” stop getting Social Security? Sure, most will say. It’s easy to say that, and then kid yourself that you’ve solved the problem.
But when you realize that most of the rich are not as rich as you think they are, and once denied their benefits will no longer want to contribute to this faux “retirement program, then the sparks will really start to fly.
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