Social Security

I have a new favorite magazine. A few years ago, it was "National Review." Then "The Weekly Standard" overtook it. Now, I gotta say I get pretty excited when a new "The American Enterprise" rolls in.

It only publishes eight times a year, so it lacks the news quality of the other two. Yet TAE takes one topic on per issue and brings a dozen great thinkers and writers together to really flesh it out. Then the "Bird's Eye" column contextualizes all of them.

The March 2005 issue, From Alms to Ownership, is a perfect example. Social Security reform is examined from a market perspective by James Glassman, historical perspective by Stephen Moore et al, and a philosophical perspective by William Tucker.

The "Bird's eye" overview is interesting as it describes the America of 1935, giving us perspective on when the plan was engineered. "What a year," it starts out:

The world's first full-color feature film has just been released. Now there are whispers of special-effects-laden Hollywood blockbusters to come over the next several years. Two projects thought to be gestating: an adaptation of a much-anticipated new book called Gone With the Wind, and some kind of musical based on the Wizard of Oz children's stories. More films are also expected from the sensationally popular new comedy team that debuted last year: The Three Stooges.

Meanwhile, the red-hot new entertainment medium of radio continues to boost its audience. Fully two thirds of all Americans now have a radio in their own home. That's almost as many as have electrical service (68 percent). Peeking over the horizon, futurists claim that within just a few years, companies may start broadcasting radio-like signals that can be picked up by boxes known as "televisions"--which not only reproduce sounds but also small pictures! It remains to be seen if there will be any consumer demand for such a novelty.

One gadget that has definitely proven its popularity is the telephone. The proportion of American homes equipped with a telephone stood at 32 percent this year--and saturation is even higher in offices. The absolute cutting edge in communication breakthroughs, though, arrived this summer--in the form of an electrified typewriter invented by International Business Machines.

Even if you can't put down the fabulous sums for an electrified typewriter, relief for achy writing hands and messy fountain pens may be on the horizon. Within ten years, experts believe, it may be possible for ordinary citizens to buy something called a "ballpoint pen" which can be used for months without refilling! Initially, though, you can expect to pay at least half a week's pay for one of these amazing conveniences.

And while America is wiring itself for majority telephone ownership, it is deeply into economic depression and as yet-undiscredited Stalinism holds sway as the wave of the future.

So: Do you want to base your security in old age on a program engineered at the same time as the Model A and the vacuum-tube radio? Has work changed much since the era when slopping pigs for Auntie Em was a typical job? Does the boundary between state and individual look different now that the USSR has gone from progressive polestar to oppressive flop? Has American finance advanced from the decades when the only choices for ordinary savers were the passbook, the mason jar, or the mattress? Are the retirement goals of Americans still the same as in the days when the Bambino retired? Or is it time for Social Security to enjoy a major-league update?

The answer, I think, is obvious. Nothing but a government welfare program could ever last this long in unimproved form. Our transportation networks, our medical services, our economy are all light-years better than they were in 1935. So why are we still stuck with a gramophone/Hupmobile/fountain pen system of public pensions?
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The most important aspect of ownership is not that it makes you rich, but that it makes you free. Ownership gives you independence, choices, a measure of control over your own life. Possessing property can liberate you from capricious bosses and suffocating government alike. Opponents of the Ownership Society completely fail to understand that...

This is the big domestic political issue for this next Congress and this Presidential term. You can read a sampling of these articles online but I would encourage anybody to purchase and read this issue cover-to-cover. You will not see a better exegesis on the conservative position on Social Security reform anywhere.

Threesources regulars: holler and I'll buy it for you or take you out to lunch when you're finished so we can discuss it.

Second Bush Administration Posted by jk at February 22, 2005 4:55 PM