Dec 12 2007
Definitions of Freedom
The Ron Paul campaign is all about freedom. So I’ve been told. The problem is that I seem to have a slightly different defintion of freedom. Freedom, to me, is not just not having the government spying on me, or being able to speak my mind to as wide an audience as I can gather. Freedom does not end with the Bill of Rights, it starts with the bill of rights. Here are some freedoms that I very much fear that Ron Paul may limit.
The first freedom is the freedom to work where I will- including at small companies or even starting my own company, without risking my life or health. Think about this for a moment- lots of people have three choices- 1) work somewhere they otherwise wouldn’t work, simply for the benefits, 2) pay outrageous amounts for private health insurance (I’ve seen quotes like $1,000/month or more), which are effectively impossible for someone with a normal salary to pay, or 3) risk that if they get sick, they die. That’s freedom? Work at megacorp or die? It’s risky enough to start up a new company, this just adds to the risk. And who benefits? The big corporations. The big insurance corporations who get our money (and are willing to spend millions to keep the system just the way it is), and the big companies who don’t have to worry so much about small start ups eating their breakfast.
How about the freedom to not be indentured from the get go? The average college graduate has over $30,000 in debt, mostly student loads, the day they graduate. And all they got for the money is the ability to get a job that pays better than one wearing a paper hat. Shortly after college is the best time to be starting a company, especially a tech startup. I mean, think about it: no kids, no commitments, retirement is decades away still, lots of time to recover from a company going bust, few commitments making it easier to put in the 70+ hour weeks a startup requires, used to living poor. Nope. You don’t dare- you’ve got college loans to pay off. Better go get a job at megacorp and get an early start on that life of mediocrity.
How about the freedom to retire, even if you do screw up, and have a business that goes belly up? Maybe not the freedom to retire to a golf course in Florida, but the freedom to know that even if you do screw up, you won’t end your days living under a bridge.
How about more basic things- like the freedom to know that the whole banking system isn’t about to collapse? That the investments you made in the hope of retiring to that golf course in Florida aren’t going to just up and evaporate. Or that the money in your bank account isn’t going to just up and evaporate. How about the freedom to know that, no matter where I work, I’ll have a safe work place? Safe food- no matter where I buy it? That the toys I buy my children will be safe and not have lead paint on them?
I agree that the government shouldn’t (indeed, doesn’t) have the right to listen in to my phone calls without a warrant. Indeed, my reading of the fourth amendment is that the government doesn’t have the right to listen in to the terrorists’ phone calls without a warrant. But the discussion of freedom shouldn’t stop there.
Popularity: 9% [?]
What is freedom anyway? Looking it like through FPL colored eyes what is the (co)algebraic laws that define freedom. Just saying freedom to do such and such isn’t exactly freedom, otherwise we end up with a useless definition of freedom. As you want freedom from fear of economic collapse I could argue for freedom from fear of terrorism and get where we are today, with all this patriot act nice governamental powers.
Also why all the freedoms you talk about aren’t gratis. If the government would have to provide or regulate those it would require more taxation, even for those who don’t require it. Why should I subside your health, if I directly pay for my health costs? Why should I subside the regulators to keep your workplace safe if I work in my farm? I could just retort and ask the freedom to not pay for bills other than mine (e.g. freedom from taxes).
Other side of this discussion is about choice, risks and benefit. If you want to work for a startup the possible profits can be huge, usually much more than the risks: if the risk/benefit analisys indicated otherwise (money smart) people wouldn’t work for or fund startups. So why should you reap the benefits (e.g. IPO cash) and we subside part of your risks? If you get rich you can argue that the future taxes you’ll pay will cover for today’s health costs, but if the startup fails you’ll never pay for the bill. Ditto for going to a good college: it’s your choice to go into debt, you could go to a less expensive college our be a drop-out like many more (including myself) and try your chances. Let’s not even talk about the parents who don’t save for their kids college: a 100 bucks every month in an indexed fund and your kid can pick his choices after high school (go to a good college and be debt less or pick a better one and assume the difference). If you start earlier (I’m saving for my kids future since I started working and I don’t even have kids yet eight years later) you can cover the best colleges. So your freedom to be unindentured will be paid by whom? If college debt is subsided why should a drop out pay for it?
Freedom is a semantic meaningless word if we don’t know what it costs. We can’t attach a freedom label to any thing we want and expect it to make sense. We are free to make our own choices, but we have to face the consequences because not all choices are equivalent. Of course there are inequalities in the system and things aren’t as good as they could, but most of our problems are artificial. For example, health care is expensive because it’s highly regulated (e.g. becoming a doctor is quite expensive, insurance for doctors against civil suits cost a lot, the patent system give way too much power to drug companies these days), because we live unhealthy lifestyles eating crap and living in polluted environments, because we want to live much longer than our ancestors with the same limited biological machine (i.e. it’s expensive to live longer because our bodies are programmed to senescence and death). Once we make our choices (e.g. better health care) we have to account for its costs and I want freedom from the costs of other people choices that don’t benefit me.
Hey, what about the freedom to be anonymous and don’t have my country, system and browser identified when I post? I should ask for regulation to mandate cleaner user-agents and randomized IP numbers. ;)
The health care argument is simply highlighting that we need to end corporate sponsorship of health insurance. If all people had to pay the cost of health insurance, you would see many more reasonable plans, and a lot of the excesses of the system go away because nobody’s willing to fund them anymore. Of course, the big health insurance companies will oppose any reform, as you say.
What I’d like to see is a hybrid system where major emergency care is subsidized heavily or totally, but routine and minor trips to the hospital are a person’s responsibility. As well, under a certain income, all health care needs to be free. We spend a great deal of money subsidizing people who don’t get routine problems fixed until they’re emergencies because they can’t afford primary care.
Also! We need to lower the barriers to getting into Medicare. Many people who are eligible for Medicare don’t have it, because the paperwork and identification requirements are onerous and we don’t help them complete them until they’re in the hospital without insurance.
(Disclaimer: my fiancee’s an emergency and internal medicine doctor)
[...] There’s an effort on the Democratic side to pigeonhole him as a rampaging bigot, but that’s simply false to fact. Please stop, so we can focus on the real differences. [...]
@Daniel Yokomizo
Hah. The country is interesting for me to see, so that’s going to stick around. The browser and OS is kinda stupid, though, so I’ve turned it off.
I’d suggest using an anonymizer if you don’t like admitting where your country is. :D
Hey, what about my freedom to show off my distro and browser of choice? Don’t oppress me man :D
Well, now your rights are being trounced. Cope.
(Actually, I just want to stop being humiliated by having the Windows icon next to my name so often. I feel like it’s taking out my geek cred inch by inch…)
Daniel Y: First of all, you’d have to convince me that the Patriot Act actually does protect me from terrorists in any meaningfull way. Most of the crap spawned after 9-11 isn’t security, it’s security theater.
True story: I work in a building with all sorts of anti-terrorist protections. I’ve never seen less than six gaurds in the front lobby, guests need to have their bags x-rayed before entering (no kidding- they’ve got two airport-style xray machines down in the lobby just for that purpose). You have to scan your ID card to get in. And yet, a couple of weeks ago, a coworker of mine found a homeless man sleeping in our back hallway, up on the 33rd floor. How the hell did he get past all of the security downstairs? The answer is that it’s not security, it’s security theater. It’s there to make the PHBs feel better. Also, I’ve become convinced, as a status symbol- “look, we’re important enough to need all this elaborate security!”
As for your comment “why should I pay for your health care when I’m healthy?”, that this is why I call Libertarianism the “I’ve got mine- fuck you” party. Which is effectively what your argument is. “Why should I pay for freedoms for other people that don’t directly affect me?” The problem with “Enlightened Self-Interest” is that most people forget the “Enlightened” part. There is a benefit, to society as a whole, to encourage people to get college degrees, start companies, work at small or startup companies, trust the banking system, trust the home lending system, trust their food and toys and workplaces to be safe, etc.
@bhurt: I said I could argue about freedom from terrorism. Could is the imperative word here. I don’t endorse this state of terror americans seems to be living in since 9/11. I was just showing how one can abuse the word free(dom) to mean anything at all. Freedom from war, freedom from fear, freedom from persecution, freedom from taxes, freedom from censorship. freedom from immigrants, freedom from high prices. It’s easy to put “freedom from” everything you don’t like, but it doesn’t mean these things are actual freedoms. In the article you talked about many things that aren’t actually related, placing them all under the freedom banner makes debate much more difficult because we start arguing about a moving target.
Ditto for the not paying for your bills if I pay for mine. You can notice that I actually never said I believe in those (I’m not a libertarian btw). What I insist in talking about is that these things aren’t gratis, there’s always a cost associated with them, in the same way there’s benefit associate with them. It’s not economically efficient to dissociate the benefits from the costs, it’s a fact that people make poorer uses of resources that aren’t directly limited (e.g. credit card debt is rampant because people don’t associate the cost or their purchases, the tragedy of the commons). If government subsidizes health care it will make much easier for its usage to be inefficient (e.g. there are several incidents of medicare paying much more for some kinds of medicine or treatments than the private sector). Also as I said going to the college, working for a startup, owning a home, having a big loving family, etc. have direct benefits for their users, so asking for direct costs instead of indirect costs is just saying that people should pay for what they use.
In regard to the benefits to the society as a whole, I don’t deny the existence of those. But we can’t ignore that when we promote certain activities we don’t promote others: our resources are scarce and once we allocate them in a certain investment we can’t use them for other investments, this is an economics concept called opportunity cost. A big government that centralizes and regulates every necessary society investiment is fundamentally unable to make optimal allocation of assets (actually if we apply game theory and consensus building strategies to the society as a whole the issue is much worse than we usually imagine), irregardless of corruption, lobbies and such. OTOH the market is very efficient on those issues, so I conclude that if we let the market solve this problem the solution will be more efficient than any governamental plan.
Also I don’t want to pay for the health care bill of people who don’t know better than chain smoke and eat junk food, I don’t want to pay for the special needs of troubled kids because their parents are unable to give them proper moral education, I don’t want to spend a dime to pay the student debts of people who want to go to nice colleges to get great jobs for themselves: it’s their benefit, their choices, therefore their costs. If you want something from society you have to give in return, any plan who don’t make clear this causation and hides it under taxes, programs and “freedoms” it’s doomed to failure, because it will end up becoming yet another example of the tragedy of the commons.
The first freedom is the freedom to work where I will- including at small companies or even starting my own company, without risking my life or health.
So the government should be giving venture capital to anyone who can put together a business plan? The government should pay their rent, give them food, and pay for their marriage counseling when the 80-hour weeks catch up with them? If the business fails, should the government maintain your quality of life until you find another job? If the answer to any of these are “no”, what’s the difference? All of those are just as legitimate blocks as health insurance. Where do you draw a line at the “freedoms” the government has to guaranty?
Right now, you have the freedom to work where you will. But where you work is going to change the quality of your life in many ways — megacorps can get you safety and security which you simply don’t have as an entrepreneur.
How about more basic things- like the freedom to know that the whole banking system isn’t about to collapse? That the investments you made in the hope of retiring to that golf course in Florida aren’t going to just up and evaporate. Or that the money in your bank account isn’t going to just up and evaporate.
On this point, Ron Paul’s actually your man, since he’s the only one advocating an economic policy which addresses the inflation tax. Take a look at the various Ron Paul vs. Bernanke videos out on YouTube.
There’s an old joke that goes like this: a mugger jumps out in front of a miser, threatens the miser with a knife, and goes “Your money or your life!” After a moment of silence, the mugger goes “C’mon, which is it- your money or your life?” To which the miser replies “I’m thinking! I’m thinking!”
People laugh, because it’s silly that someone might value their wealth more than their life.
Unfortunately, that’s a joke you just made with a straight face. I made the point that you shouldn’t have to risk your life just to start a new company, and you immediately assumed that it was equally sensible to not have to risk your money to start a new company. If you can’t see the difference between the two, you’ve got big problems. Also, you’re a joke.
As for the “inflation tax”- inflation doesn’t scare me. Bank panics scare me. A bank panic does a hell of a lot more damage than even 70’s style stag-flation does. Of course, no one outside of a nursing home remembers what a bank panic is like- the last one was over 75 years ago. This may be about to change.
Actually, a good dose of inflation might not be so bad, right now. Think about it- run 15% inflation for 5 years, and all debts, both public and private, just got cut in half. Yeah, it’ll hurt- mostly, it’ll hurt the weathly. Personally, I’d prefer to pay off the debts myself- but given a choice between moderate inflation for a period of time, and another Great Depression, I know which I’d choose.
Unfortunately, that’s a joke you just made with a straight face. I made the point that you shouldn’t have to risk your life just to start a new company, and you immediately assumed that it was equally sensible to not have to risk your money to start a new company.
Your argument that it’s “risking your life” to start a business starts from the basis of money, so that’s where I was playing. If you want to start your own business, that takes some savings. How much savings depends on the context of your situation, and is going to have to include more insurance costs than just health insurance.
Actually, a good dose of inflation might not be so bad, right now. Think about it- run 15% inflation for 5 years, and all debts, both public and private, just got cut in half.
All of your savings also just got cut in half. So those of us who aren’t wealthy, but who have been working to sock money away, have just been roundly punished for that behavior.
And social security just became even more infeasible, because the amount they need to fork out to maintain just became a whole lot more expensive than the amounts that were invested initially.
Personally, I’d prefer to pay off the debts myself- but given a choice between moderate inflation for a period of time, and another Great Depression, I know which I’d choose.
That’s an awfully nice straw man ya got yourself, there. Does he dance, too?
@Robert “And social security just became even more infeasible, because the amount they need to fork out to maintain just became a whole lot more expensive than the amounts that were invested initially.”
Current social security premiums are paid out of current FICA taxes. There is no big social security bank account in the sky that is holding a balance, so inflation wouldn’t affect it’s balance in real terms. Of course, the current excess from FICA is given to other arms of the government in return for IOUs (via the Social Security Admin buying interest bearing treasury bonds). Mass inflation would decrease the value of these bonds if they are not TIPS bonds, and if they are TIPS bonds, then the governments debt payments would balloon. Stag-flation, of course, would hurt social security, because the FICA taxes would not increase (since wages aren’t increasing).
Anyway, you are right that inflation would hurt social security, but only once it passes current bond yields and only if prolonged, and not in the way most people assume (magic SS bank account balance).
I will agree with Brian that moderate inflation is better than deflation (Depression), but I would never say that inflation would be a good thing. I am one of those people that saves, and I prefer my savings to yield more than the inflation rate, so I don’t fall behind (get punished for good behavior as you put it).
We normally call those “IOUs” “Treasury Bills” or “T-Bills”. Of which the Social Security Administration holds something over $2 trillion worth, see here.
This is one of the things that worries me about this whole debate- the cavalier way in which the Republicans happily equate “Federal Government Bonds” with “worthless slips of paper”. Normally, I would consider this just normal semantic fudging (aka “dishonesty”- the same way that innocent children being ripped bloodily assunder is called “collateral damage”). But if you combine it with the mind-boggling fiscal irresponsibility they’ve shown over the last thirty years, one gets to wondering if maybe they know something (or are planning something) we don’t.
And that’s the important point. The reason I think inflation is comming down is the huge level of indebtedness Republican mismanagement has left us with. And it has been, almost entirely, Republican mismanagement. They’re the ones who keep insisting on cutting taxes and running deficits. The Democrats haven’t done enough to restrain them, I agree- but there’s a difference between the one who didn’t do enough to prevent the crime and the one who committed the crime.
If it were me, I’d raise taxes (especially on the rich), and cut spending (especially on the Military and the war in Iraq), and concentrate on paying down the debt. I see three choices in front of us- that’s one, another is inflation, and the third is the government declaring bankruptcy, and really turning government bonds- not just the ones held by social security but by everyone- really will be just worthless peices of paper.
@Brian
If you had read my comment, I point out that the IOUs are held as government bonds. The problem with considering this real money though, is when you think about how these will be paid back. The SSA holding all these bonds is like your right pocket owing your left pocket money. The only way the rest of the government is going to be able to pay back the SSA is by paying out of current tax revenue or borrowing more money from someone else. So, like I said in my original post that you didn’t seem to read, inflation hurts the notational value of these bonds, (I never said they were worthless), but it’d also be naive to depend on their value. Just like you don’t invest next month’s mortgage payment into stocks hoping for a short term gain (because if you lose money, you lose your house), it’s likewise dumb to treat all those bonds as some bank account you can actually draw on when needed. Small amounts yes, but you are basically limited to what the government can pass on to someone else.
I also question why you think the only two options are to raise taxes and cut spending. There is always the option of encouraging economic growth, which will lead to higher tax revenue via a bigger tax base. I’m all for cutting spending (especially on things like Iraq), but I don’t mind having a strong military in general.
Oh and I nearly forgot.
Why would the government have to declare bankruptcy any time soon? The interest payments on the national debt as a share of tax revenues have been decreasing for the last 16 years in a row. The debt costs less to maintain now than it has in a long time. Since a government never dies (like a person would), there is no deadline in the future when it has to pay that all back. The only thing that would ever cause anything resembling a bankruptcy would be if the interest grew to greater than tax receipts, which frankly will not happen as long as our economy grows. Currently interest costs about 10% of the federal budget, down from 16% in the mid-90s.
Debt is also only about 65% of GDP, and has been fairly steady since WW2. During the Depression and WW2, when the federal government really WAS broke, it was running at about 120% of GDP… or about like Italy today. Our debt to GDP ratio, which is the only number that really matters, is much lower than that of France or Japan… if you ask me, they are in much worse shape than we are.
How are the bonds held by the SSA different from the bonds held by anyone else? Other than it’s a branch of the federal government that holds them? We borrowed that money from the people paying social security, we owe them the money back. Just like any other loan, or any other bond.
The one difference is that Federal Goverment, not being required to adhere to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices), simply declared that they wouldn’t count debt held by the SSA. So the actual debt is higher than the stated debt. Even if the government decided to renege only on debt held by the SSA, and ignoring the implications this would have on the bond market (and trust me, the US Government deciding to default on any debt, anywhere, would have a huge impact), what this means is that for the last six decades we have had a horribly regressive tax system.
Here’s an interesting graph on debt vr.s GDP. Makes it rather obvious where the problem is. First nit- it was WWII that maxed the debt, the New Deal was done pay as you go. Second nit, it’s also obvious that it hasn’t been “fairly steady”. But there are some differences between then and now.
First difference: at the time, there wasn’t much debt held by everyone else. Corporations, states, cities, individuals, etc. all carried very low levels of debt (compared especially to now). The last time we had this much debt kicking around the private sector was, um, the 1920’s. Which is what the real problem is- a general credit crisis.
Second point: the debt the US government had at that point was mainly held by (presumably) loyal Americans. Today, large chunks of our debt are held by non-Americans. China, for example, holds like a billion dollars of our currencies and debt by itself. This gives rise to unappetizing possibilities. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day China says to the US “We’re taking Taiwan. If you try to stop us, we’ll trash your economy by dumping our reserves of dollars and t-bills.”
Third point: we’d just finished fighting a two-front war for survival against global fascism. If we suddenly needed to do this again, borrow, say, $14 trillion dollars to ensure our survival as a free people, could we do it? Also, fiscal responsibility isn’t just about going into debt or not, or by how far- it’s what you get in return for the debt. I mean, consider the following case: person A owes $200,000. They bought a house. Person B owes $100,000. They bought a lot of fancy meals out, let credit card payments slide, etc. Who is more fiscally responsible? Remember that B owes a lot less than A does! Same deal here. Personally, I’m glad that FDR and Truman spent whatever it took to win WWII. That strikes me as a good investment. What did we get from the Reagan/Bush debt?
The bonds held by the SSA are like any other bonds. My nitpicking was about the idea of paying them back. Fundamentally all the income the government has comes from it’s taxpayers, no matter what the tax is called. If you want to pay back the SSA bonds, you have to do it with tax dollars or funds from new bonds issued to a third party. So, you are left with three scenarios.
First, the SSA has all these bonds and they start redeeming them when SS payments start to exceed FICA tax intake. The rest of the government, to pay back the SSA, must raise tax money to pay.
Second situation, the SSA has no bonds at all. SS payments start to exceed FICA tax intake, and the government must raise tax money to keep paying out SS benefits.
Third situation, the SSA has bonds, starts to sell them to keep paying out SS benefits, and the treasury sells new bonds to a third party (most likely the American public) to cover them.
No matter what, our future SS shortfall will be covered out of taxes or new debt, not some mythical pile of cash stored away. Of course you can always cut benefits or grow the economy (and hence the tax base) faster, but neither of those have to do with the SSA’s bonds at all.
I’ll bite on your nits about debt vs GDP, while I still consider the 40-75% band it has stayed in for the last 50 years ‘fairly steady’ … it was definitely Reagan-Bush that ran it up again recently. And I didn’t mean to attack the New Deal (or involvement in WW2)… both of those programs/actions paid off splendidly, and I think represent the entire point of running a deficit… as in investment in the future. The trick is to only make smart investments!
First point: I wouldn’t debate that, but I don’t think that having debt is necessarily bad if you are responsible in managing it. I think a lot of people have forgot what a debt crisis is (I certainly am too young to know), and hubris took over. Now they get to learn their lesson.
Second point: You can refer to this pie chart of who holds our National Debt.
http://www.optimist123.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/23/piechart200706.png
The big red slice is the SSA and other intragovernment lending. Notice that domestic owners are about even with foreign owners. Of the foreign owners, everyone frets over China. Last I checked, China held about $400 billion worth of dollar instruments. This is about 4.5% of our total debt, or about 8.2% of our public debt (which is a much more useful number to think about anyway). The thing is, China would be stupid to try and use this debt against us. With a little politicking, I’m absolutely sure the American public would buy ‘China Bonds’ willingly, like they did during WW2, and just eat up everything China tried to sell. $400 billion is only about $1300 for every man, woman, and child. Throw in a bunch of rich people to be realistic, and China dumping it’s bonds would have very little effect. China, on the other hand, would be screwed. With no foreign reserves to draw on to stabilize its own currency, it’s economy would overheat from inflation very quickly.
Third point: I totally agree about being responsible and the New Deal and WW2 were both very responsible uses of debt financing. While I don’t really agree with their politics at all, I would say that Reagan/Bush (but mostly Reagan) bought us Global Military Superiority with all that debt they racked up. I think time will tell whether that is a good investment or not, but that seems to be what it was spent on.
Damn. I wish I could edit, or at least preview, comments so that I could remember to close tags.
The bonds that Soc Security holds are not Social Securities fault. That Social Security will want it’s money back eventually is no different than the Chinese, or American, bond holders wanting their money back eventually. When we have to raise taxes (or inflation rates) to cover our debts, it will not be because of Social Security- it’ll be because we spent a bunch of money we didn’t have.
This is one of the things that annoys me about this entire conversation- the (professed) shock and amazement at the concept that it might be necessary, some day, to actually repay the money loaned us. And that it’s our creditor’s fault for wanting repayment. Why, that’d be… inconvient.
I think the SSA was smart to buy bonds with it’s excess money. At least that way they earn interest on the ‘balance’ … Of course it’s not their fault. The fault lies in FICA taxes that were higher than they need to be for so long… and likewise soon to be lower than they need to be. If FICA taxes had been lower, there would be no bonds to argue over, and likewise no ’surplus’ of money for our politicians to waste on stupid shit.
I’m not sure where I ever acted shocked or amazed that the SSA would want its surplus back. What does kind of shock or amaze me is the whole idea that the SSA actually has a pile of funds to draw on. Like I said before, the only way to pay the SSA back is through tax revenue or new debt. I’m not saying it will never be paid back, I’m saying the point is moot. The whole problem is that the government has been using the FICA surplus to overspend instead of (more honestly) raising income taxes. I think we both agree on that point. It’s very regressive, since it’s a flat rate on only the first $90k of income, as you pointed out.
You can call it paying back the SSA or you can call it devoting more tax revenue to SS benefits… you can call it selling bonds to China and using the money to pay back the SSA. You can call it whatever you want… no matter what, those bonds that represent the ‘balance’ in the SS ‘account’ can only be turned into cash that old people can spend if the taxpayer or some third party loans the government the money to pay back the SSA.
I’m really not sure how else to make my point. Bonds are a promise to pay back a principle value plus interest in the future. The only way for the government to meet that promise is to pay them back out of current tax revenue, or roll over the debt to a third party. So all those bonds the SSA holds are really just a promise by the people of the US that they will eventually pay more taxes towards SS.
That is what is so mindbending about the whole deal. It’s like current workers paid too much FICA taxes so they could inflate this huge pile of bonds that the SSA owns, then future workers have to pay extra FICA taxes just to pay back the SSA. Who benefits? The rest of the government, which got by spending all this surplus money without any plan to pay it back.
I think Al Gore was right to claim the ‘SS Trust Fund’ was being ‘raided’ … but his solution was moronic (to somehow create a big bank account for SS that the rest of the government couldn’t touch… a lock box). It just doesn’t work that way. The better solution would be to lower FICA taxes to neutral rate, no deficit or surplus, then raise/lower them over time as needed. This would prevent the rest of the government from dishonestly spending money that wasn’t theirs. That is the root of this problem… through convoluted accounting no one realizes that the government is basically borrowing against our future.
I’m not even sure how we got on this whole tangent, because I was originally agreeing with you anyway. Our point of contention seems to be about these bonds the SSA possesses. If you really want my take (like I haven’t babbled enough already), then I think they are less than useless. The mechanism they represent allows our government to spend money that it later swears up and down is safely held for future needs. It’s not. If the SSA had been forced to refund any surplus it had, rather than loan it to the general fund via purchase of treasury bonds, then the entire situation would be better off.
[...] Definitions of Freedom [...]