Orwell-Speak and Fear-Mongering

The headline in the Denver Post was “Social Security Isn’t Welfare”. The original editorial by Froma Harrop in the Providence RI Journal-Bulletin wasn’t quite so “peace is war” new-speak, but the text still offers the same hysteria that something might be done to finagle the sacred creation of FDR. Social Security Isn't Welfare

Let’s start with some basics. If you make $100 this year and next year I promise to give you more, that’s a good deal. If the following year I promise to give you still more, that’s the concept of adjustment to Social Security benefits. If, however, I don’t give you quite as much—still more, but not as much more—have your benefits been slashed? A reduction in rate of growth is not a cut!

Now, if you look at SS today you’ll find some interesting things. Is your SS benefit taxable? Don’t answer until you check if you intend to make any money on your own. If you are unable or unwilling to make any more money, you won’t pay any income tax back on your SS checks. But, if you find that a lifetime of experience, training and education allows you to contribute to society guess what? You will be taxed on your Social Security benefit. And, if you make more than a paltry $12k per year you will have to start reducing your SS benefit by $1 for every $2 you make.

So, Ms Harrop, why all the frantic wailing? She says:

“Under the president's new proposal, workers earning over $36,500 in today's dollars see massive cuts in Social Security benefits. What would follow is easy to predict: Most workers stop regarding Social Security as an essential source of their retirement income. They start resenting their Social Security payroll taxes more than they already do. Some accuse the low-income beneficiaries of not having worked as hard as they did, or failing to save for retirement. In the end, broad support for the Social Security system crumbles, and Congress finds excuses for throwing it overboard.”

Get this Froma, most working people already have stopped regarding SS as an essential source. They take care of themselves and they don’t want nanny government fiddling with them.

In some sort of Owellian new-speak, she contends that SS is self-sufficient while blatantly ignoring the predictions of an unbalanced future.

“For the record, today's Social Security is not welfare. It is the least welfare-like of any government program. The workers pay for it entirely themselves, out of their payroll taxes. Unlike farm supports and Medicare, not a penny comes from the Treasury.”

Duh? You don’t pay for it yourself. You pay for it for someone else, in the fervent hope that someone else will pay for it for you when you become eligible. Get the distinction? The extra pennies in the past didn’t come FROM the treasury, they flowed INTO the treasury where they were spent by profligate legislators buying themselves votes by handing out bread and sponsoring circuses.

In a remarkable suggestion which seems contrary to her original thesis, she finishes by suggesting a draconian solution. If “political leaders want to turn SS into welfare” they should abolish the payroll tax and fund the benefit out of general revenues. Of course that would be unpalatable and she knows it. A huge tax increase might look good to the 40% of Americans who don’t pay any income tax to begin with and would certainly appeal to the redistribution aficionados of the far left, but it wouldn’t keep the politicos in office who depend upon massive campaign contributions from the folks who make money for themselves.

She wants more progressivism on taxes—really sock it to the “wealthiest X percent”. She wants “levies on corporate profits”—we can’t be advocating success or competitive industry can we? She wants more taxes on investment income. That should put a damper on the growing economy. In short she really advocates for a system that stifles creativity and independence while rewarding laziness and dependence. Sounds a bit--nay, more than a bit—Marxist to me.

She finishes with this:

“Do this, and you don't have anything resembling Social Security as we know it. You have a welfare program for indigent old people. This idea -- not original to me -- is simply a straighter path to the destination proposed by the president. In either case, you end up with a welfare program helping only poor people. That's the worst kind of welfare to depend on.”

Am I missing something here? Isn’t any welfare program one which helps “only poor people”? The rest of us don’t need or want welfare.

Rather than employ all of those destructive economic policies she proposes why not let us keep a bit of our own money and put it into investment accounts where we could be responsible for our own success, plan for our own retirement, enjoy the fruits of our own labor and build our own estates?