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Social Security: An Inconvenient Truth

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English: Scanned image of author's US Social S...
Social Security card. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The first “top ten” Republican presidential nomination debate consisted almost entirely of empty calories, and it’s easy to see why. The event was put on by Fox “News,” its dominating presence was Donald Trump, and its focus was, simply, on who could get most militaristic about Iran and immigration.

Issues of substance? Fuhgeddaboudit … except for one brief exchange between New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor (and Fox talk show host) Mike Huckabee. Between the two of them, they revealed the narrow and dangerous range of thinking on the future of Social Security that characterizes both major American political parties. Even Bernie Sanders, allegedly a fire-breathing socialist, can’t seem to think outside that range on Social Security. A quick roundup of the positions:

Huckabee thinks that Social Security can and should be “saved” by switching from progressive federal income taxation to the “Fair” Tax, a 30% national sales tax.

Christie thinks that Social Security can and should be “saved” by increasing the retirement age by two years over a period of 25 years (i.e. every year or so, the retirement age goes up by one month) and “means testing” (i.e. stopping Social Security checks to senior citizens with retirement incomes in excess of $200k and $4 million in liquid assets).

Sanders thinks that Social Security can be “saved” by un-capping the tax that supports it. Right now, only the first $118,500 of each individual’s income is taxed for Social Security purposes. Sanders wants to remove that ceiling.

Social Security has long, and rightly, been characterized as the “third rail” of American politics. Those who touch it tend to die spectacularly gruesome political deaths. It has to be talked about, but nobody’s willing to talk about it outside the context of “saving” it.

That fear may be justified, but it’s also incredibly bad for America.

The ratio of retirees to current tax-paying workers is inverting — Baby Boomers are retiring, having had fewer children than their own parents.

Social Security’s  “trust fund” consists entirely of IOUs from a government already more than $18 trillion in debt and showing no signs of ever learning fiscal responsibility.

None of the gimmicks proposed by the likes of Huckabee, Christie and Sanders changes those fundamentals.  Even Social Security’s trustees predict insolvency by 2035, and their bookkeeping looks suspiciously optimistic.

Here’s what the politicians don’t want to tell you: Social Security is going to end.

Even if the US government hadn’t operated it as a Ponzi scheme, spending its revenues and paying old claims from new revenues, the demographic changes of the last 50 years would have made it untenable. And even absent those demographic changes, well, Ponzi schemes always collapse sooner or later.

It’s going to end. The only choice is whether it ends with a bang (total collapse and sudden mass destitution among the elderly) or a whimper (phasing it out with minimum possible harm to those counting on it).

Any politician who tells you otherwise is lying to you.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Presidential Politics: They’re All Conservatives

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"The Great Presidential Puzzle": &qu...
“The Great Presidential Puzzle”: “Illustration shows Senator Roscoe Conkling, leader of the Stalwarts group of the Republican Party, playing a puzzle game. All blocks in the puzzle are the heads of the potential Republican presidential candidates, among them Grant, Sherman, Tilden, and Blaine. Parodies the famous 14-15 puzzle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As reliably as seconds ticking by on an expensive wristwatch, Republican presidential candidates loudly and vehemently identify themselves as “conservatives.” We’re used to hearing politicians lie, but these politicians are telling the truth for once. They ARE all conservatives.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, lie constantly about their political orientations. They label themselves “liberals” or even “progressives.” But they are conservatives, too.

Since FDR’s New Deal, politicians of all stripes have consistently tried to link conservatism with “smaller government.” But that’s not what conservatism is, or ever has been about. Conservatism is about conserving.

What does it mean to conserve something? “To keep in a safe or sound state; to save; to preserve; to protect” (Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition).

What does political conservatism aim to save, preserve, protect? The existing system. As William F. Buckley, Jr. put it, political conservatism consists of “standing athwart the tracks of history yelling stop” (or, in the case of conservatism’s “progressive” variant, “yelling slow down”). And that, in a nutshell, is the platform and program of every serious candidate for either major party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Sure, there are differences in emphasis. But they’re not especially significant.

The candidates who call themselves conservatives are hell-bent on preserving the post-WWII garrison state by way of the single largest welfare (mostly corporate welfare) entitlement program in the federal budget: They want to maintain “defense spending” at a rate ten times that of America’s nearest competitor (China). They describe proposals to even limit the growth of that budget line as “draconian cuts.” When it comes to “social” programs like Social Security, they occasionally talk about minor cuts or privatization … but only by way of “saving” the system, not abolishing it.

The conservative candidates who call themselves “progressives” come at it from the opposite direction: Their priority is saving those “social” programs. When it comes to military spending, they occasionally talk about tiny cuts, or perhaps capping increase rates, but as the Obama administration demonstrates, even those minor modifications are not hills they’re prepared to make their last stands on.

If we think of politics as a 360-degree circle, the differences between modern American “conservatism” and modern American “progressivism” cover maybe five degrees, just to the right of zero. Those boundaries are, to mix metaphors, third rails. Step on them and die — or at least, as Rand Paul has discovered, get a nasty jolt encouraging you to hurry back into safe territory.

In reality, there are only two available political directions: Society can become more libertarian, or it can become more authoritarian (and eventually totalitarian). The conservative candidates of both parties offer only the latter option.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Time to End the Elections Duopoly

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RGBStock.com Vote PencilCalifornia’s elections system is making news again (“Top-two primary system survives challenge,” by Thomas Elias, Salinas Californian, February 17). “Top two,” in California and elsewhere, is the latest effort to strengthen the Republican and Democratic parties’ monopoly — “duopoly” — over  American politics.

Supporters’ justifications for “top two” laws are that too much choice on the November ballot “confuses” voters, and that permitting only two candidates avoids run-offs and plurality rather than majority winners. So while those pesky third party (Libertarian, Green, etc.) and independent candidates can run in the earlier primary elections if they jump through enough hoops, in November voters must choose between the “top two” primary vote-getters — almost always  a Republican and a Democrat.

The single largest voter identification in the United States, exceeding any party’s, is “independent.” Polling consistently shows that pluralities or majorities of Americans support the idea of a “third major party” and would consider voting for non-duopoly candidates for political office.

Yet every other November, the vast majority of non-duopoly candidates go down to defeat. A few win local office. Even fewer become state legislators. Bona fide independent or third party governors, US Representatives and US Senators are rarities. And the next US president who isn’t a Republican or Democrat will be the first since those two parties coalesced into their current forms in the mid-19th century.

Why? Well, for one thing, those two major parties control access to election ballots. And they use that control to make it as difficult and expensive as possible for third party and independent candidates to even offer themselves as alternatives.

Prior to 1884, printed ballots were provided to voters by political parties and candidates. Those voters were also free to write out their own ballots by hand if they didn’t vote “straight party ticket.” Between 1884 and 1991, the states adopted the “Australian ballot” — a uniform ballot printed at government expense.

Standardized, one-size-fits all ballots, of course, have to come with rules. And guess who gets to make those rules? The two ruling parties, of course. Over time they have sewn up their “duopoly” with increasingly draconian restrictions.

In most states, Democratic and Republican nominees for office appear on the ballot automatically or nearly automatically. Third party and independent candidates might be allowed to run as well, if they spend lots of money collecting petition signatures — money which then becomes unavailable for their actual campaigns.

“Top two” proponents seek to tighten the screws even further and eliminate any chance whatsoever that a third party or independent candidate without, say, the personal wealth of a Ross Perot, might “spoil” the election of one of the establishment candidates, or even surge to victory.

They refer to their systematic diminution of voter choice, with straight faces, as “democracy.”

The rest of us refer to it as “rigging America’s elections.”

If voters want real political choice, it’s time to start voting for candidates who support free and fair elections … while the duopolists still allow us to.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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