December 3, 2005

Money

What say some people came to you and made this proposal:

You give them a certain amount of money every year for several decades. Meanwhile they would keep your money, at their discretion. At the end of the time period, they would give all of the money of yours they had saved and hadn't spent. They say that you'll benefit because when the time period is up and you receive your money back it will be an enormous boon to you; you will have more money then than you would have had otherwise because you won't have spent it all.

Would you accept that offer?

I wouldn't. I wouldn't trust that person. Unless they had a vested interest in preserving all of my money they would spend most of it and I would end up with less than I would have had otherwise. If I kept the money, I could spend it on things that would have been useful in the meantime and quite possibly would have been still helpful at the time I supposedly got the money back. The scheme offered couldn't possibly help me much, but I could definitely hurt me. Delegating one's hard earned money to another who may or may not be more responsible than you with the hope that they will do a better job at saving it than you is not a good idea.

So why does the government tax us billions of dollars every year in the form of Social Security with only the promise of ultimately giving it back in the form of some inadequate retirement fund? The reason is that it's a socialist scam. This is the idea that the people in charge know better how to take care of you than you do. (FDR at the time of Social Security's creation was the first president to attempt to control the economy and people's lives in this way) Some people seem surprised that the current administration failed to fix Social Security. Some blame it on this administration's ill-conceived efforts and say that the opposition should have prevailed so that Social Security would now be working. Others say that the opposition's efforts to hamper this administration were in fact the real culprit. In fact the real reason Social Security failed is because it is a failed attempt at redistribution. Social Security, and other socialist endeavors should not be tolerated. I hope that someday the people will see this and will chose to put the money in their own pockets.

Thank You.