Republicans want to expand Social Security by tacking on a paid parental leave entitlement to the program. More than 200 House Democrats are pushing to expand Social Security’s benefits by an average of 2% across the board. With Paul Ryan’s speakership tenure passed, President Trump in the White House, and Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic Party in practice, the only bipartisan agreement between our D.C. overlords is the shameless embrace of Social Security.
The “lockbox” of the Social Security trust fund will also run out and become insolvent, spiking our federal deficit, by just 2035.
Liberals have spent decades mocking conservative skeptics who argue that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Now Republicans expressly elected to office with the promise that they’d cut the deficit have followed Trump’s lead and joined know-nothing Democrats.
Well, the solvency problem demonstrates that we fiscal conservatives were right all along. There was never a lockbox. Social Security at first provided a 92,380.48% return on investment, but today it pays out a single-digit return on investment, and tomorrow it promises a negative return. It has always been structured like a Ponzi scheme.
It’s time for Washington to cut millennials a deal and give us a chance to get off the ship before it sinks, saving our wallets and the nation’s ballooning deficit. Congress ought to pass a Social Security buyout to anyone who wants it.
The government has promised Social Security payments to Americans who have spent a lifetime paying into the system. Given the structure of the program, that requires taxes from Americans working today. A buyout that required Americans to pay double or triple the amount of Social Security taxes for a finite amount of time in exchange for being released from the program for the rest of their lives could circle the square. Current retirees would be funded by increased Social Security taxes on Americans taking the buyout, and millennials could be saved from a lifetime of paying into a broken system.
The two biggest factors driving America’s looming deficit crisis are the projected increases in major public healthcare spending and Social Security. The question of healthcare is massively complex, with every factor from medical research and development to physician supply to rural hospitals needing to be accounted for.
Retirement is far more simple. Actual bipartisan budget hawks ought to take advantage of the problem’s simplicity. A buyout is a solution which forces no one off Social Security, and the proposal forces its defenders to explain how the program isn’t a Ponzi scheme. The Bernie Sanderses of the world may argue that allowing people to opt out of the program would make it insolvent in the future. First off, why would it when Social Security’s greatest defenders swear that it’s just your money, not that of other taxpayers? Secondly, it’s already going to become immediately insolvent in the future. This won’t exacerbate the scope of the problem; it’ll mitigate it.
There’s a decent case to be made that the government ought to incentivize retirement savings as it does with IRAs, 401(k)s, and investment credits for low-earners. But that could all be achieved with a private system, or with a system of private Social Security accounts that are invested in something that gains in value. Despite left-wing disdain for the financial industry, over lifetimes, free markets work. Money invested by a 20-year-old can outlast boom and bust cycles and outpace the market.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review decided to put the government’s promise that Social Security protects retirement funds as an investment to test. They compared the Social Security return on investment of those who retired in 2003 with what their ROI would have been if they put their Social Security spending into six month certificates of deposit or an S&P 500 index fund. The result: More than 99% of Americans would have seen a greater return on investment from either certificates of deposit or an index fund than they received from Social Security.
But the fundamental role of a liberal government isn’t to hold the hands of adults fully capable of basic financial planning. It’s to serve as a backup for those who absolutely cannot. Issuing welfare to those who cannot help themselves may not be a conservative solution, but slashing Social Security for everyone in favor of just offering welfare to those who absolutely need it is at least more so than our current reality.
For all the free stuff Democrats and Republicans alike wish to give millennials, the greatest gift of all would be freedom from the nation’s dumbest entitlement program and a lifetime of taxation issued under the lie that we’ll ever see that money back again.
