The Social Security Trust Fund
Is that an explicit agenda? Is there a conscious ‘liberal’ conspiracy to use Social Security as the launching pad to a grander and more benevolent federal government? Probably not – no more than there is a ‘conservative’ conspiracy to use Social Security as a stake to drive through the heart of the social safety net. But when a particular policy advances your long-term goals then doubts about its short-term effect become much easier to dismiss.
Whatever you may think of the President’s proposals for Social Security reform – and in particular the proposals for privatization deserve skepticism – the fundamental debate is over whether or not there is actually a crisis in the current system. To those who favor a general and large-scale expansion of the federal welfare state supported by a seemingly boundless capacity for “greedy corporations” and “the rich” to supply funding, the Social Security trust fund backed by that capacity is both solvent and adequate. To those who favor smaller and less obtrusive government with leaner claims both on individual liberty and on individual and societal wealth, the Social Security trust fund is an accounting sham that merely obscures the coming disaster.
Who is right? It depends on your view of the welfare state and of our capacity for sustaining it with loans and tax revenue. Which means neither side will be won over, even when one side eventually wins.
The argument over Social Security is at root a continuation of the more fundamental argument over social welfarism itself: Is Not! Is So!
© Copyright 2005, Augustus P. Lowell