Apr 08
Social Security is a program that takes money from poor people and transfers it to richer people. To the extent that America is defined by class structure (which can be debated), the poor tend to start working earlier in life, to pay into Social Security (and Medicare) longer, and to die younger. The rich tend …
Mar 24
The Business Insider is out with a chart showing that almost half of all Americans (47 %) save nothing and live paycheck to paycheck in response to decades of government policies that punish savers. Chief among the government’s anti-saver policies is the Federal Reserve system, which has set interest rates artificially low for more than …
Mar 24
A 2004 study by C. Eugene Steuerle, Adam Carasso and Lee Cohen of the Urban Institute, entitled “How Progressive is Social Security and Why?,” found that Social Security is a massive transfer from poor groups to rich Americans. Although “Social Security was designed to redistribute income from those with higher lifetime earning to thos with …
Mar 17
The U.S. Social Security program taxes most heavily on persons with low incomes, does not provide a fair return, and causes a massive transfer from the less well off to the better off. According to Milton and Rose Friedman, “the poor tend to pay [Social Security] taxes for more years and receive benefits for fewer …
Mar 07
Entitlements such as Social Security change people’s behaviors. Where people expect to be supported by a government program, they tend to work less, retire earlier, save less, and invest less. The world is much poorer because of such programs. The United States (and the world) is less prosperous, much poorer, less productive and less comfortable …
Feb 11
The great economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), in his exhaustive treatise “Man, Economy, and State,” briefly discussed Social Security (2nd ed.2001, pages 957-58): Social security confiscates the income of wage earners, and then, most people presume, it invests the money more wisely than they could themselves, later paying out the money to the former wage earners …
