Social Security

FDR Versus Today’s Liberals

Featured image One of my favorite themes is to trace the immense distance today’s liberals have traveled from the liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt.  Liberals used to hate it when Ronald Reagan quoted this remark FDR made in a speech to Congress in 1935: “The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national »

What Does the Payroll Tax Have To Do With the Pipeline?

Featured image Nothing, of course. But the Democrats’ demagoguing of the extension of the payroll tax holiday has naturally prompted a response from the GOP, which, in turn, has already brought a veto threat by President Obama: President Obama warned Congress on Wednesday not to tie approval of a payroll tax cut to other sensitive measures such as the Keystone Pipeline project, which his administration delayed last month. … “Any effort to »

The Wrong Apology

Featured image The usually supremely sensible Robert J. Samuelson has a curious column out this morning in the Washington Post, calling for former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to link arms and embark on an “apology tour,” admitting their failure to tackle entitlements while in office and forming a bipartisan truth squad to create an opening for compromise in the middle: They would say things that would offend their political »

This Week’s Applied Hayek: Nation Magazine Edition

Featured image The Nation magazine thinks it has hit a two-fer in a recent issue, calling attention to the supposed hypocrisy of Charles Koch (cue villainous musical fanfare here) and Friedrich Hayek, for taking advantage of Social Security benefits.  Hayek was reluctant to accept an invitation to make an extended visit to the U.S. in the mid-1970s in part because of health reasons, and he worried about his health care coverage if »

You’re idiotic, he explained

Featured image Is Social Security something of a Ponzi scheme? It seems to me to partake of its essential elements, requiring new “investors” to pay off previous “investors.” The trappings of the program are sufficiently misleading that they would land principals operating in the private sector in serious trouble. Thanks to a variety of material misrepresentations, as John recently noted, many Americans still believe that the government maintains an “account” in their »

Is the Social Security Fraud Drawing to a Close?

Featured image Social Security, not Medicare or Medicaid, is the crown jewel of the entitlement state.  For several generations now, it has been sold to voters as a more or less sacred compact. Many Americans still believe that the federal government maintains an “account” in their name, which contains assets. Some even think that their “account” contains their own contributions, carefully set aside for their retirement by Franklin Roosevelt or his successors. »

Obama’s Lying Demagoguery About Social Security

Featured image Of course, it might not be lying demagoguery, it could be ignorance; with Obama that question is always present. Obama says that if August 2 arrives without raising the debt ceiling, Social Security checks may not go out. Law professor Michael McConnell, a former federal appellate judge, explains why Obama is wrong: The Social Security trust fund holds about $2.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, which its trustees are legally »