- Defaulting on our debt is an executive choice
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If we default on any debt payments, it is because the White House has made the choice to default. There is no need to default even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised for a long time. - Exposing Social Security
- Step one to fixing Social Security is to make it obvious just what the problem is.
- Senator Marco Rubio and the National Press Club
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Senator Marco Rubio appeared before the beltway press on Tuesday to talk about reforming Social Security and Medicare before they go bankrupt. - Social Security
- Just what is social security? Is it a welfare program or a pension fund, or something else we don’t understand?
- Social Security reform and the polls
- Republican efforts on social security reform may pay off even if polls indicate people don’t currently support reform.
- Stop lying about Social Security
- There are two big lies about Social Security that allow such a flawed program to continue: the extent of the taxes and the nature of the welfare system it is. The first step toward fixing a flawed system is to stop lying about it.
More Information
- Milton Friedman—The Free Lunch Myth
- “Can I tax the building? The building can’t pay taxes. Only people can pay taxes. So when you talk about a tax on business, it has to be paid by somebody. Either it’s paid by the stockholder, or it’s paid by the customer, or it’s paid by the worker. There’s no other way it can come from.” “In connection with the current discussion of social security this fiction arises. There is a fiction that the social security tax is half on the individual and half on the employer. That’s nonsense. That’s bookkeeping, that’s not economics. That’s not reality. The part that the employer pays is part of his wage cost. If an employer considers…”
- The Truth About Entitlements
- “Does the United States really have to restructure the entitlement programs that affect seniors? Some would argue that Social Security is sound. Some would suggest that greater taxes on the highest earners would be a solution. Some would say that Medicare’s problems can be solved with painless reforms to control costs. Some would suggest that we have room to raise overall taxes to levels seen in European countries. Some would say that high economic growth is likely to eliminate the problem. This paper looks at the feasibility of these alternatives to scaling back spending promised for seniors.”
- Social Security Goes Bankrupt
- “American socialists have been raiding the Social Security ‘trust fund’ for decades, to make the rest of the government look less insolvent than it really is. The funds are stuffed with IOUs, which count as ‘assets’ for Social Security… but are not counted as liabilities for the general Treasury fund.”
