The Case To Abolish Social Security

I’ve said for some time Social Security should be abolished, or at a minimum be voluntary.  Mark Brandly at Mises makes his case to abolish it.

Making the system sustainable will require higher taxes or benefits reductions. These reductions could be achieved by either reducing the benefits per recipient or reducing the number of beneficiaries — say, by raising the minimum age requirements. The solution is to give workers a negative rate of return on the money that is taken from them. It would also help if some workers collected no benefits at all. Workers who are taxed and then die before collecting any benefits are a boon to the system. Maybe the federal government should rethink its war on tobacco.

This system is a massive income-redistribution scheme, taking one-eighth of most workers’ incomes. The total tax burden is hidden from the workers. The tax revenues have been used to cover the deficits in the rest of the government’s budgets, and the only way to make the system sustainable is to give the participants a negative rate of return on their money.

Read up.