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Ayn Rand Institute experts appear frequently in various media outlets, addressing everything from the state of the nation to the state of the culture. Here are some recent highlights.
Probably the most plausible argument for Social Security is that it has made Americans better off financially, lifting millions of seniors out of poverty, and providing all of us with the security of knowing that we will have a decent pension in old age. But none of that is true.
Dean Baker, a leading welfare statist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, recently offered up his theory for why a growing number of Americans are still living with Mom and Dad well into their twenties. His answer? Basically, too little government intervention and too little government spending.
In this episode of The Debt Dialogues, I contrast my own approach to the welfare state crisis with those who label it “generational theft,” and discuss why no one — not even the elderly — benefits from the welfare state.
Haven’t bought my new book on the welfare state, RooseveltCare: How Social Security Is Sabotaging the Land of Self-Reliance? Here’s a recent interview I did with Kerry Lutz and the Financial Survival Network on the book and the urgent necessity of abolishing Social Security.
If you spend any time reading free-market thinkers, you’ll inevitably encounter the argument that wealth redistribution is wrong because it is theft. See, for instance, this recent article by economist Dominick T. Armentano aptly titled “Redistribution Is Theft.”
It’s inevitable. Whenever I attack Social Security as an immoral institution that needs to be abolished, someone announces that my arguments are irrelevant because Ayn Rand was a hypocrite who took Social Security.
One of the things that makes thinking clearly about Social Security difficult is that the program actually blends together two very different issues: (1) how individuals prepare for old-age and (2) transferring income from those who earn it to those who allegedly need it.
Elizabeth Warren and many of the other people recklessly seeking to expand Social Security, which is already on an unsustainable course, justify their crusade by claiming that America is facing a retirement crisis. Millions of older Americans, they say, cannot afford to retire: Social Security doesn’t pay enough and they haven't saved sufficiently on their own.
