A few weeks ago I was listening to the Dave Ramsey radio show and I heard him take a call from a young man who was struggling with a low-paying job and two kids he had to support all on his own. I was impressed with Dave’s advice.
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.
In a recent debate on the welfare state, I was asked whether I thought it was important to help others. That, I said, was not the right question. In a free society, people help others all the time — parents help children, neighbors help neighbors, private charities help orphans.
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.
In this episode of The Debt Dialogues, I talk with philosopher Harry Binswanger about inequality, the motive behind egalitarianism, and why opponents of the welfare state should reject the idea of “equality of opportunity.”
One strain of argument for the welfare state contends that because you have benefited from the welfare state, you have an obligation to fund the welfare state.
Somewhere near the bottom of Dante’s nine levels of hell rest the “squeegee bandits.” These were the guys who waited for your car to stop at a traffic light, and then — without permission — quickly squeegeed your windshield “clean.”
