Social Security ‘Cure’ Worse Than the Disease

In “Kerrey-Simpson Package Would Destroy Social Security Benefits” (July 9) Prof. Robert Eisner suggests some solutions for the problems of Social Security. Unfortunately, his solutions are pure coercion in the “intellectual” tradition of socialist central planners of the past 200 years.

It is only necessary to quote Eisner’s words to see where he is coming from: “A real issue is the declining ratio of young working people to elderly retired people that we can expect in the decades ahead.” Eisner’s “solution”: “Somebody must work to bake the bread that those not working wish to eat. And those working must be willing to give or be coerced into giving those not working an appropriate share of that bread.”

Eisner then discounts, to some extent, the reality of what he just said is a real issue. He then proposes his solution: “To the extent to which it [the ratio of workers to retirees] does decline, there are remedies. One, rarely mentioned, is to encourage people to have more children. . . . Aside from the coercion of limiting the use of contraceptives or of choice regarding abortion, this might entail allowances or tax credits for children and government provision for child care from the earliest ages. The latter would have the added advantage of encouraging more women to enter the labor force.”

Ah! Ha! I see it now! The solution to Social Security’s problems is to entice or coerce women to have more children, and then to place the children in the care of others from the earliest ages, with that care to be provided by the government.

While the rest of Eisner’s piece is not quite so obnoxious, it does sweep under the rug all of the real problems of Social Security.

These problems were addressed in a comprehensive article in Time magazine’s issue of March 20, 1995, entitled “Social Insecurity.” Time noted, correctly, that Social Security is and always has been a Ponzi scheme that promised benefits far higher than the taxes paid by the earlier recipients, so that later participants must be forced to pay for this bonanza to their seniors. Unfortunately, as in all Ponzi or pyramid schemes, when the amount of new money coming in dwindles (as it will with Social Security), the pyramid scheme explodes.

The truth about Social Security is that it will not pay anybody enough for a decent income when they are old, but it is such a heavy tax that it is interfering with the ability of the younger generation to save and provide for their own retirement.

FREDERIC G. MARKS

Los Angeles