Truck and Barter

Please don't laugh (or cry). This post is not about sensible policy; it is about being tied to a system that makes me worse off. It's a vain plea to all of you who support SS: please let me go my own way.

I know that my release from SS is not going to happen; too many of my fellow Americans -- current beneficiaries, politicians, and those ideologically committed to national collectivism -- really want me to stay.

For several years, I have been a fine source of free money; I know I'll be an even better source with a Ph.D. But you have no right to determine which, if any, elderly, widowed, orhpaned, or disabled person deserves my financial support.

The system, as it is currently set up, doesn't care about my welfare, because if it did, I would already be estranged from it. In this world, here and now, I would prefer to support my Russian mother-in-law, somebody who will never receive a dime from SS, and a few other Russian relatives who live in far worse conditions than many on the SS dole.

You Americans don't care about my mother-in-law, but I do. Your laws tell me that through SS, I must support my own mother, who lives in a McMansion. I must also support my mother's boyfriend, who just bought a Lexus. To hell with you. My world, my preferences, my horizon extend beyond political borders.

How many others are there, immigrants and nonimmigrants alike, who struggle to send remittances to loved-ones outside the U.S., and are forced to support people in the U.S. who are much better off?

I would have liked to have opted out when I graduated college, but this was not an option. As a result, I would have owned a much larger portolio of assets that I would have sold to support my family while I earned a Ph.D. in economics. Instead I did save some, but the sum I "gave" in social security taxes over the term I worked would have made life a lot easier.

Do I sound crass to you? Well, maybe that's because you haven't looked at SS from my perspective. So, here's a crash course on my views of the SS program: I've worked and have given money to the government, which has spent it on a potpurri of beneficiaries (some "needier" than others), and through a gimmicky transfer of funds cooked up to look like investment, the general Federal budget. The benefits of this income redistribution are real, and I recognize the beneficiaries were former "donors" to your involuntary retirement program, but this investment of funds into an asset trust fund is a pretense.

From the SS perspective, that transfer is a huge fund of assets, short and long-term interest-bearing U.S. Government securities. But from the view of the rest of the government, those securities are debt. From the view of the taxpayer, the assets and debt cancel, and the transfer of funds is simply an accounting entry indicating accrued spending--the amount of money taken from SS taxes and spent on non-SS activities.

I know that the SS deduction is an income tax with a funny label, that's all. If there were no SS taxes to pay for SS benefits, the SSA would have to take money from the federal government. Instead, the federal government takes the SS tax surplus.

Notice I use the word "take" -- some would use the loaded term "raid" -- not the word "borrow". The federal government may use Treasury Bonds (a debt instrument) to complete these transactions legally, and those T-Bonds may accrue interest, but the government is no more borrowing from itself than my pants are when I remove my wallet from my left pocket and put it into my right.

The government spends every damn dime you and I send in through SS taxes, much of it on non-SS matters. Granted some of the government's expenditures on non-SS matters are investments that will yield returns. In 2003, the OASI "Trust Fund" increased its "assets" by $138 billion, all of which was "invested" in government securities. How much of that $138billion was actually invested, and not spent on paper clips or bureaucracy? I don't know, and there's nothing I can do about it. The SSA promises to give me benefits when I'm old or disabled, but I need them now. When I'm old, I'll have my own nestegg.

Thanks for nothing, folks.

I think it's clear that I feel absolutely no larger committment whatsoever to this program. In fact, I'm owed an apology by the government for being shady and dishonest with me. All those pathetic statements from the SS telling me how much I've put into the system... and what I'm "entitled" to later on. I know what this means, and it is not a philosophically principled, glorious future. Since you insist on keeping me in the system involuntarily, somewhere down the line, I'll be collecting benefits, while some other schmuck will be supporting me. Whatever. This wage slavery is patently dishonest, and I want no part of it. I don't like it, and want out. If the government can pretend that there really is a separate Social Security system, I can want out of that system.

But I know moral pleas won't convince you to free me. So what would you say to the following exchange?

I relinquish your "obligation" to pay me in the future; in exchange, I give you no more "contributions". You may keep all the money I've already "given" you.

This modest proposal is extraordinarily fair. You've taken my money; I don't want any back. Sounds good, right? In fact, I'll do one better. I'll work for X more years, giving you all the SS contributions you currently require, and then I'll relinquish your obligations, if you'll relinquish mine! More free money for you! No strings attached!

You don't want it? Why not? How about if I get my mother to let you relinquish her benefits too? What can I offer you guys to let me out of the system today?

This dickering process is similar in principle (though definitely not extent) to how most nations freed slaves: compensating slave-owners. Hamilton did it in New York, 80 years before the rest of the country, and Lincoln wanted to end the civil war by compensating slave-owners around $400 a head. This what I would like to do--emancipate myself from your system by buying my way out.

Just think of it in those terms for one minute.

UPDATE 1-21-05: I forgot to mention that when a slave was freed, so were his decendants. I guess that stream of future contributions would slightly increase my net present value to the SS system, and raise the current spot price of liberation from SS.