Would Jesus Be for the Common Good?

Privatizing Social Security: 'Me' Over 'We'.

Comments

[Scott]

If its wrong for Falwell and Robertson to legislate their morality, its equally wrong for the left to do so. I'm tired of being morally judged simply for not wanting to hand power over to the State (my bank account is no more anyone else's business than my bookshelf or church attendance is). The people who run govt programs are no different from (and thus every bit as self-interested as) those who run corporations.

[Streak]

Without moralizing, is there a value in a shared communal idea? Conservatives seem to be saying over and over that it should be each individual off by themselves, pulling on bootstraps and working to accumulate wealth. Isn't there value in community? In shared experience?

[Scott]

is there a value in a shared communal idea?

Shared voluntarily? Sure. 'Shared' in the sense of "submit or face jail time"? No.

[Chameleon3]

I'm with Scott, sharing should be voluntary, not forced as in Social Security. Government welfare should also be out the door. There was none of this in Jesus's time from the Romans, and I didnt hear him complaining about it.

[Leighton]

There was also slavery in Jesus's time, and he didn't seem to have much to say about it. Maybe the South was right?

[dlw]

We all receive protections from the state, who has the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, and in turn owe obligations, such as taxes and other measures that support others. This is a continuation of the feudal system of mutual obligations. As an investor, you already get your interests protected in other ventures. In social security, you will come out with a lower return than you otherwise might have received, but in exchange many others are made to save more than they would otherwise would and guaranteed more stability in their income as they reach retirement age.

The right to have private property is never an absolute one. At issue are the rules that govern us and our inter-relations. We all benefit when more people have more secure futures. It is not unjust, per se, to redistribute income some, inasmuch, as our income streams inevitably reflect our hard work, luck and market power.

dlw

[dlw]

note, we're trying to have a discussion about how Social Security might be reformulated over at the Social Gospel today, if others are interested.

dlw

[Scott]

We all receive protections from the state, who has the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, and in turn owe obligations, such as taxes and other measures that support others.

Not paying SS taxes and not getting SS support would go together. I'm not demanding SS checks w/o having paid taxes. This 'obligation' doesn't exist.

That, and the govt doesn't have a monopoly on legit violence. A rapist breaks into a woman's apartment, and she defends herself w/ violence by clubbing him w/ a baseball bat. Violence? Yep. Legit? Yep. Govt? Nope.

The right to have private property is never an absolute one.

Its as absolute as any other rights are. Every right is a property right when you get down to it. Freedom of religion? If I have the govt shut down your church service, I've violated your rights. If I have your worship service removed from my living room where you are holding it w/o my consent, I'm not violating your rights. The govt decides what gets printed on govt owned printing presses every day - its only when it says you can't print something on your own press that the 1st amendment has been violated.

Every right requires a sphere where the govt is not allowed, and that sphere is private property.

[The Atheist]

For me, social security/welfare/any tax funded social programs are not an issue of "morality," they are an issue of our social contract, and they make socio-economic sense. When everyone is better off, everyone REALLY IS better off. When there is less poverty there is less crime. When people are happier, when people feel secure in their financial futures, productivity goes up and the economy improves. No one operates best under the stress of more workdays per year than any other developed country in the world. No one can focus 100% or keep a good attitude when you're afraid your job is going to get outsourced or handed to someone half your age for half your pay. Stress kills. Your body releases hormones that make you gain weight faster and more readily, and your veins constrict so your blood pressure goes up. It's all interconnected.

[Carlos]

In case not everybody is signed up for the Los Angeles Times, I copy below the article.

----------------
Privatizing Social Security: 'Me' Over 'We'
By Benjamin R. Barber

Social Security privatization has been vigorously challenged on both economic and technical grounds. It has been said again and again that privatization increases risk for prospective retirees without solving the long-term Social Security financing shortfall (if there actually is one). It has been argued that privatization is merely a scheme to divert money from the Social Security trust fund for speculative stock market investments. And it has been noted that it creates new costs (portfolio management, government oversight) without being able to guarantee workers future retirement benefits.

Yet the most profound cost of privatization has been wholly ignored: the systemic cost to our public way of life. By turning a public social insurance and pension policy into a private bet in which personal and private decisions determine who does well and who does badly, we do irreparable harm to our democratic "common ground." After all, one of this nation's greatest public goods has been its promise to give every working family a guarantee of support at retirement, or in case of disability or death. This promise, offered to all citizens, wipes away all the distorting traces of class, race and gender that often play out so dismayingly in the private realm. You cannot simply take justice out of the public realm and put it into the private realm without fundamentally weakening the democracy on which the very possibility of justice depends.

Conservatives ought to recognize even more quickly than liberals that privatization — whether of education, housing or Social Security — makes us less of a public. It diminishes the republic — the res publica, or public things that define our commonweal. It turns the common "we" into a collection of private "me's." It opts for market Darwinism, in which smart investors prosper but others lose, rather than social justice as its organizing principle. It demeans the "us" by turning "us" into "it" — the big, bad, faceless government bureaucracy. And it privileges the private and individual by appealing to market liberty, as if people could really be free one by one or as consumers alone.

Private market liberty is not political liberty; it is only personal choice. It may generate private benefits ("I want an SUV!" or "Give me 100 shares of EBay!") but offers nothing for the common good (a fuel conservation policy, for instance). It is as citizens that we pay our Social Security taxes, and it should be as citizens that we enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Yet privatization tries to convince us that the consumer is simply another, more efficient, form of the citizen. The citizen who votes with her dollars rather than her ballots. But dollars don't deliberate. They don't seek common ground. They are not bearers of empathy and imagination. As education consumers in Chicago or Washington, we can select the "best schools" for our children, but as citizens we need public schools that help make us all public citizens. As consumers in Los Angeles, we can choose among hundreds of automobile models, but only as citizens can we make the choices that create a public transportation system serving all.

Privatization is a kind of reverse social contract: It dissolves the bonds that tie us together. The social contract takes us out of the state of nature; it asks us to give up a part of our private liberty to do whatever we want in order to secure common liberty for all. Privatization puts us back in the state of nature where we possess the natural power to get whatever we can but lose the common power to secure everything to which we have a natural right.

Private choices rest on individual power and skills and on personal luck. Public choices rest on civic rights and common responsibilities. With privatization, this administration is trying to seduce us back into the state of nature, where the strong dominate the weak and anarchy ultimately dominates the strong and the weak, undermining security for both. Under these conditions, Thomas Hobbes reminds us, we are perfectly free to do as we choose, but as a consequence we live lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Not an ideal recipe for social security.

The Social Security entitlement should not be toyed with and altered in accord with today's economic fashions. It is an emblem of civic membership and a reflection of the benefits that come with the responsibilities of citizenship.

For us as individuals, privatizing Social Security is probably a bad bet on technical grounds. But for us as citizens, it is a certain disaster. As prospective retirees and private consumers we may want to argue about it, but as citizens, if we care about our democratic republic, we are bound to condemn it.

[dlw]

Scott, I don't believe anyone gets SS without paying into the program at some point, but we'll have to get into the details to see that. It is primarily a forced savings program that has some redistributive effects.

And, self-defense is not the same thing as the legitimate use of violence against others and, yes, that is the working def'n of what separates the state from other organizations.

dlw

[Scott]

And, self-defense is not the same thing as the legitimate use of violence against others

Then all you have is a circular defn - the govt is defined as having a monopoly on legit violence, and legit is defined as being done by the govt (how else would you defn it?). You cannot have "community" from the earlier comment enforced by violence against others.

[Streak]

Conservatives often want to force a single language and ban teaching or government notices in Spanish or other languages. This, they argue is to keep America from following Quebec or other countries in losing their common connection. SS has provided one bit of that commonality, that all Americans (regardless of class, race, gender, etc) had some security at the end of their life working in this difficult economy.

I truly don't understand this darwinian call (especially from Chamy) to just let the capitalist system do its business, and those who survive, survive.

[Scott]

Conservatives often want to force a single language and ban teaching or government notices in Spanish or other languages. This, they argue is to keep America from following Quebec or other countries in losing their common connection. SS has provided one bit of that commonality, that all Americans (regardless of class, race, gender, etc) had some security at the end of their life working in this difficult economy.

So SS is peachy because it is a justification for conseratives' use of force for the "common" good?

[Streak]

Scott, I guess I don't understand your point. I am suggesting that providing some kind of safety net for our elderly is a good thing for all Americans and speaks to that desire for Americans to have a connection. You agreed that was a good goal, but not if it was forced. Yet how else would we have something like this?

If conservatives had their way, would you not have a situation where everyone is on their own, that regardless of the conditions that produced their poverty, they would be out of luck? If someone wanted to help them, fine, but the society as a whole would do nothing?

[Scott]

and speaks to that desire for Americans to have a connection.

The "desire for Americans to have a connection" is no basis for you using physical force to mandate a specific connection. Base it on voluntary contributions instead of gunpoint.

[Streak]

I think you are stating this in false terms. There are many things that all of us are obligated to do, and if you frame it negatively, it all is at gunpoint. We all have to have drivers licenses to drive and if we don't we could be arrested at gunpoint (I guess). We all have to pay taxes, obey laws, etc. Framing SS as a gunpoint issue strikes me as hyperbole.

But again, that connection accross cultures is meaningless if we simply just rely on voluntary contributions. My question still stands. Is there not a good shared value in providing a base level of security for our elderly? Or do we just say to everyone, "better tend to yourself, or you will die in the street--unless some voluntary contributor helps you out."

[Scott]

I think you are stating this in false terms. There are many things that all of us are obligated to do, and if you frame it negatively, it all is at gunpoint.

OK, so "at gunpoint" is false even when true. Thanks for clarifying.

We all have to have drivers licenses to drive and if we don't we could be arrested at gunpoint (I guess).

You only need a license to drive on a public street. That law is unenforcable on private property.

Is there not a good shared value in providing a base level of security for our elderly?

Its not a "shared value" if you threaten people with jail time to enforce it. That makes it an "emposed value", and you have no more right to do that than Jerry Falwell.

[Streak]

"OK, so "at gunpoint" is false even when true. Thanks for clarifying."

Thank you for being a dick.

[Streak]

sorry for the response. I have been civil up till now, and am simply getting tired of the misrepresenting my responsese. You think social security is armed robbery, I disagree.

[dlw]

Scott, circular def'ns is when A is defined as B and when B is defined as A.

My earlier point that what makes gov't gov't is its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence still stands, as well as all those other points I made that you let slide by.

dlw

[Scott]

You think social security is armed robbery,

I think its money taken ultimately by the threat of physical force. Try to collect any taxes w/ unarmed tax collectors.

Scott, circular def'ns is when A is defined as B and when B is defined as A.

What definition of "legitimate violence" are you using when you claim govt has a monopoly, then? If that violence wouldn't be legit if done by anyone other than the govt, and the govt is defined to be the holder of a monopoly of legit violence, then that would be circular (A defn in terms of B and B defn in terms of A).

[dlw]

Scott,
To do violence to another is to potentially hurt/harm them when they have not offended or threatened to offend you.

The gov't can use violence in a way that none of the rest of us can. It is how we keep order, by giving up our rights to use violence to the state. It is legitimate because we accept that this threat is necessary to keep us from harming each other.

Because we give it the monopoly, the state is an object that is contested for its control and it is also the basis for property. Specific property rights do not have any other natural basis than that they reflect what is protected by the state.

So if you got problems with SS, make your case and then accept what comes out of our democratic process that guarantees that the control of the state is shared among a variety of interests.

But be sure to also count the cost and consider that time spent protecting your own intersts, which apparently are doing pretty well, could also have been spent in activities that let your light shine and provide you more opportunities to point to the life, death and ressurection of your true Lord.

dlw

[Scott]

To do violence to another is to potentially hurt/harm them when they have not offended or threatened to offend you.

Which is immoral, whether done by you or 51% of the people who show up on election day. Is everything Bush does moral because "we the people" elected him, or are some actions immoral regardless of their popularity?

That's one thing I never get from people pushing social programs. If 'we' delegate taxing power, so 'we' collectively decide how much to take (so it isn't theft), why aren't people on welfare ever 'volunarily' reducing their own benefits, collectively, if 51% of the voters want _that_? Why are spending cuts never described as people voluntarily giving up benefits because that's what they decided 'collectively'?

Why is it wrong to talk of taxes as being 'taken', but OK to talk about reduced benefits as 'taking' from the receipents?

Because we give it the monopoly

No, 'we' didn't. I gave Bush nothing last November. Did you?

Specific property rights do not have any other natural basis than that they reflect what is protected by the state.

Your claim here will ultimately have to become that NO rights exist w/o govt (which would mean that govt, by defn, couldn't violate those rights because it gave them to you). I don't see how you can differentiate between property and free speech rights here.

But be sure to also count the cost and consider that time spent protecting your own intersts, which apparently are doing pretty well, could also have been spent in activities that let your light shine and provide you more opportunities to point to the life, death and ressurection of your true Lord.

Jesus wants us to turn power over to the govt so we can stop making our own decisions and spend more time witnessing? Yuck.

[dlw]

To do violence to another is to potentially hurt/harm them when they have not offended or threatened to offend you.

[i]Which is immoral, whether done by you or 51% of the people who show up on election day. Is everything Bush does moral because "we the people" elected him, or are some actions immoral regardless of their popularity?[/i]

no, not all acts of violence, or threat of such violence is immoral. The Israelites used violence, as did Jesus.

You already benefit from state-sanctioned violence as well and so it seems hypocritical to say others are immoral for having it protect their interests.

[i]That's one thing I never get from people pushing social programs. If 'we' delegate taxing power, so 'we' collectively decide how much to take (so it isn't theft), why aren't people on welfare ever 'volunarily' reducing their own benefits, collectively, if 51% of the voters want _that_? Why are spending cuts never described as people voluntarily giving up benefits because that's what they decided 'collectively'?[/i]

Why aren't corporations voluntarily reducing the benefits they receive or ensuring that there will be regulations to hold them accountable? People don't need to advocate reductions in their own benefits, others do it for them. At issue is whether we are honorable in not cheating others and gaming the system or not and how we resolve our conflicts over whose interests the gov't should protect.

[i]Why is it wrong to talk of taxes as being 'taken', but OK to talk about reduced benefits as 'taking' from the receipents?[/i]

They are all takings. We just have beliefs about what gov't should or should not do.

[i]Because we give it the monopoly

No, 'we' didn't. I gave Bush nothing last November. Did you?[/i]

We all implicitly accepted the social contract that binds us together and lets others wield the power of the state that can both harm and protect our economic self-interests.

[i]Specific property rights do not have any other natural basis than that they reflect what is protected by the state.

Your claim here will ultimately have to become that NO rights exist w/o govt (which would mean that govt, by defn, couldn't violate those rights because it gave them to you). I don't see how you can differentiate between property and free speech rights here.[/i]

Yes, property and free-speech are intertwined(we have the gov't protect our rights just as we have the right to persuade others that the gov't should protect our rights) and without gov't in our fallen natures we would have no rights except that based on our superior use of violence over others.

[i]But be sure to also count the cost and consider that time spent protecting your own intersts, which apparently are doing pretty well, could also have been spent in activities that let your light shine and provide you more opportunities to point to the life, death and ressurection of your true Lord.

Jesus wants us to turn power over to the govt so we can stop making our own decisions and spend more time witnessing? Yuck. [/i]

Jesus wants us to value loving our neighbor more than guaranteeing that our interests will be protected in their entirety. I would recommend that you read a substantial portion of the book of Luke in this regard. I'm not saying that you can't participate in the process to protect your interests. I'm saying we should pull our punches some in this regard as a means of valuing others and making it easier to form relationships with them where we can share about our faith.

dlw