Sunday, April 22, 2018

Social Security

Social security was designed to provide some income for the elderly during the dreary years of the great depression. In the decades since it has become much more. It is now a relied upon retirement system, something it wasn't designed to support. In the 1960's LBJ also turned it into an income system for the disabled. Not just way more than the program was designed to do, but far more than it could possibly support. The result has become a ponzi-scheme funded program that will become insolvent in the next 20 years. It depends on increasing numbers of people paying in to take care of those receiving the benefits. There won't be enough to pay in the near future. This isn't news. The public and the politicians have known this for decades. And they have done nothing. Republicans and Democrats have been content to do nothing and let it collapse. It gives them something to blame each other for and drive out the base voters in election years. So every year we just watch the countdown to disaster continue.
Many feel like they have a social security account; they are entitled to their benefits they paid for. The program was sold to the public as this type of program. It is not. There is no account. The government seizes the revenue from you through payroll taxes and immediately spends it. And spends even more. The "surplus" in collected funds doesn't go to support the program, it is used to make the budget deficit appear smaller. I am 50 years old and have no thoughts of ever collecting anything from social security. It isn't going to be there. It won't be there for anyone younger either. It won't even last for those that are older than I am. The money you paid into the program isn't there. It's already spent. You won't get it back. This is wrong.
Libertarians are philosophically opposed to Socialist Security. We don't need the nanny state to tell us how to take care of ourselves. This isn't a legitimate function of government. People should be entitled to the wages of their labor, and responsible for their own lives. Philosophically libertarians are right. Practice, however, is different. The program already exists. It doesn't matter if it would have been better if it had never existed. That ship sailed long ago, we can't go back in time to fix it. People have been promised benefits. They have paid for benefits. They ARE entitled to those benefits.  The Libertarian Party isn't just a philosophy club. It is the party of solutions. I have a solution.
First you have to make it solvent. SSDI disability is the most abused and fraud filled program in the federal government. End it. No new recipients starting now. There are plenty of disability insurance options available on the market. Use one, or not, at your own leisure and/or peril. Those already dependent on SSDI disability would be grandfathered in. It wouldn't be right to change the rules after the fact at a point where no other options exist. This will drive down costs, and increase the available funds for the original purpose of retirement income.  Next, stop spending the surplus. Create the dedicated trust fund account most believe Social Security to be. These two changes alone will extend the solvency by decades.
There's more we can do. Eliminate the cap on SS taxes, while simultaneously lowering the tax rate on employers and employees to 5%. This would make things easier on employers that would have lower expenses. It would increase the take home pay of workers, leading to increased economic growth and spending without the immediate inflationary pressure of increased wages. Most importantly, it would make Social Security solvent for everyone. Once we have that, then we can discuss "privitizing" part or even all of the program. Until we fix it and make it solvent, there's nothing else we can do but watch it collapse. Democrats and Republicans are content to do just that, and do not care at all about all those that will be impacted by the collapse. I say we give this Libertarian a chance do right by the folks that are paying for it and fix it instead.
   

School Security

     In February the country was rocked by a school shooting in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead. This was unfortunately not the first time this has happened. Nor will it likely be the last. Mass shootings are regrettably becoming annual news events. First and foremost I would like to offer my sincere condolences to the parents that have lost loved ones. Losing a child is a devastating grief no parent should ever have to endure. There are no words I can express that could ever ease the pain.
     The question for the rest of us is "How do we prevent this from ever happening again?" Gun control advocates immediately take advantage of such events to push their agenda. Some even naively believe that gun control would make a difference. Australia enacted strict gun control and confiscation measures after a mass shooting in 1996. In the decades since, the murder rate in Australia has been cut in half. A dramatic result? In that same time in the USA, over a million AR-15 style rifles have been sold here in the United States. The murder rate in the USA has also been cut in half. Two opposite actions, the exact same result. Guns are not the problem.
     When I was in high school, students often kept deer rifles and shotguns on display in gun racks in their pickup trucks. They never shot anyone. I once brought a shotgun to school so the band could use it to simulate the canon shots in a performance of the 1812 overture. There were a couple of interested glances in the hallway, but again no one got hurt. They were non-events. Guns were not the problem.
      The guns haven't changed; schools have. Public schools in particular have shifted to a compulsory attendance model. Families that do not send their children to school can be fined, jailed, or lose custody of their children. Districts receive funding based mostly on attendance and graduation rates, not on quality of education. The result is students that do not want to be at school but are forced to attend; students that regularly disrupt classes and get in trouble. The result is a toxic adversarial relationship between the school and those children that results in anger, animosity, and the occasional violent outburst. By the time a student displays enough bad behavior to be considered a threat and is expelled from school, the damage is done. That student already sees the school as an oppressor to be dealt with.
     At the same time, schools are now overwhelmingly designated as "gun free zones" in order to receive even more federal funding. Advertising to all that the children inside are at best poorly protected. A free-fire zone with little fear of immediate consequences for those that enter to do harm. Combined this is a recipe for disaster.
         So what can be done? Some districts are dropping the gun free zone, and are permitting some staff members to carry weapons to protect their students. Others are hiring armed security or school resource officers. This will help some, but is far from a comprehensive solution. Schools need to change. Our philosophy needs to change. Not all children belong in school. Many are better served through apprenticeships learning trades. More school choices need to be available to suit a wide variety of students, and homeschooling needs to be a recognized viable option. Efforts need to be made to remove disruptive students before they view schools as their oppressor and take violent action.
       We also need to rethink how and what we are teaching our kids. In an attempt to artificially inflate self-esteem, we are raising generations that are unable to appropriately deal with adversity. By teaching them that all their feelings are valid, important, and to be respected; they respond quite poorly when they discover that not all of their feelings and desires are acceptable.We need to stop creating the mental illness that leads to these events.
     I spent a year as an ISS supervisor, dealing with students that had frequent discipline issues. I spent 8 years teaching regular classes in public schools as a certified public school teacher. I also spent 7 years as a security officer in a public high school. I am not expressing an abstract opinion, these are first hand observations made over decades. We are failing our kids. The problem is not guns, the problem is us.