It's an interesting concept. The belief just because you reach "X" age, your entitled to having the younger generation take care of you needs to end yesterday. I don't owe your mommy nothing.
Adding to the political deception in Washington is the notion that nearly 60 percent of the federal budget is off limits for spending cuts, the so-called non-discretionary spending such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Congress has the constitutional authority, through a simple majority vote, to change whatever laws associated with those "nondiscretionary" spending programs.
As an example, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Flemming vs. Nestor (1960) there are no "accrued property rights" to a Social Security check. That means Congress can do anything it wishes with Social Security and that includes means-testing payments, raising eligibility age, reducing payments, increasing "contributions" or eliminate the program altogether. The same applies to any of the other so-called non-discretionary spending programs.
By the way, thinking about the looming Social Security disaster, I believe that a person who's 65 years old and has been forced into Social Security is owed something. But who owes it to him? Congress has spent every penny of what he put into Social Security. Any check he receives comes out of the hide of young workers in the labor force. I think that's unfair. The young worker has no obligation to that senior citizen, but Congress has.
I have a one-time fix to give us some breathing room to make reforms. The federal government has huge quantities of wasting assets -- assets that are not producing anything, 650 million acres of land -- almost 30 percent of the land area of the United States. It owns 80 percent of the land in Nevada, 70 percent in Alaska, 60 percent in Idaho and 50 percent in California and Oregon. I would be willing, and I suspect many others, to make a deal with Congress whereby I forsake all Social Security and Medicare benefits for, say, 50 acres of land in Alaska.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
Solving the SS and Medicare lie!
