Should Social Security be reformed to include personal retirement accounts?
Social Security: A Full Disclosure The implications of this seemingly routine question, concerning which permutation or aggregation of Social Security’s construct is most optimal, are so profoundly far reaching that I urge the reader to prepare a coffee prior to sitting down and proceeding to read further. The question, as posed, prepackages the responses to a debate about social security to be confined to only the options of “yes” or “no” concerning some proposed reform, in an attempt to appear “fair and balanced”, but in fact shamelessly dodges the heart of the matter. If the question were posed in court, an astute defense would demur emphatically on the grounds that it “leads the witness”. As posed, the question is biased in implying the assumption that the validity of the existence of social security is a foregone conclusion that rests beyond the realm of possible options over which to deliberate. Given that the ultimate purpose of any deliberations regarding social security is to
Social Security: A Full Disclosure This question postures as invitation to an open, democratic forum of thought and debate concerning the revision of Social Security. Yet, despite appearing as impartial as a judge, quite the opposite is true, for it is toxic. Its court is tainted because, paradoxically, any answer regarding how Social Security should be reformed will satisfy the question’s true, veiled agenda. As posed, the question cleverly confines our attention to responding to “how” Social Security should exist, thus effectively evading the question “why” Social Security should exist. It insinuates, “You are free and capable amongst yourselves to debate and alter the inscrutably convoluted, economically, socially, and politically intertwined institution that is Social Security, but not in such a manner as to actually eliminate it”. By analogy, it implies that we have the qualifications to understand and modify how a bomb works, but no right to dismantle it. Make the bomb bigger, ma
