As with any Ponzi scheme, the people who get on board early make out. This is pointed out by Geoffrey Kollmann and Dawn Nuschler of the Congressional Research Service in their report "Social Security Reform" (October 2002) They say, "Until recent years, Social Security recipients received more, often far more, than the value of the Social Security taxes they paid. ... For example, for workers who earned average wages and retired in 1980 at age 65, it took 2.8 years to recover the value of the retirement portion of the combined employee and employer shares of their Social Security taxes plus interest. For their counterparts who retired at age 65 in 2002, it will take 16.9 years. For those retiring in 2020, it will take 20.9 years." My question is: How can anyone who draws out every penny he's put into Social Security in a few years say that he's not living at the expense of another?
In my opinion, it takes a special form of callousness and disregard for the welfare of future generations of Americans for today's senior citizens to fight against reform. Nobody's talking about abolition of federal senior programs. We must accept that serious mistakes were made and we must take compassionate corrective action. But what the heck! As I said in my "What Handouts to Cut?" column, "Both today's politicians and seniors will be dead so why should they make sacrifices now to prevent an economic calamity decades off into the future?"
Walter E. Williams
Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of 'Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?' and 'Up from the Projects: An Autobiography.'
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