Summary:

* Harland and I will have to agree to disagree over how many of those who
fear government "imperialism" or "fascism" also fear corporate "imperialism"
or "fascism".

* The Green platform is indeed a principled expression of their values.

* I never said that principle is unimportant or inappropriate. I never said
that the LP should cater to any phobia. I never said that the SS Trust Fund
never existed.

* We apparently have differing definitions of "means-testing",
"privatization", "funds", and "ripped off".

* That SS is pay-as-you-go is not due to how it manages its temporary excess
receipts, but rather is due to how its receipts barely keep ahead of outlays
(instead of pre-funding them).

* How to "choose the victims"? Cato makes everybody a victim, and lets each
choose his fate.


Harland Harrison wrote:

> > Still waiting for evidence or argument that those
> > who fear government "imperialism" or "fascism" can
> > be convinced to join us even though most of
> > them are Green-ish in their fear of corporate
> "imperialism" or "fascism".
>
> But I contested your premise.

The quote from you I can find that comes closest to addressing my premise is
when you seemingly agreed by saying "The anti-war movement is mostly on the
left too".

> I never agreed that people who fear
> fascism automatically fear corporations.

That's not my premise. My premise is still as stated above.

> Irrational people with "phobias" may fear
> corporations, but the reasonable people do not.

I guess we just disagree over whether those who fear government
"imperialism" or "fascism" also tend to unreasonably fear corporate
"imperialism" or "fascism".

> The Greens do not win many elections, despite having
> the most powerful civil liberties argument in decades, precisely
> because the fear of business cripples their platform.

That can't be the precise reason they don't win elections, because Green
minus fear of capitalism pretty much equals Libertarianism, and I don't see
us winning many elections.

> Reasonable people despise fascism but not business.
> The liberal voters are reasonable people.
> At ACLU meetings, for example, you meet ordinary
> people who work for corporations, invest in
> corporations, [...]

I know people who work for and invest in Yahoo but still think corporations
are evil. We seem to have radically different impressions about the
attitudes of people who oppose American and corporate "imperialism".

> The irrational people are definitely more vocal
> and more dedicated than the majority. We have had
> our share of irrational people in the Libertarian
> party, and should understand this. Greens do better
> because they use the labor of "corporate-phobes" and
> "government-phobes", not because they have a better message than
> Libertarians.

So of ACLU members, or of the people who voted for non-Libertarian anti-war
candidates in 2004, or of the people who voted for Nader in 2000, what
percent would you say fall on the Libertarian half of the economic freedom
axis? I would guess 10%.

> > Social Security has been pay-as-you-go
> > since its creation in 1935. The SS Trust Fund
> > has not been "looted". No alternative investment
> > vehicle for the SSTF's $1.5T in assets would
> > change the nature of SS as a pyramid scheme.
>
> SS was started with a $50 million endowment [...]

Nothing you go on to say contradicts anything I said above.

> If the TF never existed, somebody has
> seriously mislead the American people.

I didn't say that nothing called "the Trust Fund" ever existed. I said that
you, like the American people, misunderstand the nature of the Social
Security Trust Fund.

> You cannot fix SS without ripping somebody off.

That is necessarily true if you define "ripping off" to include breaking
unfairly generous promises.

> > > Principle may not seem appropriate to you,
> > > Brian, but most of us find principle important
> >
> > Your implication that I think principles
> > are unimportant or inappropriate in politics
> > is without foundation.
>
> You wrote that the motto is "not apt".

Right, and I immediately explained that the reason it's not apt is that
other parties have principles too, only the wrong ones. You then implied
that I consider principle neither appropriate or important. Your implication
remains unjustified.

> the Greens have "10 KEY VALUES".
> http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/intro.html
> I agree with every one of those values, but I do
> not support the rest of the platform. So many
> planks of their platform do not seem to follow
> from those principles. The Greens don't make
> a big deal of principle

Excerpts from their values:

[...] opportunity to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by
society [...] confront barriers such as class oppression [...] restructuring
of social, political and economic institutions away from a system which is
controlled by and mostly benefits the powerful few [...] Restructure our
patterns of income distribution to reflect the wealth created by those
outside the formal monetary economy [...]

The socialism of the Greens' platform as entirely consistent with the above.

> We both disagree with some of the planks which you
> listed, but they are not so immoral, like murder or
> torture, which would taint anybody in the organization.

Apples and oranges: no party's platform endorses murder or torture. But if
you want to go there, we can compare the bodycount of socialist to
non-socialist governments in the last 100 years. It's something like 100 to
1: http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html#CiviliansKilled. So either way, I
indeed think the Green platform utterly taints anyone who recommends Green
without reservation.

> she does not claim protectionism would fix the
> problem of outsourcing in that particular quote!

Her platform endorses standard protectionism as the cure for "American
workers who are losing their jobs and benefits as the corporations make huge
profits through outsourcing jobs to other countries". What else do you think
is meant by "democratic trading institutions that establish ethical
standards for commerce, promote social and economic justice"?

> >> Who are you saying is looking for
> > "additional targets to hate"?
>
> This argument is getting weird. Who am I
> saying is looking for "additional targets to hate"?
> Nobody! I said, "Reasonable people look for
> common ground instead of additional targets to
> hate."

So you're arguing against positions that nobody here holds. Yes, that is a
little weird. :-)

> > Who do you hear advocating that the LP cater
> > to any phobia?
>
> How weird can this get? I heard you!
> "Gun nuts.. pot heads.. [A] government-phobe who isn't already a
> Libertarian is probably also a corporate-phobe."

This is indeed weird. I've repeatedly and consistently said on this forum
that we should NOT cater to gun nuts and pot heads. I make this point
emphatically at http://marketliberal.org/FixLP.html, which I recommend to
this forum any chance I get. Here I said "We already have the loyalty of
gun nuts and pot-heads", which is the opposite of saying we should cater to
them.

When I point out that corporate-phobia makes someone NOT agreeable to the
LP, I'm not "catering" to any phobia. The only possible sense I can imagine
you mean is that I'm somehow enabling their corporate-phobia by not making
it the LP's primary mission to conduct a personal get-well intervention on
their behalf.

> > I simply asked you for evidence or argument that
> > those who fear government
> > "imperialism" or "fascism" can be convinced to
> > join us despite most of them also fearing
> > corporate "imperialism" or "fascism".
>
> I do not agree with your premise. Most voters
> have no fear of business, but the majority opposes
> fascism.

That's not the negation of my premise. The negation would you be if you
said: it's not the case that most of those who fear government "imperialism"
or "fascism" also fear corporate "imperialism" or "fascism".

You switched "fear" to "oppose", and you switched the group under discussion
from "those who fear government imperialism/fascism" to "most voters".

> you call too many people "leftists".
> eg " the majority of pro-peace voters in
> America are leftists "

This is the first time you've stated actual disagreement with my premise. We
clearly have different perceptions of the political beliefs of those voters
who make peace their primary voting issue.

> We should separate anti-war and pro civil
> liberties from the Greens and their
> corporate-phobic followers.

I still think that most of those who fear government "imperialism" or
"fascism" also fear corporate "imperialism" or "fascism", but it would
probably be futile to try to convince you of this. We'll just have to agree
to disagree.

> > Are you seriously saying the Republicans offer
> > a good home for fiscal conservatives? [...]
>
> No. I say the South Park voters can be separated
> from the Republicans with civil liberties issues,
> but not with fiscal issues which the Republicans
> already offer them.

I don't think your "no" was necessarily in answer to the question above, so
I repeat it.

> I do not think "they test your means".

They test your income. I leave it to our audience to decide whether "means"
is a standard synonym for "income".

> Even if you inherited a huge portfolio of stocks
> and real estate, you would still be entitled to
> this 120% PL minimum from your SS account. Isn't
> that true?

The document doesn't explicitly say. Do you think the Cato Institute would
ever advocate a "safety net" for high-wealth low-income people?

> SS does not have any funds to park.

It has $1.5T in dollar-denominated assets. I again leave it to our audience
to decide whether dollar-denominated assets can be considered "funds".

> then the Social Security Administration would
> be the largest investor in the country.
>
> Right! The fund would balance, but we would
> have other big-government problems!

I don't know what you mean by "balance", but it's not the case that the
pyramidical nature of SS would change, or that SS's assets would match its
liabilities.

> A pay-as-you-go system would
> have just paid all taxes to the Treasury and
> withdrawn all payments from the same account.

Whether Social Security is pay-as-you-go is not a function of what federal
department or what federal building houses the funds that SS has on hand by
virtue of its income managing to stay slightly ahead of its outgo. No change
in where SS keeps such funds would transform it from pay-as-you-go to
pre-funded.

> The accounting tricks of SS made it easy for the
> government to hide the shortfall. A simple accounting
> system could have prevented the overspending. You and
> I cannot even determine the magnitude of the problem today.

Politicians have of course misled, but he government has never lied in its
SS accounting. No accounting change could have made the SS's accumulated
current surplus of $1.5T match its current liability of over $20T. The
magnitude of the problem is well-documented, although uncertainties are of
course inevitable due to variables like longevity, birth rates, and
income/productivity.

> How could people like us have gotten the votes
> to stop it earlier?

The way you get votes to stop inequity is to rally the people being treated
inequitably. And that is what I'm proposing the LP do.

> Perhaps you are correct that the Trust
> Fund never even existed in the first place!

Something called a Trust Fund always existed, but it was always
pay-as-you-go, not pre-funded. Ida May Fuller paid in $25, and received
$22,000. Pay-as-you-go pyramid schemes can offer such returns to early
investors, but pre-funded plans cannot.

> The SSTF needs much more than $1.5T, and should
> have more than it has. I call that "looting".

What is your basis for saying it "should have more than it has"? Are you
claiming to have evidence that the SSTF does not contain every T-bill that
SS ever bought (and didn't redeem)?

Or are you just claiming that the system should have been pre-funded instead
of pyramidical? I agree it should have been, but the fact that it never was
does not constitute "looting" of any SS trust fund. Instead, it constitutes
"looting" from the people who entered the pyramid scheme late.

> I was not aware that the $7.4T included the SSTF!
> Very good news!

So if you're going to say the SSTF is empty, then please remember not to
quote $7.4T as the size of the federal debt.

> The "problem" has nothing to do with demographics because
> the problem is a pyramid scheme, a fraud.

In 1935, life expectancy was less than the SS retirement age, and one could
reasonably have expected that the initial pay-as-you-go system could have
been sustained the initial level of benefits. But as the demographics got
worse, Congress responded by increasing benefits much more than it increased
payroll taxes.

> > > If the government had kept track of the receipts
> > > from each worker, carefully invested them, and apportioned
> > > benefits from the revenues,
>
> > The Social Security Act did not create such
> > a defined-benefit program.
>
> SS is a defined-benefit program,
> no matter what you say.

In changing my statement to a negative, I transposed "benefit" and
"contribution". I meant to say that even in 1935 it was not the sort of
defined-contribution plan you're describing. (From the subsequent context
it's clear that I meant to say "contribution", not "benefit".)

> A pay-as-you-go system would not need a Trust Fund,
> or even its own checking account, because all its money
> belongs to the US Treasury and should stay there.

SS benefits are by law paid from SS payroll tax receipts. If benefit checks
are ever not to bounce, the pipeline of SS receipts must be kept from ever
being empty. Simply changing what building or under what nomenclature
("trust fund", "checking account") those pipeline funds are kept cannot
change the pay-as-you-go nature of the pipeline. The only way it would
change is if the pipeline were pre-funded -- i.e. if the benefits coming out
the end had been in the pipeline so long they in fact consist only the
earlier contributions of the cohort receiving the benefits.

> Are you saying that my projected benefits will
> exceed the present value of my Social Security taxes?

I don't know the details of your personal situation. See table 25-2 at
http://cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/hb108-25.pdf for the average break-even
age of various age cohorts.

> Do you think the buy-out bonds could actually be as
> much as the present value of contributions?

I don't know the details of the SS benefit formula ("AIME/PIA", 6.2 footnote
20). The Cato paper indicates without elaboration (p7) that at least some
young workers would receive a "windfall".

> Do you think the continued benefits of those who stay
> in the plan would be about the same too

Definitely not -- and nor should they be.

> If the Treasury could just give everybody their
> money back, return their "contributions plus
> interest plus inflation", SS would not be in trouble.

Not true, because SS is a windfall for current and past retirees. If we
tried to restore the status quo ante, current windfall recipients would be
"ripped off" (in your lexicon).

> There is not enough money to be fair to everyone.

Is there no level of windfall that you wouldn't call "fair" just because a
politician promised it? Was it "fair" that Ida May Fuller got $22K from her
$25 lifetime contribution?

> How do you want to chose the victims?

I like Cato's idea of letting the victims choose themselves. Opters-out may
not be made whole, but they get to cut their ballooning losses. Stayers-in
may not get their entire promised windfall, but they get the peace of mind
that their future benefit stream has sustainable financing and won't depend
on massive tax increases that taxpayers might reject.

> > > It says that recipients get this
> > > benefit even if they have substantial, non 6.2, assets.
> >
> > False. The document says nothing about the
> > safety net applying to high-wealth low-income people.
>
> Where does the document say the 120% does NOT apply
> to people with assets?

Let X be the statement that recipients get the low-income safety-net benefit
even if they have high wealth. I didn't say that the 6.2 plan says not-X.
You said it says X. You were wrong.

> Do they propose to evaluate peoples' assets? Do they force recipients
> to sell off assets above a certain level to qualify?

As I understand it, that's the usual practice with a means-tested benefit.

> If so, do we think Libertarians like this idea?

I for one like the idea that a benefit intended for the poor should not be
given to the wealthy.

> Just because people who hate privatization call
> a plan privatization does not mean that you should
> call it that too.

It lets people take personal private possession and control of their entire
future benefit stream. I call that privatization. You can call it whatever
you want.

> half of SS remains in government hands for
> everybody, and all of it remains for those
> who do not "opt out".

Yes, opters-out will still pay taxes to finance the safety net and
transition costs. And yes, people at or near retirement will not be
blindsided by having their promised benefits denied when it's too late for
them to make any other plans. Without either of these elements you'd call
the plan unfair. With them, you say the plan doesn't qualify as
privatization. So what you're apparently saying is that you don't think
privatization can be fair. Does this mean you oppose privatization?

> Under 6.2, three classes, the "ins" the "outs"
> and the "overs", square off over a 6.2% payroll
> tax, a bond by-out scheme, a continued schedule
> of benefits, and another 6.2% forced savings
> or tax rate.

I don't understand the above. If you're saying that the 6.2 plan doesn't
guarantee an end to all political tension over retirement security, then I
say: so?

Brian Holtz
2004 Libertarian candidate for Congress, CA14 (Silicon Valley)
http://marketliberal.org