Social Security.

Part of the "Critiques of Libertarianism" site.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html

Last updated 10/25/07.

Social Security is one of the biggest libertarian bugaboos. It's obvious success clashes harshly with the sink-or-swim ideology of most libertarians. However, libertarian alternatives are mostly unworkable parrotings of the right-wing Social Security agenda. Those are easily rebutted, as these links show.

Links

Buying Into Failure: Paul Krugman's New York Times article points out that Britain and Chile have attempted similar reforms to Bush's Social Security plans, and they have both failured to live up to their promises. From The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive.
Debunking The Conservative Attack On Social Security: Despite vast sums spent on thinktank propaganda, the facts about why Social Security works are plain, and the errors in conservative arguments against it are blatant.
Twelve Reasons Why Privatizing Social Security is a Bad Idea: A large-scale introduction to the issues. See also 11 Myths About Social Security and Chile's Experience With Social Security Privatization.
Antisocial Insecurity.: Doug Henwood's astute analysis of the "Social Security crisis" and various schemes to save it. From his Left Business Observer.
Social Security Website Links: A terrific, perhaps exhaustive, set of links. Part of the EBRI Social Security Research Program of the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
Rampant Bull: Robert Kuttner's The American Prospect article provides the best overview of Social Security, its origins, its goals, its politics, and possible reforms.
The Privateers' Free Lunch: Dean Baker's The American Prospect article that shows privatizing Social Security will not result in the claimed big improvements.
The Chile Con: Privatizing Social Security in South America.: Stephen J. Kay's The American Prospect article that shows Chile's "solution" is not an appropriate model for US Social Security.
The Myth of Social Security's Imminent Collapse: An Extra! (the magazine of FAIR, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting ) article that covers the two major fallacies of the "collapse" scare strategy.
Testimony before the Senate Committee on the Budget -- July 23, 1998: Henry J. Aaron's Senate testimony on the "problem" of Social Security.
The Myths of Social Security Crisis: Behind the Privatization Push: An article by Henry J. Aaron, detailing the fraudulent claims of crisis and the false "solutions". A Brookings Institution Opinion Piece.
Brookings Review Summer 1997, "Privatizing Social Security": Arguments Pro and Con. Pro goes first, and has an opportunity to rebut Con. The Con side (Henry J. Aaron again) faces the important realities that the Pro side usually glosses over or ignores. A Brookings Institution article.
Privatizing Social Security: The Troubling Trade-Offs: An overview of the less emotional arguments about privatization, by Gary Burtless and Barry Bosworth. A Brookings Institution Policy Brief.
Why Privatizing Social Security Would Hurt Women: An Institute For Women's Policy Research rebuttal to Cato Institute proposals and claims about Social Security privatization.
Can Financial Assets Beat Social Security? Not in the Real World.: Arguments that the stock market has a better rate of return than Social Security ignore the tradeoff between risk aversity and returns. From the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
The Truth About Winners and Losers: A concise summary of who would benefit from Social Security privatization: no group alive today. Because of transition costs. Based on Mueller's NCPSSM study.
Social Security Magic Tricks: Michael Kinsley's Slate article points out the clear economic fallacies in the promise of higher returns if Social Security is privatized.
Millionaires One and All: (PDF) Details the fallacies underlying the CATO Social Security Calculator. Under realistic assumptions, you'd accumulate 1/10th to 1/30th of what CATO estimates. Part of The Social Security Network.
Zogby Polling For Cato Institute, Other Clients, Manipulates Findings To Misrepresent Public Opinion About Social Security: A poll based on spin, rather than real alternatives, yields more spin. From Campaign For America's Future.
Libertarianism and Poverty: Dennis Loo makes the case that libertarians claims about poverty fail on moral, econometric, and historical grounds. From The Ethical Spectacle .

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Copyright 2007 by Mike Huben ( mhuben@world.std.com ).
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