Two nutshells

Social Security is not "Government Spending" by Jacob Davies There's a schizophrenia over Social Security among those who would like to see it done away with. On the one hand, the payroll taxes that fund Social Security - and have been subsidizing the rest of the budget for 25 years - don't count as "taxes" when it comes to asserting that "half of the people pay no tax", even though for most people payroll taxes are larger than income taxes. But when it comes to the Federal budget, Social Security is the boogeyman, the big bad king, the trillion dollar monster of spending. Except it's not spending. Here are things that are "spending": Buying a road. Buying a jet fighter. Buying a rocket. Buying 3,500 more jet fighters. Buying a school. Buying a dozen shiny new aircraft carriers. Buying your grandmother a pacemaker. There is a legitimate (if overblown) concern that when the government buys things, it doesn't tend to get a very good deal. This turns out to be true when it comes to jet fighters and aircraft carriers, and less true when it comes to roads and schools and medicine. Social Security, though, is not spent by the government. It is distributed by the government, based on a lifetime of payments into the system and certain rules that act as insurance for widows and orphans and the disabled. (We like being nice to orphans, right?) The recipients are the ones who do the spending. And those good, solid American individuals are presumptively possessed of the wisdom to spend it more appropriately than the government. They can spend it on food and rent and clothes and gifts for their grandchildren and trips to Florida, or hookers and blow and video poker, or burn it in their fireplace, or whatever it is they want to do with it. It isn't government spending. It's the way in which about a third of the population gets to retire while the other two thirds provide for them, and the way in which we insure against bereavement and disability. It isn't scary. It's boring, but nice. Like your grandma. And if your grandma wants to spend hers on video poker - well, who am I to judge?