States Kevin Drum, in reponse to a WaPo column in which a young writer notes that she isn’t relying on Social Security for her retirement:

If there’s any single area where conservatives have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, it’s in convincing the populace that government sucks.

First off, what person who has any kind of retirement plan (e.g., IRA, 401k, 403b, etc.) is relying on SS for retirement? As Chris Lawrence rightly notes:

Every penny that Drum has in his IRA, 401(k), and retirement accounts puts the lie to his politically-expedient defense of the current system.

Indeed.

So here’s the challenge: can anyone make a cogent argument that indeed Social Security is superior to private-investment-based systems (which includes government-run system like most teacher retirement systems, that nonetheless have individual, private-investment based accounts that retirees own) that I suspect anyone reading this post is planning on partaking of (and therefore that the government does a better job at paying for retirement, or, i.e., that the government system doesn’t, in fact, “suck” at least in this particular arena)? Part of that argument has to be why it is that the person making the argument has chosen to pay into a retirement account instead of just looking forward to livin’ large on SS. Further, I would like an explanation about why it is that Congress has a retirement system for its members rather then just relying on the wonderfulness that is Social Security?

If the ultimate argument is simply that SS is a program for the poor, and that is the only reason to defend it, then make that argument and stop talking about how great the system and how it really doesn’t need fixing. Be honest and just state that what one is after is income redistribution pure and simple. At least it would be a legit debate.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that the Republicans are being entirely direct about their belief in the private economy as a motivating factor (it is mentioned, but has been overshadowed by the “crisis” talk).

Still, the bottom line of the whole thing that I don’t understand is this fiction (as exemplified by Drum’s post and the rantings of Reid and others that the Reps simply want to “destroy” SS) that SS is the ultimate in retirement plans and that anyone who thinks otherwise has been brainwashed. Clearly, anyone with any sense (and with the financial ability) is relying on some kind of investment-based system. If that is true (and it incontrovertibly is) then why it isn’t a good idea to transform Social Security along those lines is beyond me. Cetainly such a system would be good for the poor as well. Indeed, since such a system would create inheritable assets for the poor to pass on to their children, surely such a system would help the poor far more than the current system.

To cling to SS just because it was part of FDR’s New Deal is the worst kind of conservatism that one can practice: the idea that we should keep doing something simply because “we’ve always done it that way.” I thought that the Democratic Party was the party of progressive thinking. Perhaps tenure has addled my brain, but at the moment the Democrats appears to be the tradionalistic reactionary conservatives on this one.