I have a great plan for “saving” Social Security.

Today’s average U.S. life expectancy is 78 years. Let’s make the retirement age to collect Social Security 79.

Presto. The “system” is saved (or until life expectancy increases, at which point we can raise the retirement age again).

Pretty dumb? Sure. But if the goal is “saving” the system, nothing would work better.

Wait a minute you say. It’s not about the “system” but about saving me, my children, my grandchildren, my neighbors. It’s about making individuals better off.

But if the point is making individuals better off, why do we only hear assurances from most politicians that they will “save the system?”

The “solution” that I have proposed here is one extreme example how Social Security, if we insist on keeping it as it is today, can be “saved.”

How about raising your taxes to get the same amount of payout at retirement?

How about leaving your taxes the same but requiring that you pay them for a longer period of time, raising the retirement age to collect?

Can you imagine getting a call from your bank that they have run out of money so in order to save your CD they have to cut the interest rate on it in half? Or that you can’t cash in your one year CD for another two years?

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When Texas Governor Rick Perry in the Republican debate at the President Reagan Library described Social Security as a “Ponzi Scheme”; Perry hoped the media would hyper-ventilate and scream that his political career was over. Back in 1982, Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill legendarily damaged the President’s and the Republican’s popularity by spinning that Reagan’s efforts to return Social Security to solvency was an effort to destroy the program. Perry understands that Social Security still remains popular; but he intends to use as a wedge issue against Democrats the fact that few Americans are willing to pay more taxes make the program solvent and that younger voters believe they will never receive the benefits they are paying for.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes a Ponzi scheme as “an investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks.” Social Security began collecting taxes in 1937 and began in 1940 to pay their first benefit recipient, Ida May Fuller. Ms. Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program before she retired. The Social Security taxes on her salary were $24.75; her initial monthly check was $22.54; and she lived to collect $22,888.92. Essentially, Ms. Fuller earned a spectacular 925% return on her investment.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was quoted by his Labor Secretary Francis Perkins as trying to make sure Social Security would not be a swindle to future generations:

“Ah, but this is the same old dole by another name. It is almost dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress of the United States to meet in 1980. We can’t see the United States short in 1980 any more than in 1935.”

Prior to the 1970s, the Social Security program was fairly well funded; because it took a highly visible Act of Congress to change the payments. But in 1972 Republican President Richard Nixon increased benefits by 20% and created a formula to automatically adjust Social Security payments by a cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. President Jimmy Carter in 1977 more than tripled the Social Security tax on wages; but price inflation continued to drive COLA payments up faster than the taxes on wages.

When President Reagan tried to reinstate the original COLA calculation in 1982 he was pummeled by Democratic Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, who famously told the press that trying to change Social Security was the political equivalent of asking for the instant death of touching the “third rail” of an electric train. Republicans lost 26 Congressional seats in the following midterm elections, as the Democrats made preservation of Social Security the centerpiece of their campaign slogan: “It’s not fair … It’s Republican”.

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Recently, I got into a big fight with my cube-mate.  After attacking him for his listening to Bill Maher during the workday, he shot back and mocked my Glenn Beck listening.  As if there was some moral equivalence between the two.

“But Beck’s predictions have been right throughout the last two years.  Why would you not at least give him a listen?” I questioned.  My Georgetown-educated cube-mate shot back: “Because most of the people that listen to Glenn Beck are uneducated mid-westerners.”  Infuriated, I protested “Do you have any idea how arrogant and elitist you sound right now?”  Leave aside the irony that I was attacking his condescension while as a colleague of ours pointed out, showing beneath my loafers were our company holiday gift socks dotted with various currencies.

As my cube-mate went on to say, though he conceded that government should not be all-encompassing, “I want smart people to make decisions for people.”  In other words, us silly hicks are incapable of governing ourselves.  This is the fatal conceit of which F.A. Hayek wrote that reflects the attitude of the intellectual class today.  Why is it fatal?

First, the “highly educated intellectual” today routinely receives a subpar education.  Believe me, I went through it at Columbia, one of the few remaining schools with any semblance of a valuable curriculum.  A real education is about teaching the pupil to think critically.  Routinely, education today is more about spending time in science classes listening to professors talk about the merits of joining the Peace Corps (yes, this happened to me), iconoclastic gender, race and political studies courses and cultural Marxist programming of the heirs apparent of the political, economic and cultural hierarchy of the country.

Of those who graduate from these institutions and matriculate to the political realm, the progressive ethic pervades.  And what is this ethic?  The elite must decide for the sheep.

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Much is being made of the fact that mini-Madoff Scott Rothstein, the Fort Lauderdale lawyer who the government and his victims claim ran a $1.2 Billion Ponzi scam in South Florida was a major fundraiser for Republicans John McCain, Governor Charlie Crist, Senator John Ensign and the Republican Party of Florida.

Dem FL Gov Candidate Alex Sink and Rothstein, her "Judicial Nominating Committee"

What the media has missed is that Rothstein switched to the Democrats after McCain’s loss, giving to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and endorsing Florida Democratic candidate for Governor Alex Sink while giving the Florida Democratic Party $200,000.

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