Is Collecting Social Security Immoral?

Since I’m getting close to the age at which I am eligible to collect Social Security, I have been thinking about whether I will. I think so – and as soon as I am eligible, too.

I wont be duped by the promise of a higher benefit if I wait until I’m actually old and feeble because the house is betting I’ll croak before it has to send me a check.

Some will say – and I used to say this – that the benefits SS recipients get are paid for by the SS “contributions” people not old enough to collect benefits (which still includes me) are forced to pay. In my case, that’s literally so. As a self-employed person, I have to write a check every year for the 15 percent off the top of every dollar I earn. People who are paid salaries also pay this but it’s less obvious because it’s deducted in advance from their paychecks and also because it looks like it’s only 7 percent, because their employer is perceived as paying the other 7 percent. This is of course a pleasant fiction, like employer paid-for health insurance. The fact is you are paying for it – in the form of less pay than you would otherwise have gotten.

I digress.

There is the utilitarian argument in defense of collecting Social Security benefits. It basically boils down to: I need the money. Well, so does a mugger. The SS recipient has of course been mugged himself. That is obviously wrong. I deeply resent having been serially mugged to the tune of 15 percent of every dollar I have earned since I began working as a high school kid back in the ’80s. If I had not been mugged of all that money, I probably could afford to retire right now since I would have used that money to invest in things that would have generated even more money. As an example: If I’d had $70,000 back in the early 2000s I could have bought a townhouse in the development adjacent to where I used to live in Sterling, VA. At the time, my old neighborhood was what they call working class and a little on the rundown side. It has since gentrified astoundingly. That $70k townhouse would sell for $400,000 today. Even accounting for inflation, I could have made a very handsome profit of more than double what I (hypothetically) invested. I would probably have $150,000 cash money in the bank. I could comfortable live on that sum for five years without earning a cent – nor needing a cent.

But it’s all gone – along with all the other cents I have “contributed.”

Nevertheless, it isn’t moral to make up for what was taken from you by taking from someone else. But is that the case with Social Security? It is certainly true that people who are still working are still “contributing,” but that money is spent (by the government) almost as soon as it is extracted and it is spent on whatever the government decides to spend it on, such as “defense.” So how does the government finance Social Security benefits? Well, via the taxes it extracts generally – as well as by simply creating the money out of thin air, by printing (and digitizing) it via the “Fed.” The government is going to extract money generally irrespective of any benefits paid out to SS recipients. So refusing benefits isn’t going to do a thing to relieve the extracting. The money created out of thin air is just that. It isn’t extracted from anyone – though of course it does end up extracting from all of us in the form of degraded money that buys less because it is worth less.

None of this addresses the basic viciousness of SS, which (among other viciousnesses) creates enmity between the generations as well as dependency of the older generations, who look to the government and its benefits to salve the retirement years made financially precarious by SS. It is true, of course, that there would be people in a precarious state without SS, not because of SS but because there are people who are irresponsible as well as unlucky. SS is premised on this being the rule rather than the exception and so impoverishes everyone, which renders almost everyone dependent, too.

Speaking just for me – a GenX guy who isn’t old enough yet to get benefits but who has been forced to “contribute” for decades – I would agree to forgo a cent in benefits in return for a single lump sum payment of every cent I have been forced to “contribute,” plus a fair rate of interest to reflect what the money would have earned had it not been taken. I bet there are lots of other GenX’ers would take that deal, too. It’d be fair because it would be restitution.

I’d like to see Millennials – the generation just behind mine – as well as the Gen Z generation behind them – offered the same deal. Most of us are still able to work and many of us want to. If we had our money back – and were no longer forced to “contribute” going forward – most of us would probably be ok, financially.

As far as the older generations ahead of us GenX’ers, Millennials and GenZ’ers, who are for the most part no longer able to work and many of whom badly need the benefits, I say they ought to get them. There is plenty of money to pay for this without forcing the younger generations to keep on “contributing,” by reducing the grotesque spending on “defense” and other such things. It’s morally indecent to take away from an old person what he’s dependent on because so much was taken from him when he was young. But it is also morally indecent to keep on taking from younger people, too.

SS is like Dracula in that it needs a stake driven through its heart. Otherwise it will live and suck all of our blood forever.

. . .

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