Again...the Invisible Hand

[jackman]

They have a far lower chance of getting your money if you are in control of it than if the government is in control of it, look at how much of their action was contingent upon the backing of the taxpayer via subsidies, guarantees and limited liabilities. If that percent of income that you're paying to social security is cash in your hand then the only way that Wallstreet is going to get it is if you give it to them. If people took some responsibility for their own retirement there would be LESS centralisation of power, financial and otherwise.

there would also be a much bigger gap in classes as well, further removing the middle class from the picture. agree? it sounds like wealth distribution isn't part of your mantra and that's ok, but i'm just trying to clarify what your position is.

there are not very many people who would do any kind of well for themselves, left to invest their own money in whatever they choose. a little direction is quite a help to some who haven't the means to know how to grow their money. and the rich would always have the option of not investing a dime, which would again help not a soul in the middle or lower class. granted, they want to pinch every dime they can, so i'm sure they would invest, but it'd still all be going to sach, so private or not, sachs wins.

[mediamogul]

They have a far lower chance of getting your money if you are in control of it than if the government is in control of it, look at how much of their action was contingent upon the backing of the taxpayer via subsidies, guarantees and limited liabilities. If that percent of income that you're paying to social security is cash in your hand then the only way that Wallstreet is going to get it is if you give it to them. If people took some responsibility for their own retirement there would be LESS centralisation of power, financial and otherwise.

there would also be a much bigger gap in classes as well, further removing the middle class from the picture. agree? it sounds like wealth distribution isn't part of your mantra and that's ok, but i'm just trying to clarify what your position is.

there are not very many people who would do any kind of well for themselves, left to invest their own money in whatever they choose. a little direction is quite a help to some who haven't the means to know how to grow their money. and the rich would always have the option of not investing a dime, which would again help not a soul in the middle or lower class. granted, they want to pinch every dime they can, so i'm sure they would invest, but it'd still all be going to sach, so private or not, sachs wins.

One of the most important things a government does is to provide for the welfare of it's citizens. The New Deal was created directly in response to the overwhelming needs generated by the Great Depression. They are socialized programs in the sense that everyone pays into them and they are available to anyone who needs them. They are viable is due to the fact that everyone pays into them and continues to pay into them even when they are not using them. The small government, de-regulated business approach was attempted during the early 1900s pre New Deal and was a disaster for most of the population. Contrast that with the period of great prosperity following WWII when taxes were highest and much of the infrastructure of the US was built. Privatize social security and the banks will flip a profit and then run the program into the ground or make it like any other unrealistic privatized retirement account which only works for the vast majority of people because it is supplemented by Medicare and Social Security. The Libertarian view of this matter didn't work then and doesn't work now. Government is not only useful but necessary.

[jackman]

One of the most important things a government does is to provide for the welfare of it's citizens.
...
Government is not only useful but necessary.

ok cool. now i see. there are a lot of factors that go into the privatizing of social security and it makes it a very vague subject for debate. i thought you were on the opposite side of the argument from me. glad i asked.

maybe the libertarian way won't work on this issue, but i like a couple of libertarian positions, namely getting out of all these damn wars. but i agree where you are coming from. people aren't using that money yet, but that's because the boomers here haven't started collecting en masse yet. it's soon here, and the fund will deplete quickly. but, as long as people continue to pay in, there "should" be some there later.

************

damnit mediamogul, i thot you were theVoid replying to me. lol. well, at least i know where you're coming from - and agree with it.

[kılıç_mehmet]

Well, why shouldn't they?
If the circumstances do not require people to act honest, but instaed, fraudelent, they cannot do anything else but they need to thrive in this environment.

[Tiberius]

The term "invisible hand" becomes completely irrelevant when one of the following happens:

1) The government attempts to regulate / control the market.
2) The market attempts to influence government decisions.

The invisible hand of the market is a term to describe the self-regulatory nature of the free market. Markets which are regulated by the government, or which try to influence government policy in order to favour business, are by definition not self-regulatory.

[Minimalist]

And as such is phony. What you refuse to admit boss, is that rich cocksuckers Always try to manipulate your precious market. Only governments have the power to stop them and the result of libertarianism would be to gut that ability to benefit those same cocksuckers.

[paintpooper]

And as such is phony. What you refuse to admit boss, is that rich cocksuckers Always try to manipulate your precious market. Only governments have the power to stop them and the result of libertarianism would be to gut that ability to benefit those same cocksuckers.

The government is the people. We can stop them. If we had a government by the people for the people. The rich manipulate the market by using the government to create laws and regulations to favor them.

Take record label companies for instance, the government is trying to push legislation that would "help" these dieing companies. Like SOPA. The people don't need these media moguls anymore yet the government is trying to subsidies the dying business so they don't fail, they should fail because the market has no need for them.

Same thing with WallStreet and the Banks, if they failed which they did, they should have not got a dime of our money, but they did. This is not free market, this is a rigged market where WE are the ones getting shafted.

My ice cream parlor failed because I opened it in Antarctica, I want the government to bail me out cause I failed. They wouldn't bail out my ice cream shoppe. I don't pay enough of their election campaign contributions. US government is a perversion of its original intent.

If a certain product, service, or any type of production can not sustain itself, then it is not a viable thing and the market will correct itself. I don't know when the last time we had a true free market was. It had to be before 1913. Once a private entity controls your money supply your free market is dead. Then that entity gets laws passed like the Legal Tender Act where only Federal Reserve notes are allowed for transactions. That's like if I have a gumball machine that made unlimited gumballs and I made the government pass a law that made only gumballs legal tender, and also btw I have the only gumball making machine in the world. I would have complete control muah ha ha ha.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

That notion of national private superannuation is built on the premise that everyone has the capacity to 'put aside' say 5-10% of their income .This is palpable nonsense.

Here in Australia we have a three tier system;

(1) All government departments and most large companies had/have mandatory,contributory,subsidised superannuation schemes,usually based on between 5-10% of gross salary.There IS a slow move to private contributory superannuation.(but still subsidised)

(2) There is a national superannuation scheme,on top of any private scheme.ALL employers,must by law, contribute an ADDITIONAL 15% of very worker's wage to a Federal government controlled superannuation fund.

(3) There is a non contributory pension scheme. Currently paid at age 65,but increasing to 70 over the next few years,for both men and women. The pension is income and asset tested*, with your domicile being exempt. The full rate of a single pension is currently $695.30 a fortnight. I turn 65 in October. Because of my private superannuation, I will receive about $200 a fortnight,plus the concession card, which is worth about $2000 a year.

I have long been bemused by what I see as the appalling US standards of social justice,especially in health,education, welfare and the callous treatment of veterans. I'm not sure of the cause.Perhaps partly from the smug Calvinist notion of "the undeserving poor",perhaps partly from a pervasive bourgeois culture of envy. Or perhaps it's just money; the innate jingoism of the US has meant it has spent obscene amounts of money on war and "defence" since WW 2. The mind boggles on the the difference to American society if even part of that money had been spent on the needs of ALL of the American people.But what do I know? I'm a non American ,looking from the outside,but so gratfulf to be spending my old age here rather than in the US.


*the blind pension is income and asset test free.