Ed Crane, president of the libertarian Cato Institute, makes the case for Social Security personal accounts.
[I]t's ironic that the people who appear so concerned over the growing wealth gap in America are the one's who refuse to allow low- and moderate-income Americans to accumulate wealth. The investment-risk argument was used in 1983 when the Greenspan Commission refused to even consider personal accounts. Yet the DJIA is now 10 times higher than it was at the peak in '83. How much longer will we deny lower-income Americans an opportunity to participate in the wealth-creation engine known as the U.S. economy?President Bush has an opportunity to create a real legacy. He has been heroically bold in raising this issue. But it seems to me he's been timid in the manner in which he has chosen to promote it.
Personal accounts are the right thing to do whether Social Security is solvent or not. Solvency discussions are boring, not to say uninspiring. Ownership and inheritability are inspiring. The fact that personal accounts help traditional Democratic constituents even more than Republicans should be another opportunity to turn debate around. Sending people out with charts and figures will achieve little. Returning to the first principles of liberty and opportunity--the true reasons to support personal accounts--will work.
The administration has essentially been repeating the kind of strategy that failed in "making the case" for war in Iraq. Then they chose the easy sell: weapons of mass destruction, vs. the real reasons -- strategic and moral -- that were harder to explain. Now they've tried hard to sell "solvency" vs. the potential, but complex, persuasive power of the "Ownership Society" and thus are on the defensive when forced to admit that personal accounts don't address the solvency issue.
As we see with the fumbling Bolton nomination (and as we may be about to see on the filibuster issue), the Bushies are just not always skilled at the blocking and tackling of politics. They end up playing catch-up ball all too often. It's a far cry from the Leftist paranoia of Bush-Rove machinations that rule the world. Would that it were so.
Posted by Alan at April 24, 2005 09:31 AM