Social Security: The Biggest Ponzi Scheme on Earth (By Milton Friedman)

"In 1964, Barry Goldwater was much reviled for suggesting that participation in Social Security be voluntary. I thought it was a good idea then. I still think so."

A guess why Goldwater was reviled? Voluntary Social Security would be DOA. It doesn't make fiscal sense for the upper class to pay social security, so they wouldn't. That leaves the lower class' taxes going to pay for it--somehow I don't think there's enough there.

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Yes, Social Security as is sucks.

No, we shouldn't kick it while it's down.

Seems like there's an awful lot of polemical posts on Hacker News lately from Conservative political organizations. Guess they figured out that here they could promote their agenda for free.

Is that really what Hacker News wants to be? A political forum? If so, I'll encourage the folks at Media Matters, Center for American Progress, and Campaign for America's Future to start posting here.

It's bad enough that Conservative political groups are hijacking a startup news aggregator. It's worse that the ideas they're pushing don't work.

Conservatism--the political philosophy promoted by AEI, Hoover, Heritage et al--is the flip side of Communism. With Communism, the purpose of people is to serve The State. In Conservatism, the purpose of people is to serve The Market. Thus, popular New Deal programs such as Social Security are anathema to them.

Both Communism and Conservatism work badly, producing similar effects. Our unregulated Conservative markets have crashed and burned just as badly as the Russians' hyper-regulated Communist markets did. States and countries run on Conservative principles are typically backward and stagnant:

--Mississippi and Alabama have Conservative state governments, and have practically no startup activity. Massachusetts and New York are not Conservative, which makes them capable of spawning MIT and Silicon Alley.

--Conservatives say that the keys to a strong economy is low taxes on rich people and unregulated markets. We've had them for the past decade, just as we did in the 1920s, and just as it did in the 1920s, our economy has melted down. What happened when we had sky-high taxes on rich people, and highly regulated markets? We got the U.S. economic boom of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and built the world's biggest middle class.

The fact that their political philosophy has produced poor results doesn't give the folks at AEI/Hoover/Heritage pause, however. Just like the old Communists, these Conservatives are now complaining that "Conservatism DOES work! It's just never been tried!" Just as with Communism, Conservatism never fails, it is only failed.

As for the ideas of Milton Friedman that these Hacker News Hijackers are pushing, we may want to read what a Nobel Prize-winning economist has to say about them:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19857

I have seen a lot from libertarians; few from conservatives or Conservatives. Which particular anti-abortion, pro-war, pro-Drug War, traditionalist, or otherwise conservative articles were you referring to?

I think it's really funny that when you see some viewpoints with which you disagree, it is because some big, anonymous agglomeration ("Conservatives!") must be abusing their freedom of speech by saying things with which many HN readers agree (and your solution -- telling an actual big, anonymous agglomeration to push their viewpoints here -- just seems to exacerbate the problem). A few other points:

In Conservatism, the purpose of people is to serve The Market.

What does it mean to 'serve' the market? The market is an abstraction -- you can't make 'it' better or worse-off, though you can do that to participants.

Our unregulated Conservative markets

You're referring to how the unregulated hedge funds produced much worse returns than the highly-regulated commercial- and investment-banking industries -- and how the only safe spot in the current financial turmoil is the highly-regulated, government-created, government-subsidized mortgage industry, right? Right?

Mississippi and Alabama have Conservative state governments, and have practically no startup activity. Massachusetts and New York are not Conservative, which makes them capable of spawning MIT and Silicon Alley.

Has it not occurred to you that you have the cause and effect wrong, here? New York and California can have more abusive governments because even if you pay 50% of your marginal income in taxes, you're still better off starting a startup in CA than in Mississippi, or trading derivatives in New York rather than Alabama.

What happened when we had sky-high taxes on rich people, and highly regulated markets?

Some day, you will be introduced to the term 'loophole'. You will wonder why the three-martini lunch and the company car used to be so common, and are now so rare. You will run the numbers on the Reagan tax cuts and find that the reduction in nominal rates would imply gigantic cuts in total income received, which is not what happened -- and then you'll realize that, in general, tax cuts are accompanied by loophole-closing, and tax increases are accompanied by loophole creation. That's just how things work.

Thank you for linking to Paul Krugman, well-known as the first person to be awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize for his political rants in a popular newspaper, rather than his academic papers. I haven't actually read what the prize committee said about him, but everyone I've met who agrees with Krugman's polemics seems to see the prize as new evidence in their favor, so I am assuming that this is what the award was for. Right?

In a site populated by hackers and entrepreneurs, you're going to get people with a strong preference for individualism over collectivism - that's the nature of the beast here. People are going to be very free action-oriented, anti-paternalistic, and not too many of us are going to like the government. We've also got the smart people thing going on where we think politicians are numbskills that spend more time politicking than doing anything intelligent.

So you've got that. But past that, it's hard to find intelligent discussion on economics, government, and society, and a bit coming into HN is healthy for the discussion.

What I'm impressed about is that we get practically no political current events here - and that's pretty cool. Most of the ideas we talk about in terms of economics, society, and government are pretty broad, intellectual strokes instead of inflamed stuff. And for the record, I'm all up for talking about market failure, monopolozation, and unfair initial distribution of resources. And we can have some good discussion.

Edit: This was originally a reply to someone who said HN was being invaded by Conservative lobbyists getting free publicity or some such. byrneseyeview replied to the same guy quoting some of it before he deleted it if you're curious as to the gist of it.