Don't Trust Us With Social Security

Every time I write about Social Security, I get an email box full of letters from readers who just plain don't like the philosophy behind the government-run retirement insurance program.

They don't like the idea that the government takes their money and, after "investing" it for them, decides how big a check they'll receive every month after they've reached some bureaucratically determined retirement age. It's paternalistic because it assumes the government invests our money better than we would. And it's coercive because the government doesn't give most of us a choice about whether we're going to participate in the system.

All of which is true. The program is bureaucratic, often arbitrary, definitely paternalistic and certainly coercive. ...