Clarifying the Corrupt Nature of Social Security

The following essay has been making the rounds on social media:

A woman died at age 65.  She paid into the system for almost 50 years and collected NOTHING?  Keep in mind all the people that die every year that were paying into the system and got nothing!  And these governmental morons mismanaged the money and stole from the system, so that it's now going broke.

BEAUTIFUL! and they have the audacity to call today's seniors "vultures" in an attempt to cover their ineptitude.

   DISGRACEFUL!

The real reason for renaming our Social Security payments is so the government can claim that all those social security recipients are receiving

entitlements thus putting them in the same case as welfare, food stamp recipients.

THIS IS WORTH THE FEW MINUTES IT TAKES

TO READ AND DIGEST!

F.Y.I. By changing the name of SS contributions it gives them a means to refute this program in the future.

It's free money for the government to spend under this guise.  The Social Security check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a *Federal Benefit

Payment*?

I'll be part of the one percent to forward this.  I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you.  Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it.

The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a "Federal Benefit Payment."   This isn't a benefit.  It is our money paid out of our earned income!  Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too.  It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.

If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.

If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers contributions) at a

meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved!

This is your personal investment.  Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.

That's almost three times more than today's average Social Security benefit of 1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration.  (Google it – it's a fact).  And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)!  I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.

Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger *Ponzi scheme* than Bernie Madoff ever did.  (Lyndon Johnson)

They took our money and used it elsewhere.  They forgot (oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking.  They didn't have a referendum

to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them.  And they didn't pay interest on the debt they assumed.  And recently they've told us that the

money won't support us for very much longer. (Isn't it funny that they NEVER say this about welfare payments?)

But is it our fault they misused our investments?  And now, to add insult to injury, they're calling it a *benefit*, as if we never worked to earn every

penny of it.  Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't mean that our investments were a charity!

Let's take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare.  Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government.  Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare

going for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.

Then call it what it is:

Our Earned Retirement Income.

99% of people won't forward this.

Will you? [sic]

There’s a large measure of truth there. But it’s inaccurate in important ways. Here is my rebuttal:

True; Social Security is thoroughly corrupt—which is why I won’t be forwarding this e-mail.

Your Social Security taxes are in fact not a “personal investment”. They are a wealth transfer payment from you who earned it to those who didn’t earn it. The Social Security “trust fund” is a fraud. The taxes that go into it are immediately paid out to other people—people you don’t even know—or “lent” to Congress to spend as they see fit. Unlike a pension fund, which legally must contain real assets sufficient to fund the vested benefits, the SS trust fund is a pile of IOUs—non-tradeable treasury bonds—that can only be repaid by additional taxes levied on us, the same people whose SS taxes funded it in the first place! The “system” is not “going broke”. It has always been broke, by design.

You have no property right to that money you pay “into the system”—and never have. You are not legally entitled to the promised benefits—and never have been. The politicians can lower or rescind the benefit at any time. As CATO reports, “One of the most enduring myths of Social Security is that a worker has a legal right to his Social Security benefits. Many workers assume that, if they pay Social Security taxes into the system, they have some sort of legal guarantee to the system’s benefits. The truth is exactly the opposite. It has long been law that there is no legal right to Social Security.”

So yes, the benefits are in fact Federal Benefit Payments in the nature of welfare and food stamps—and funded the same way, with other people’s taxes. Social Security payments are not “earned retirement income”. You money is long gone, along with the potential return on investment. Those Social Security monthly checks are literally handouts funded by taking money out of other people’s pockets. What about the money you “paid in” all those years? That’s long gone. A more proper term to describe Social Security benefits is restitution. You are entitled to receive the promised benefits for the same reason you are entitled to get your wallet back from a street thug who mugged you. But that is not a return on investment of your money. Those monthly checks are only made possible by government doing to others what it did to you all those working, taxpaying years. If that isn’t moral corruption, then the term has no meaning.

Social Security, like all socialist programs, is corrupt to it core. It forces everybody into a chain gang of reciprocating slavery and dependency, with the state as the master and “benefactor”. Re-labeling won’t change that. “Need” won’t change that. Social Security shouldn't be saved. It should be phased out and abolished. Until that is politically feasable, I advocate for a personal account system. The taxes future participants must pay—all 15.3% of it—should at least be deposited directly into a real account, in the individual's name, invested as the individual sees fit, inheritable for the individual’s heirs, with an iron-clad statutory ban on politicians, other retirees, or anyone else getting their hands on one nickel of it for any reason.

Government-forced savings are not right, either—but much less bad than the current fraud. At least each “contributor” would see where his/her money goes and watch it grow, via monthly statements, like an IRA or 401k. Only by establishing the individual’s property right to his payments could the money drawn out be honestly called Earned Retirement Income.

I don’t believe for a second that 92% of our population need Social Security; that most Americans are too incompetent to plan for their own futures without picking each others’ pockets. If it is the case that only 8% of Americans still want freedom, then America is philosophically dead, Marxism has won, and economic collapse, Gulags, and gas chambers are only a matter of time.

I don’t believe in the basic incompetence of the vast majority of the American people. But I do believe in the saying, “Be careful what you wish for.” Think of what it could mean to keep the current system going. It’s definitely unsustainable. But the proposed cure is worse than the disease. Many politicians have suggested “means testing” social security benefits; a fancy way of saying if you have private savings built up over a lifetime, the state will cut your social security payments for the sake of increasing benefits of others who “need” them, thus screwing the responsible because they were responsible enough to save. Saving Social Security and Medicare means cutting a lot of people’s benefits. Think it’s bad that the woman who died at 65 got screwed? Wait until people who don’t die at 65 get screwed. That’s what it’ll take to “Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going . . .” (Contrary to scaremongers, Social Security can be radically altered or even ended without harming people who have planned their lives around it and now count on it.)

If we’re going to continue Social Security, it should at the very least be radically altered. If we’re going to rename anything, it should be to rename “Social Security” into “Personal Security”—and mean it. We must establish an ironclad individual property right to the money taxed away from each of us as well as the returns generated by means of personal, private accounts. People whose political power depends on keeping people dependent on politicians for their payments won’t like it. Neither will people who hope to collect more than they earned or people who want to evade the responsibility of taking care of themselves. But those of us who believe it is the individual's right and responsibility to plan his own life will be the big winners.

Related Reading:

The “Personal Account” Path to Ending Social Security

Property Rights: The Hidden Issue of Social Security Reform -- Charles E. Rounds Jr.

Protect Your Corn: 3 Ways to Self-Fund Retirement in a Means-Tested Social Security World -- David Reyes

Social Security is Much Worse Than a Ponzi Scheme - and Here's How to End It -- Richard M. Salsman

Chile’s Social Security Lesson For The U.S. -- José Piñera

Privatize Social Security (Even if the Market Crashes) -- Michael D. Tanner

Private Social Security Accounts: Still a Good Idea -- William G. Shipman and Peter J. Ferrara

The Social Security Injustice

Politicians’ Bipartisan Sneak Attack on Social Security Highlights Need for Personal Accounts

Electric Buses? How Will You Charge Them Up Under NJ Environmentalists’ Dark Green Anti-Energy Agenda?

Reporting for NJ.com, Larry Higgs expounds on the virtues of electric busses as opposed to diesel-powered ones, now that the first ones have arrived in New Jersey. In Electric buses are in N.J., and more are coming. We tried them, Higgs reports:

In the race to be the greenest, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has put the first electric buses on the road in New Jersey. It purchased 18 Proterra electric buses to use in shuttle service at its three major airports. The first buses went in service at Newark Liberty International Airport on Thursday, running on the airport’s 24/7 shuttle. [sic]

They seem pretty cool. I posted these comments:

Great idea. Seriously. These buses look like technological marvels. It certainly is progressive to replace fossil fuel transportation with electric where feasible. This moves power generation from individual vehicles to central power plants, where air pollution can much more easily be controlled and mitigated.

But how will you keep all these batteries charged, on demand? Keeping these electricity-guzzling behemoths going will need plenty of not just clean but reliable electricity-generating capacity. So-called “renewable energy” notwithstanding, the key word is reliable. Where will that clean, reliable electricity-generating capacity come from if the “Greens” win their war against natural gas pipelines and nat-gas generating plants and nuclear power?  

Of course, the Greens are not interested in progress. Fundamentally, they are ideologically opposed to industrial progress, as such. On principle, “green” means neo-primitive regression to pre-industrial living--or as close to it as is politically feasible. Their agenda is to make human living harder, not cleaner. They seek to “protect the Earth,” not human flourishing and well-being. It is a dark agenda.

People have been trying forever to simultaneously have their cake and eat it. It can’t be done. If “the race to be the greenest” means transitioning to electric transportation, then it also must mean the impediments to expanded reliable electricity generation must be eased, not hampered. This means defeating the Dark Greens’ anti-reliable energy agenda.

Related Reading:

The ‘Jihad on Pipelines,’ New Jersey Front

The NJCF’s Rant Against Human Energy Needs

Why Do We Need Pipelines?--Pipeline 101, American Petroleum Institute

Alex Epstein: Fossil Fuels Power Electric Cars

Nike Shamefully Turns it’s Back on Americanism

Just prior to the Fourth of July, the national holiday was marred by the actions of a great American company, Nike. With a chance to defend America’s core principles, Nike caved to pressure to remove its sneaker line celebrating America’s Founding era because it featured America’s original flag. The Betsy Ross Flag features the 13 red and white stripes representing the original 13 colonies that collectively declared independence from England, and 13 stars organized in a circle, one for each state that then existed. Nike’s pulling of its Independence Day sneaker line is an act of corporate ignorance and cowardice.

According to Bloomberg, the flag symbol offended some people, including Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick:

The design recently has taken another meaning for some Americans as far-right groups have claimed it as a symbol of their cause. It has also been criticized as evocative of an era when slavery was still predominant in the U.S.

And Newsweek reported:

Kaepernick reportedly told Nike he and others found the symbol offensive due to its connection to the United States' slavery era, according to The Wall Street Journal, who first reported the story Tuesday.

Really? The Abolitionist movement is also connected to the slavery era. Should we repudiate all of the brave people who fought--ultimately successfully--to end slavery, including Abolitionist leaders like Frederick Douglass?

The Ross Flag symbolizes the new American nation after their successful fight for Independence and the formation of a governing Constitution. That fight officially started with the signing and ratification of the Declaration of Independence, which represented the official beginning and philosophical blueprint of the United States of America. It’s declaration of political equality and inalienable individual rights of all people inspired pro-freedom movements like the Abolition and Women’s Suffrage, and the fight for emancipation of oppressed minority groups. It was cited by Emancipationist President Abraham Lincoln, Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King and Gay Rights leader Harvey Milk. 

In declaring that every individual has the inalienable right to live free for his own sake, with her own happiness as the primary purpose of her own life, The Declaration of Independence is the greatest anti-slavery, anti-oppression political document ever written. This is not like the Confederate monuments, which should be removed from all government property. The Confederate monuments symbolize the repudiation of America’s Founding principles in defense of slavery and minority group oppression. The compromises that kept many people from enjoying the benefits of its ideals notwithstanding, the Betsy Ross flag symbolizes the individualist core of Americanism, the exact antipode to slavery and oppression.

I like to think that this episode is a result of misinformed people. That's probably true for some. But for others, there likely is a more sinister purpose to the reaction against this symbol of Americanism. The Declaration of Independence is not just an anti-slavery document. In the same way and for the same reasons, it is an anti-socialist document. Given the rise of the treasonous (philosophically speaking) socialist wing of the Democratic Party, it’s important to recognize that you can’t build a socialist America on a foundation of individual sovereignty and freedom. You just can’t. So the socialists must obliterate that foundation.

As to the objection that “far-right groups have claimed it as a symbol of their cause,” that is not even worth commenting on. In any event, shame on Nike for caving to the reactionaries. As Harvey Milk, one of the early leaders in the “Gay Pride” fight for equal rights for gays, said at a 1978 speech,

In the Declaration of Independence it is written 'All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights . . . .' That’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence.

Yes. That’s what America is. That’s what the Betsy Ross Flag symbolizes, in my view. As an American, I am deeply offended by Nike’s cowardice. 

Related Reading:

July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased

The Declaration of Independence

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence—Onkar Ghate

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty – Timothy Sandefur

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?--Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased

“It is . . . from the perspective of the bloody millennia of mankind's history . . . that I want you to look at the birth of a miracle: the United States of America. If it is ever proper for men to kneel, we should kneel when we read the Declaration of Independence."—Ayn Rand

The Fourth of July is a national holiday that, to me, stands far above all of the others. It represents the greatest political achievement in world history. More than that, the birth of the United States of America represents a towering and unprecedented philosophical achievement. America, born of the Enlightenment, is the first nation founded on the principle that man the individual has a fundamental, inalienable right to his own life, and that government’s responsibility is to protect that right…that the people act by right, while the government acts by permission.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

So opened the document that marked the starting point of the United States of America as a sovereign nation. Above are the most radical words ever written as the foundation for a nation. For the first time in human history, a government was to be the servant of the people, by conscious design and on principle. “The people” were understood to be, not a collective, but a collection of sovereign individuals recognized as possessing unalienable individual rights to his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. America was the triumph of reason, which was understood to be a faculty of the individual. The government would now be charged with the task of protecting every individual’s freedom to act on his own sovereign, reasoning mind … as a matter of unalienable right.

The birth of America was the culmination of Mankind’s long tortuous philosophical journey that began with Aristotle, and continued through his rebirth via Aquinas, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, and the Enlightenment. Tribalism was to be swept into the dustbin of history, along with “The Divine Right of Kings” and all manner of omnipotent ruler. Men would be set free from the forcible domination of other men—not be permission of some King, cleric, lord, or tribal chief, but by moral right. Rights don’t come from government, the founders held. Rights precede government; then “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”—“just powers” being understood to be only those powers required to carry out the job of protecting individual rights, not the power to violate rights by redistributing private wealth, regulating our lives, and the like.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence, America’s Founding Fathers, were not conservative in any rational sense. They were radicals in the complete and honorable sense: They represented a concept entirely new to mankind. Standing up against the tide of history, with only the winds of the ideas of John Locke and the Enlightenment thinkers at their backs, this unique group of intellectuals took action. Indeed, the ideological radicalism of the ideas to which they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor turned to actual armed rebellion. The rest, as is said, is history.

America’s Founding was flawed in many respects - the failure to eradicate the ancient evil of slavery from American soil for some 7 decades after the ratification of the Constitution being the most obvious and most egregious. The anti-slavery forces simply did not have the strength to defeat that vampire at the outset, and so slavery had to be accepted into the young nation. But the moral groundwork had been laid – that all men are created equal – and the fate of the slave states was sealed. 89 years after the signing of the Declaration, America’s Founding ideals caught up with the slave states. Some have pointed to America’s early acceptance of slavery as proof of its basic depravity. In fact, the defeat of slavery represented one of America’s finest hours, and a testament to the formidable power of its ideals. Indeed, those ideals underpinned freedom’s progress in regards to women’s suffrage, the defeat of Jim Crow segregation laws, the mid-20th Century Civil Rights movement and the end of black voter suppression laws.

America’s Founding was the most monumental political achievement in world history. America is currently backsliding from its Founding ideals, heading in the direction of collectivism and statism. But we have the means to reverse that trend, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, which serve as the philosophic blueprint for our Constitution. As Harvey Milk, one of the early leaders in the “Gay Pride” fight for equal rights for gays, said at a 1978 speech,

In the Declaration of Independence it is written 'All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights . . . .' That’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence.

Indeed, the words of July 4, 1776 have been written. Ratified on July 4, signed on August 2, the Declaration of Independence will never be erased. But its ideals can be forgotten, twisted, evaded, or ignored. We can not let that happen. The Fourth of July reminds us that the fight for freedom is a philosophical fight—fought not on foreign military battlefields but right here at home, on the intellectual battleground of ideas. Freedom can not be won and secured by the sword. It can only be won by the pen. It’s not enough to merely uphold the U.S. Constitution, either in its original form or in its current “living” form. We must remember and reassert “The Conscience of the Constitution,” as one scholar called the Declaration of Independence. It is indispensable intellectual ammunition for those of us fighting to establish the fully free society that the Founders envisioned and came close to achieving.

Proof of the moral and practical power and viability of individual liberty is written across the brief span of the past 241 years. The ideas of reason, individualism, and capitalism have been unleashed. The philosophical foundation for an American rebirth has been laid by a Twentieth Century philosopher/novelist whom I call America's Last Founding Father, and the final rout of statism is tantalizingly close—yet still so far.

“And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

By closing out the Declaration with that pledge, those great men of 1776 declared that they would accept no substitute for the ideals in which they believed. As the world watched, they laid it all on the line—their property, their families, their lives—for those ideals. They would succeed or perish. That utterly uncompromising stand gave us the United States of America. The least we could do is pledge to uphold those principles, to roll back the compromises that are undermining them, and to accept no substitute.

Happy Birthday America.

Related Reading:

The Declaration of Independence

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence—Onkar Ghate

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty – Timothy Sandefur

Tom Gilbert Looks Backward, but ‘Need’ for Pipelines is Forward-Looking

Tom Gilbert, campaign director of ReThink Energy NJ and the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, crowed that We’ve proved we don’t need the PennEast pipeline. PennEast has proposed and is seeking regulatory approval to build a new natural gas pipeline through Western New Jersey. Gilbert’s proof? During the extreme cold spells of Winter 2019, there was enough natgas capacity to avert shortages. Here are some excerpts:

With spring here, and the coldest weather behind us, it’s a good time to reflect on the hollow claims PennEast made once again that its proposed pipeline is needed to make sure people can stay warm when it’s freezing outside.

If one of winter’s certainties is that there will be some numbingly cold days, another is that the companies that would profit from building the unnecessary pipeline through parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania will seize on this in an effort to justify building their new pipeline.

This winter’s polar vortex proved them wrong again.

Despite extreme cold spells, during the polar vortex, and also the bomb-cyclone of 2018, New Jersey had abundant gas for heating homes and other buildings.*

All PennEast’s billion-dollar pipeline would do is take away from the resources available for developing affordable, reliable, clean energy sources.

To say “[C]ompanies would profit from building the unnecessary pipeline” is contradictory. If it’s unnecessary, there would be no customers, and hence no profits.

More importantly, profit-seeking pipeline businesses and their investors are geared to future needs. The reason that “New Jersey had abundant gas for heating homes and other buildings” now is because pipeline builders foresaw today’s energy needs years ago, and built the infrastructure capacity we now rely upon.

That billion-dollar private expenditure does not “take away from the resources available for developing affordable, reliable, clean energy sources.” Morally, it’s their money, their choice. Anyone else is free to commit their own money to “developing affordable, reliable, clean energy sources”; e.g., build new nuclear capacity, if government would allow it and Environmentalists would get behind it.. Anyone is free to invest in unreliables, like solar and wind.

I for one am thankful for the forward-looking natgas pipeline builders. I hope to someday get access to natgas, which I do not now have, so I can convert from oil heat. That is one industry to whose profits I’d be happy to contribute to.

I won’t defend every public claim made by PennEast in support of regulatory approval for its proposed pipeline. But money speaks louder than words. If private investors are willing to put up $1 billion, I’d trust their judgement above anti-fossil fuel Environmentalists. Where would we be if ReThink Energy NJ, the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, and their ilk had gotten their way 10 or 20 or so years ago, and stopped the building out of the pipeline capacity that kept NJ buildings warm in Winter 2019? It is the PennEasts, not the Environmentalists, who have our future reliable, affordable, clean energy needs in mind.

* [“Polar vortex” is the modern buzzword for extreme cold wave. “Bomb cyclone” is a relatively recent term invented by meteorologists to describe a rapidly intensifying low pressure system. Both phenomena have been around as long as Earth’s weather.]

Related Reading;

“To Make Money”: The Noble Motive of PennEast Pipeline Company

The NJCF’s Rant Against Human Energy Needs

Why Do We Need Pipelines?--Pipeline 101, American Petroleum Institute

The ‘Jihad on Pipelines,’ New Jersey Front

Related Viewing:

Can We Rely on Wind and Solar Energy?

FIRE’s 1st Amendment Challenge to Rutgers Offers a Classic Lesson in Democracy vs. Republicanism

In Rutgers trampled the constitution by letting students vote to defund the newspaper, group says [New Jersey Star-Ledger, 6/4/19], NJ.com’s Adam Clark reported for the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

Rutgers University should restore funding to its student newspaper after it violated the constitution by allowing students who don’t like what the paper publishes to vote to defund it, a First Amendment group claims.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) on Monday called for Rutgers to restore more than $500,000 to The Daily Targum, which lost its student fee funding through a referendum last month.

That referendum violated the constitution because it let students decide how public money is spent based entirely on whether they agree with what a student group does, said Adam Goldstein, a program officer at FIRE, a non-profit free speech advocacy group.

Students, including a conservative group that dismissed The Daily Targum as “fake news,” aren’t legally allowed to defund a public university newspaper just because they don’t agree with the content, he said.

The fact that The Daily Targum, and probably other campus newspapers, is publicly funded in a public university complicates the issue. If a majority doesn’t want to fund it, they shouldn’t have to. On the other hand, the minority that contributes to the public funding shouldn’t be forbidden from doing so. Rescinding the funding thus violates the minority’s rights. In a privatized setting, where campus newspapers are privately funded, any individual can refuse to fund the paper by not subscribing, leaving others free to subscribe.

That said, I think there’s a broader political philosophy lesson here. It is that broader context that I chose to focus on when I posted these comments:

Though public funding muddles the issue, this episode highlights the anti-liberty nature of democracy.  

Every individual possesses certain inalienable fundamental rights. These rights include but are not limited to freedom of speech, which underpins press freedom. Inalienable means no person’s rights can ever be subject to a vote. That is the basis for the American constitutional republic, of which the democratic process is an important but limited part.

The Rutgers case is an easily observable example of democracy, with free speech rights directly rescinded by vote. Much more insidious is the attacks on free speech through indirect democracy, with voters electing politicians to covertly attack free speech rights. Catchphrases used to justify or sneak in free speech limitations include "dark money"; "new neutrality"; "fake news"; "hate speech"; "campaign finance reform"; “corruption of our democracy”; "offensive content"; "election manipulation"; "harmful online content"; "social media addiction" [aka "internet addiction", et al]; "dehumanizing speech"; “extremism”; “political bias”.

In a republic, politicians are forbidden to violate individual rights, even though elected. Democracy is limited by constitutional limits on government power, such as we have with the First Amendment. Let’s hope FIRE is successful in rolling back this bit of democratic tyranny at Rutgers. And let’s hope the First Amendment continues to protect us from the broader political attacks on free speech that permeate our media and culture.

Politicians of all stripes are always itching to democratically stifle our rights. Don’t let them. We must remember that freedom is not the right to vote. Freedom is the right to live your life regardless of anyone else's vote.

Related Reading:

America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters

Note to #FREEPRESS: A Free Press Derives from Freedom of Speech

The First Amendment

Freedom of Speech and Press are Linked

John Farmer's Understanding of Free Speech Rights as Non-Absolute is Dangerous and Wrong

Budding Grassroots Campaign Against ‘Hate Speech’ is shallow, childish . . . and Dangerous

Constitutional Distortions: Free Speech vs. Freedom of Speech

Roger McNamee’s Attack on Intellectual Freedom

Democracy for All: The "Drown Out the Voice of Average Americans" Amendment

Contra the "Progressives," NJ’s Tax Structure Looks Quite Fair (At a Glance)

New Jersey politics at the state level is dominated by the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, the Legislature has been at odds with the Governor. One of the key issues is Governor Murphy’s demand for a “millionaires tax,” which is adamantly opposed by Legislative leaders Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin.

The NJ Star-Ledger Editorial Board’s Tom Moran, who has been critical of Murphy, posted the case for raising taxes on millionaires in a recent editorial, despite NJ having one of the highest income tax rates in the country. I’m not going to critique every one of Moran’s reasons. Suffice it to say that Murphy claims that millionaires “like myself” should pay their fair share. The rest of this post is roughly what I posted as a comment to the editorial.

But a picture is worth a thousand words. What I will do is show an interesting chart included in Moran’s article, Why Murphy is right about millionaires. And how he’s blowing the politics, published in the print edition (but not the online version) of the Star-Ledger on 6/16/19.

The chart was compiled by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, New Jersey Policy Perspective, a "liberal" think tank. Here is the chart, including the caption:

"Our income tax is steeply progressive, but the property and sales tax are regressive. Count all state and local taxes, and under Gov. Phil Murphy's budget proposal, each income group pays about the same share of its income in taxes, hovering around 10%.

• Under $25K (bottom 20%)          9.6%
• $25K-$47K (low-mid 20%)          9.1%
• $47K-$76K (middle 20%)            9.9%
• $76K-$133K (mid-high 20%)      10.4%
• $133K-$319K (next 15%)            10.1%
• $319K-$921K (next 4%)              10.0%
• $921K and up (top 1%)                10.5%

The methodology appears to focus only on taxes paid, leaving out collection of government benefits funded by taxes. When you factor in those programs, lower income people undoubtedly collect a lot more in relation to taxes paid than upper income folks. Factoring in the receiving side of the tax issue, the tax burden on low income people is undoubtedly much lower, probably even negative for some.

But leaving that aside, only a so-called Progressive can look at this chart and see unfairness. Remember that these are percentages, not actual taxes paid. In percentage terms, they are roughly equal. But in dollar terms, they are anything but equal. For example, a person making $1 million @ 10.5% pays $110,000 in NJ taxes, 45.8 times as much as the $2400 paid at the rate of 9.6% on income of $25,000.

Only a so-called Progressive would call that regressive. On its face, this raw data indicates that, based both on fairness and mathematically, there is no case for raising the upper income tax rates. Keep this in mind the next time you hear some Progressive like Murphy call for "the rich" to "pay their fair share."

Related Reading:

NJ’s Pension Funding Crisis and Public Tax Hypocrisy

Taxes in New Jersey: Americans for Prosperity vs. New Jersey Policy Perspective

In N.J., a Flat Tax, Not a “Millionaires Tax,” is the Fairer Solution

The Collectivist Rationalization for Keeping Overtaxed New Jerseyans from Leaving the State