We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Reality check on the American Prospect A truly bizarre article has appeared in the American Prospect arguing that President Bush’s proposed social security privatization should be opposed. Why? Because social security privatization has happened in Britain and has been a disaster.
How odd. I live in Britain and work in an economic think tank, and I never knew that Britain had privatized social security. Indeed, the Inland Revenue (Britain’s equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service) wrote to me recently on the subject of my state pension.
Social Security Privatization was floated as an idea after Labour came to power, but it has never become government policy. It was advocated by Frank Field MP, then the Minister for Welfare Reform, who soon after left the Cabinet.
The Prospect article is, frankly, drivel. Social security privatization has not happened in Britain.
Dr Eamonn Butler has more on the UK’s pensions on the ASI Blog.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I see the offending article was funded by a grant from the Center for American Progess. I’m not surprised. Read this about them.
When will you learn, it doesn’t matter what the issue is, what the pros and cons are, what makes the most logical, good-for-everyone sense… all that matters is, “Where does Bush come out on an issue?”
Then they pick the opposite.
In the American context, “Social Security” means state retirement pensions. The comparison is with the British PENSION system, not with what we call social security.
The whole argument is riddled with flaws. It was thoroughly dealt with on TCS a few weeks ago, IIRC.
EG
BTW, go and read an excellent article on SSecurity privatisation over at Cafe Hayek(Link). Recommended.
American Prospect? Tossers r’ us?
CBS News ran a similar story a few days ago pointing out that many pensioners had lost their pensions in Britain’s “privatised” social security system.
What they didn’t mention was Gordon Brown’s £5bn a year tax on pension funds introduced in 1997, before which the pension schemes were doing quite well. Indeed, Britain still has the best genuinely-funded pension schemes in Europe. Pensions in Britain were not properly handed over to individuals – under the government’s supervisory regime, supposedly to protect workers, they had to be advised to join their employer’s scheme, even if they would have been safer buying unit linked funds looked after by an independent scheme.
It’s not just that particular article at the American Prospect which stinks…