Ayn Rand, although long past, continues to represents many intellectual breakthroughs for free-market economists.
What better way to test the timeless nature of these principles than against modern issues
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Specifically, Social Security.
Social Security is defined as a federal insurance program that provides benefits to retired people and those who are unemployed or disabled.
Before we jump into Rands view on Social Security there are two concepts to understand:
- All money held by the government is money from the citizens.
- Redistribution of wealth is respectively the transfer of income and of wealth(including physical property) from some individuals to others by means of a social mechanism such as taxation, charity, welfare, public services, land reform, monetary policies, confiscation, divorce or tort law.
In her book “Atlas Shrugged” there is an automotive factory that functions similarly to modern Social Security. The young and best workers give the fruits of their labor to the elderly. Those who are characterized as most in need and helpless.
An emotional knee-jerk reaction would be to identify the recipients of social security as entitled to the money because they may be poorly of without it.Those who fail, perhaps through no fault of their own, still have the freedom to seek the help of others.
Although your emotions may immediately identify this as the right thing to do, consider that those in need do not have a right to your belongings.
To give is a choice. Those in need do not have a right to your belongings.
Social Security is mandatory. Your dollars are taken and spent regardless of your consent.
Rand was morally opposed to Social Security because of her firm defense of the individual’s moral right to his life, his liberty, his earned property, and the pursuit of his own happiness.
If you are to redistribute someone’s earnings at it’s best that is temporary stealing.
Simply put, to without consent take another mans property and forcefully give it to someone else is theft.
And laws permitting such action are only legalizing the act, making it legal plunder as Bastiat puts it, which does not make it morally sound.
Social Security is a form of legal plunder. Seizing the money of young workers and giving it to an older person to pay for his retirement. Creating a vicious cycle of dependency.
To often we only see one side of the equation, what about the young victims, whose earnings were seized: the young man who can’t afford both to work and go to college, the young couple unable to put aside money for a down payment on a house, the young woman unable to save enough to start her own business.
This program is contrary to the American dream where freedom is acquired at the price of risk. The risk to succeed and to fail. If we are unwilling to pay the price of freedom we do not deserve to keep it.
Elizabeth Beeli 