Don't get the idea they actually represent anyone

December 7, 1998

It was rather remarkable to hear labor leaders and other traditional liberals express strident opposition to private retirement accounts at the New Century Alliance news conference the other day. All the rhetoric about the people they supposedly "represent" is hogwash. Consider:

According to a poll conducted by democratic pollster Mark Penn and published in The New Democrat, 72% of Democrats believe that Social Security should be at least partially privatized. The AFL-CIO's own poll showed 60% of union members favor putting a portion of their Social Security tax into individual accounts. The Heritage Foundation commissioned a poll by the Charlton Research Company that showed virtually the same result: 58% of union workers support incorporating individual accounts in Social Security. Earlier this year, a USA Today poll found 66% of the public favoring incorporating personal accounts into Social Security.

Leading Democrats have publicly taken a stand favoring allowing individual investment of Social Security. Senators Moynihan, Kerrey, Breaux and Robb and Rep. Stenholm have made it clear that this is indeed a bipartisan issue. Yesterday, before the Democratic Leadership Council, Kerrey said it this way:

"There is no more Democratic idea than building a generation of wealthy Americans who participate in our economy rather than feeling isolated from it."

Here's Senator Moynihan on Fox News Sunday earlier this year:

"It's the liberals who can destroy Social Security by preventing any change."

Indeed.

Is the current Social Security system immoral? Tune in today's live webcast

Join us today at 4:00 p.m. for a live webcast of a policy forum in Cato's Hayek Auditorium on "The Morality of Social Security Privatization."

This promises to be an unusual and lively debate. Speakers making the argument that privatization is the truly moral choice are: Daniel Shapiro, author of The Moral Case for Social Security Privatization (Cato Social Security Paper no. 14), and associate professor of philosophy at West Virginia University, and Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute. Speakers taking the other side are Kenneth Tollett of Howard University and Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University.

This important discussion by leading philosophers and social scientists comes on the eve of the two-day White House conference on Social Security. According to Daniel Shapiro, the most important arguments for social security privatization are moral, not economic.

"A privatized Social Security system meets moral criteria far better than does our current, bankrupt, pay-as-you-go system. A privatized system provides the freedom and responsibility to shape one's own life; avoids intergenerational inequalities; and still retains some sense of shared responsibility via a minimum pension guarantee that is part of all significant privatization proposals.

"The moral shroud that used to surround Social security is an illusion: there is no moral argument for Social Security. A private system is justified regardless of which political values one things most important."

Cato Experts at White House Social Security Conference

Four Cato experts will be key players in next week's White House conference on Social Security reform.

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