Today Josh Marshall has a lengthy and extremely informative post on several subjects, including where the Democratic Party is now with respect to the Clinton Years and why Social Security is really important to the very kind of society in which we live. It is this latter point which I think deserves really close scrutiny and understanding. Here is a quote:
"The idea behind private accounts is that people should rely on themselves alone and bear the consequences of their successes and their failures and random chance on their own shoulders. If things don't pan out for you in retirement, that's something to take up with your children.
"The concept behind Social Security is fundamentally different. The first premise is that if you put in a lifetime's work there is simply a level of destitution below which society will not let you fall. Maybe you made so little during your working years that there wasn't enough to save. Or maybe you just didn't plan ahead well enough. Or maybe you suffered some misfortune. Whatever. If you worked you won't be destitute when you retire. People who made big bucks through their lives don't get a particularly good 'deal' from Social Security, if you insist on seeing it in investment terms. But that's a distorting prism, sort of like thinking you got a rotten deal on your medical insurance if you never have a catastrophic illness.
"I like to think of this as the moral equality of work. In our society, we allow the market to assign all manner of different cash values to different sorts of work or even the same sorts of work under different circumstances. And by and large, within some very small limitations like the minimum wage or certain non-discrimination laws, most of us think this is how it should be. I certainly do. (In this sense, I think collective bargaining amounts to another competitive arrangement within a market economy -- though doctrinaire free market folks have always seen it in contrary terms.)
"But the cash value of work isn't the same as its moral value. And if you look at the values imbedded in all those Social Security actuarial tables, you see this principle: whether you were a janitor or a fast-food worker or a doctor or a tycoon, if you worked during your working years you shouldn't be left destitute when your working years are over (retirement) or when, through no fault of your own, you can't work anymore (disability). No matter what. The common denominator is a life of work -- skilled or unskilled, impressive or unimpressive, remembered or forgotten. It doesn't matter."
The key phrase is "the cash value of work is not the same as its moral value." Your paycheck reflects the economic value of your work as assigned by the market forces and institutions, and we essentially agree that work of greater economic value should be given a greater reward.
But this is an economic view of the value of a person, not a human or moral view of his value. The market of necessity focuses entirely on the economic value of people and excludes other views. Society, however, needs a much wider view. Work is of value to society whether it is very productive or only slightly so. It is in many ways the very thing that brings us all together as human beings.
Private Social Security accounts reduce the human value to nothing more than a paycheck and luck. This is also the basic flaw of the Ownership Society being touted by President Bush. Social Security, as currently structured, states that if you have worked all your life and no longer work because of retirement or disability, then you are guaranteed that you will not live the remainder of your life in destitution and dependent on the charity of family and others.
The same argument applies to the minimum wage. There is an inherent value in socializing people into the world of work over and above the economic value of the work they do.
That is the basic issue being argued in the political realm today. I come down strongly on the view that a human being is a great deal more important then just his or her ability to work for a paycheck or acquire money. Work is of value to society regardless of its' economic value as assigned by the very short-term and institutionally restricted procedures of the market. We permit the market to operate mostly freely because that provides the greatest productive value back to society, but it does little to support families in their child-rearing functions or long term scholarship.
Converting Social Security to private accounts subject to the vagaries of the financial markets requires a much too limited view of the value of human beings. We must not permit the safety net to be destroyed.
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