DIY

The Hassle Factor - But I don't want to manage my own Social Security account!

Thomas Geoghegan makes exactly the point I've made in arguing about Social Security in the past--people don't WANT to be responsible for their own retirement. This is a government program because, despite the current national conservative mood, it's something that people generally feel the government should handle: ensuring that, no matter what, every citizen will have a minimal standard of living in retirement after a lifetime of labor. People like not having to worry about how this safety net money is invested:

This is my gripe against the Bush plan: I've already got enough to do.

Millions of Americans, I'm convinced, are against it for only that reason. We don't want to have to think about Social Security. "But people worry about it now," you might say. Oh, sure, at these presidential drop-in discussions in Fargo, N.D., a cop or cook will say, "I worry Social Security won't be there for me." But come on, they don't really worry. If they did, they'd open a damned savings account.

I love Geoghegan's willingness to get into the dirt on this issue:

I hate to personalize things, but since Mr. Bush's reform is his personal obsession, I think I will. It galls me that a president who has never had to dig is handing us a shovel. Look at all the freedom that George W. Bush had because Bill DeWitt Jr. and Mercer Reynolds handled all his investments. Early on, they told him, "You just worry about coming up with funny nicknames, and you will never have to worry about money." And he came into the White House with his brow unlined.

Social Security is our little taste of this freedom. The world adds and adds. Social Security subtracts. It simplifies life. Social Security is "Social" and "Secure" instead of "Individual" and "At Risk." That's what is so maddening to people on the right, the Ayn Randers, the libertarians.

They look down on the rest of us. They think of us as slugs. We aren't living authentically until we worry as much as they do.

Fortunately, Bush's plans look to be doomed. That doesn't mean some of the problems he's allegedly seeking to solve will go away--America, and Americans, are going to have to learn to survive in a more competitive world in which our economic dominance is not assured--but won't it be nice to have one less thing to worry about again?