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| Ordos, one of a number of empty Chinese cities. |
• Demographic Disaster? New
census figures show an aging population for the United States, which bodes ill
for the continued viability of such programs as Social Security. Right now there are about twenty-five
Americans of retirement age for every hundred between the ages of 18 and 64. That’s about a 4 to 1 ratio, which is much
better than, say, that of Japan.
Forecasts put those figures shifting to thirty-five per hundred by 2030,
a significant drop in the ratio to under 3 to 1. Comparing this to the official ratios for the
Social Security System of people paying in to those receiving benefits
gives a much gloomier figure. In 1940 as
the system was still gearing up after its start five years previously, the
ratio was a very comfortable (and comforting) 159.4:1. In 1945, it was an unalarming 41.9:1. Five years later it was getting into worrisome
territory at 16.5:1. By 2013, the last
year for which figures are posted on the SSA website, it had fallen to a very
alarming 2.8:1.
• Capital Homesteading the Answer? The fall in the ratio of people paying in
to the Social Security System to recipients is blamed on two factors. These are, one, declining birth rates and,
two, a crackdown on immigration.
Evidence suggests that a program such as Capital Homesteading
that would enable people to take care of their own consumption needs out of
their own resources — and revise the whole idea of “retirement” — would either
minimize this problem or eliminate it completely. Social Security, after all, was never meant
to be a total provision for someone’s retirement, nor was it intended to cover
everyone. That just sort of
happened. It was supposed to be a social
safety net. Having people pay into an
entirely separate system to fund it was a way of “selling” a government pension
program by making it look like a
savings program. If you read the
original literature carefully, though (and know something about retirement
law), it is clearly evident that is not the case. The money people pay in is not a “contribution,”
it is a “tax.” That means they no longer
own it; the government does. There was
even a landmark Supreme Court
case, Flemming vs. Nestor (1960) that explained to Ephraim Nestor that,
contrary to his belief, he did not have private property in the money he had
paid in. A Capital Homesteading Account,
however, would be something that a person does, in fact, own as private
property, and which would be at his or her full disposal.
• DOL Fiduciary Rule Bites the Dust. The Fifth Circuit on Thursday “vacated”
the U.S. Department of Labor’s controversial 2016 fiduciary rule, issuing a
mandate three months after a divided panel invalidated it. While popular with groups ostensibly
protecting retirees and workers, the rule imposed heavy financial burdens
especially on benefit plans for small companies, forcing them in some cases to
abandon a qualified retirement plan.
This might not sound like such a big deal, but given the projected
strain on the Social Security Administration and the fact that most of the
enterprises in the United States are “small” companies, anything that inhibits
or precludes private initiative in preparing for retirement is self-defeating
if the goal is to increase workers’ security.
• Aspen Institute Work and Wealth. On Monday the CESJ core group attended a
presentation of a report on “Work and Wealth” at the Aspen Institute branch in
Washington, DC. The seminar, while
professional and well-presented, did not reveal anything new in the way of
suggested solutions. During the informal
discussion period following the program a number of people expressed interest
in CESJ’s approach, but there has not been enough time go by to see if anyone
will follow up.
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| "Uh, oh. Looks as if they found out you're not using 'Smile'." |
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice Arlington.” If you type anything else, you will either
get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 25 different
countries and 38 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this
blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, France,
Peru, United Kingdom, and Australia. The
most popular postings this past week in descending order were, “Meet
the Republican Candidates . . . for 1912,” “Is
There an Alternative to Tariffs?” “News
from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 24,” “The
Just Third Way Podcast, No. 23,” and “Is
Government Money Real Money?”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#