>>26 "I see. So by preventing government officials from extorting people's hard earned money from them at the point of government guns, if necessary, Bush is not really liberating the people, and granting them the right to do with their own money as they wish?" It's not exactly a liberation of their money, it's changing the direction of the money to a riskier and half-as-profitable route.
"Well, you are right about one thing, Social Security is a violation of individual rights, and thus a violation of libertarian philosophical principles." Not denying that, but what we don't need is for a president who is famous for directly pushing money upwards to commit people to this sort of lousy privatization. It would make people more dependant in the end, make people less convinced of the benefits of privatization and give the hard left something to argument with. What we need is the type of excellent bipartisan reform, was enacted in 1996, that proved left-wing demagogues wrong and lessened welfare rolls by being a balanced, non-ideological and fair change towards a quid pro quo nature. This privatization is a very bad idea.The same dude who is proposing the change worked for Pinochet, and this very change -that cost Chileans up to half of their reirement funds- will have disastrous effects for you too. But hey, I am a Swede, so burn your money at the altar of Adam Smith for all I care. Hope you like cat food.
"I'm sick and tired of the "we're being robbed!" bullshit libertarians spout. The US isn't the USSR (yet)." Taxes are a form of slavery, at least when the money distributed to others only make them lazy or less alert. That is why the welfare reform of 96 was so great; it encouraged work by explaining clearly that the feeding tube would be removed if nothing was done, but that it would not run dry or be tugged away at any given moment. It was government handouts, but a conditional one and it worked wonders. This faux-liberation of people's finances that Bush is proposing will fuck things up and harm the notion of economic liberalism.