Re: Is there no one who can articulate the purpose of Social Security?
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Why do we have a program to provide a retirement benefit?
natedogg
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From the standpoint of the government, they have already make the promise to provide all citizens with adequate income. It's also true that, by the government's measures of "adequacy", citizens in the US do not save "enough" in their working years to have "adequate" post-employment income. Government gets caught in a game where they hand money over to people during their working years so they have "adequate" income, the people spend it all, and then at retirement they come looking for more income. It's easier for the government to manage this game if they have one program dedicated to providing post-employment income because then they can focus the rest of their energy on the employed citizens, which is who they really care about because their first focus in on manipulating the economy (where retirees don't play as big a part in production).
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