Privatized Social Security & Elder Welfare

It does not take a genius to realize that privatizing Social Security under any formula will result in the increased demand for welfare services for the aged when the generation with those privatized benefits is due to receive them.  The nature of the stock market is such that some of those people will have failed in their investments and they will need help—more help than those who are receiving the standard Social Security benefit. 

Some of those under the privatized option may do better; but others will do worse, and they will need welfare services which the government will have to supply if they are not to become a blight on those around them.

Not only that, privatization of Social Security invites wasting the investment of capital in our national welfare through the Social Security program, whatever its shortcomings.  Let me illustrate by analogy.

The other day some of my family ate at the Grandview Buffet in the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh.  Since we had not been there before, we walked through the casino section to see what it was like. None of us had ever been to it before, or used slot machines.  My son saw a machine that took dollar bills and put in a $5 bill and began pushing buttons, which made the machine display different pictures and messages which did not really make much sense, except that eventually we figured the game was over.  He wondered whether he should try again, but he decided against it since none of us knew how it worked.

For those who do not know what they are doing, privatization of Social Security will be the same thing: many people will not know how to manage accounts in the private market, although undoubtedly there will be many offers of assistance available to them. I cannot imagine a constitutionally valid way of barring individuals from claiming the right to manage their Social Security accounts if they are privatized; and the more they are warned about the dangers, the more some individuals may claim that right.

We have the right to fail and to become a burden on society.  The purpose of Social Security is to be the end of the line in that process, at least to some extent. Privatizing Social Security would frustrate that intent and betray what the U.S. Constitution calls the federal government’s responsibility to promote the general welfare.

Want to Help? Serve with Care and Communication

In what turned out to be his final gift to the world, Jean-Domnique Bauby relayed his impressions of and responses to hospital workers who were responsible for caring for him.  Although only in his early 40’s, he suffered a stroke which left him totally paralyzed except for the ability to blink his left eye and slightly move his head back and forth.  Since he had been the editor-in-chief of a major French magazine, a publisher arranged for a transcriber to decode and record his thoughts for the book we read in English as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  He died a few days after it was published about a year after the stroke.  The book has also been made into an award-winning movie by the same title.

The book records an imaginative and rich inner life that the film only partly captures, though the film situates the story in its French setting which will greatly assist Americans reading the book, though it does seem to take some unexplained liberties. 

In this post I want to highlight Bauby’s general comments about hospital staff. He makes particular comments here and there throughout the book, but the comments referred to here have had an effect on me because in them he struggles with his profound dependency on those who are being paid to help him.

We learn about ourselves when we encounter those in extreme need because it forces us to either face the possibility that we could someday be in the same position—or we may choose to ignore our feelings, in effect to suppress them. I work in a hospital; but I only occasionally remember that if I live long enough, I too, will one day be one of those unknown patients being pushed around in a wheelchair.  This book has challenged me to question how I think about those who are unable to communicate normally.

I think Bauby has given his readers a gift.  He has illustrated how hard it is to be in such great need, and how angry it makes a person.  Yet he shows how forgiving a needy person can be in spite of that anger when we continue to act with even just a degree of care and responsibility. We do not have to be perfect and we can accept each other when we are far from perfect. Yet we can still aspire to do better!

Here are the key excerpts from the 1997 edition…

As the weeks go by, this forced solitude has allowed me to acquire a certain stoicism and to realize that the hospital staff are of two kinds: the majority, who would not dream of leaving the room without first attempting to decipher my SOS messages; and the less conscientious minority, who make their getaway pretending not to notice my distress signals. Like that heartless oaf who switched off the Bordeaux-Munich soccer game at halftime, saying "Good night!" with a finality that left no hope of appeal. (p. 40-41)

 At first some of the staff had terrified me. I saw them only as my jailers, as accomplices in some awful plot. Later I hated some of them, those who wrenched my arm while putting me in my wheelchair, or left me all night long with the TV on, or let me lie in a painful position despite my protests. For a few minutes or a few hours I would cheerfully have killed them. Later still, as time cooled my fiercest rages, I got to know them better. They carried out as best they could their delicate mission: to ease our burden a little when our crosses bruised our shoulders too painfully. (p. 110)

…I realized that I was fond of all these torturers of mine. (p. 111)

Thank goodness it was BP!

If the deep-water drilling accident that was bound to happen eventually had been caused by a smaller, less well-endowed oil company, the entire world would have been in a much greater mess.

As bad as the Gulf oil spill is, at least BP has the resources to commit to cleaning it up responsibly.

BP is taking a lot of the blame for what is really a systemic problem:  Sure BP took cost-cutting risks—as would every oil company in a competitive climate. That is why we need government regulators to ensure that reasonable risk management precautions are carried out by every company, to not only ensure safety but also to ensure them that they all operate in an even playing field where the same rules apply to all.

What happened in the Gulf is that not only did BP cut some corners, which we can assume every other company also cuts to one degree or another; but the government also cut some regulatory corners and did not enforce the risk management protocols it should have.

Presumably getting the regulatory system back into operating order is why President Obama called for the six-month halt on deep-water drilling. The government needs to get its act together! 

A disaster like this could happen again if the government does not do its job right, and we won’t be so lucky if next time the company involved is not as well-endowed as BP.

Thank goodness it happened to BP!