What I like about DD's approach is that it is a link in a chain of communist moral values. Human values originate in sociality. Social Security is a primary human value, as primary cultures demonstrate. The Constitution is to provide for the General Welfare.
CB ^^^^^^ nonono, tell the truth and shame the devil. Social Security isn't a savings program, an insurance program or a life assurance program and there is no connection between inputs and outputs of the kind that might be summarised usefully as "returns". It's purely and simply the embodiment in a modern political economy of the fundamental moral principle that there is an obligation on society as a whole to look after those who are too old to work. Every single primitive society in the world has always recognised this obligation (even hard cases like the Inuit where strong social pressure toward voluntary euthanasia is apparently sometimes exercised). It even makes it into the Ten Commandments. It is quite a fantastic achievement of several hundred years of liberal political thought that we have reached a pass at which people can seriously question the moral imperative to social provision of retirement incomes. best, dd
