I wonder about your ontology.

What is the distinction between “illusory” property in which everyone believes and which they respect in their actions and “real” property? I am genuinely having trouble with the distinction.

If the real concern is that future Congresses will cut Social Security benefits, there are lots of ways the security of those benefits could be dramatically increased. George Bush could barnstorm around the country saying that any future President or Congress that tries to cut Social Security benefits from the amount retirees are entitled to under current law (or default on the “Trust Fund”) is un-American and deserves to be voted out of office. He could write a “Contract with America” to that effect and demand that all Republican lawmakers sign it. He could use his influence to put that principle at the front of the Republican Party platform.

He could even write a new “Social Security Civil Rights Act” giving Americans a property right in their benefits (at the amount they are entitled to under current law) and the right to sue to receive them if cut or taxed above a certain level. As for the trust fund, he could insist that future surplus tax revenues from the so-called “Social Security tax” be invested in securities under the auspices of an independent agency designed along the lines of the Federal Reserve (with directors with long enough tenure to insulate them from political pressure).

Cutting benefits under that scenario would be pretty darn hard. Marginally easier than confiscating retirees’ “personal” retirement accounts? Maybe. Easier than jacking up the tax rate on capital gains realized through “personal” retirement accounts” (which has the same practical effect as partial confiscation)? Definitely not.

If you’re still worried that Congress would abolish Americans’ property rights in Social Security and cut their benefits even under those conditions, the President could even be pushing for a Constitutional amendment to protect them (with a special provision for repeal under conditions of national emergency with the consent of some kind of Congressional supermajority).

The problem here is that you libertarians (and the Republicans) aren’t interested in strengthening Social Security – you want to destroy it. That’s fine, but don’t try to change the subject – make the honest argument that “personal” accounts are the feasible second-best to abolition.

For the record, my dream would be to abolish the payroll tax, increase the income tax, and turn Social Security payments into a means-tested welfare program. But the stigma attached to “welfare” would make it too easy for y’all to cut benefits, so defending what we have now is the feasible second-best to that. And I’ll say it loud and proud.

Will assumes everyone is honest and bad things do not happen. He describes a utopian vision of the world.

There are better ways, than the present system, to help people enjoy retirement, but they are not any of the ways Will describes.

His ideas are a simple parroting of Wall Street. Leave Wall Street out of it.

I used this example before, but a British citizen cannot sue for relief if Parliament takes away her house without compensation. But British citizens have “real” property rights in their homes because it is (at least for now and in the foreseeable future) politically unthinkable for any Parliamentary majority to do that.

(Note: I’m not arguing against justiciable property rights in constitutions. I’m just saying that even if they don’t exist, property rights still may. And, conversely, a justiciable right in the constitution, as the People’s Republic of China now has, will not do any good if the judicial system will not reliably enforce it.)

Since property rights exist only when it is politically unthinkable to interfere with them, Will and Cato’s statements that they aren’t property rights can’t be evaluated as a neutral description of reality, but as an attempt to change that reality.

And as I’ve argued before, the Fifth Amendment means that if Americans had a genuine property right in Social Security, their payments would be more secure than they are today. There’s a major difference between “Congress could cut or eliminate your benefits by changing one number in a statute” and “Congress could cut or eliminate your benefits by passing a law abolishing a property right, fighting things out with the Supreme Court, and then, if they win, changing a number in a statute.”

Of course, if the government is sufficiently confiscation-happy or judicial or executive authorities refuse to enforce property rights against violators, property rights don’t really exist, but that’s not the situation under consideration.

What is true is that you can’t sue Congress for changing the level of benefits. So the analogy with the UK Parliament’s theoretical power to expropriate your house without compensation is a good one.

If it is unthinkable for Congress to repudiate the obligations of the general account to the trust fund, then that is all the property rights anyone can ever have. And if the social security debate goes the way it looks like it’s going, then it will indeed be unthinkable to the same degree as it is unthinkable for Congress not to respect the governmetn bonds in the portfolio of the private insurance company.

In any case Congress would never have to repudiate the government’s obligations to the trust fund by defaulting; it would only have to cut benefits payable. If it did that, the “trust fund” could keep getting bigger and bigger even as benefits got smaller and smaller (and because they were getting smaller and smaller).

The shadow, as Plato would remind us, is not more solid than the form.

I believe this sentence would be more rhetorically forcible if you relocated the interrupting clause to the beginning. Check it out:

As Plato reminds us, the shadow is not more solid than the form.

What do you think?

There are two related points you’re missing here, it seems to me. One is that Congressional reduction of SS benefits is *not* as unthinkable as, say, mass uncompensated expropriation of people’s houses, or even of their 401(k)s. It may be very unlikely, but it is less unlikely.

The other is: the reason *why* it’s less unthinkable is that real property is a natural, moral right that exists prior to the State, not a grant at the State’s whim, and at least some of the population, some of the time, still dimly and half-consciously remembers that. Thus a positive government entitlement, however long-established and generally popular, is not going to have quite the same moral force behind it in the popular mind as the negative right not to be expropriated. Almost the same, maybe, but not quite.