Cato Did It!

[peristaltor]

I've always wondered why folks have for years been down on Social Security. Everyone who slams the Depression-era social backstop seems to ignore that it only had to exist because the traditional market-based systems failed so dramatically. What gave them the idea that market-based solutions would work after this spectacular fail

Comments

[hiro_antagonist]

But it's a pyramid scheme, no? And doomed to the same sort of failure, no?

[peristaltor]

Not necessarily. Pyramid schemes get started to enrich those that start them. I get the impression The Cato Institute started this not to enrich themselves by over-funding the markets but to divert retirement dollars away from SS, and that they did this because of their aversion to public funding for, well, anything.

(This is not to say that all the folks in the financial sector aren't trying to perpetrate a vast swindle using retirement funds; just to say that Cato might not have had that principle thought and the malice behind it when they started their dog and pony show.)

To horribly mix metaphors: Their boner for Ayn Rand may have just screwed us all.