{"id":26398,"date":"2021-01-30T20:06:56","date_gmt":"2021-01-31T00:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=26398"},"modified":"2021-02-08T22:14:04","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T02:14:04","slug":"milton-friedman-social-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Milton Friedman: Social Security Doesn&#8217;t Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>How does Social Security work? Why does <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-capitalism\/\">Milton Friedman<\/a> say Social Security doesn&#8217;t work? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Milton Friedman, Social Security is unnecessary and unjust. Friedman posits that Social Security doesn&#8217;t allow people to make the best choices for themselves, and puts an unfair burden on the poorer young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more about Milton Friedman, Social Security, and his views. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Milton Friedman: <strong>Social Security<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the most famous redistributive program in the United States is Social Security. Social Security is a government pension system that pays benefits primarily to elderly and disabled citizens. It is financed by payroll taxes collected on people during the course of their working lives. As a compulsory program, no one has the option of <em>not <\/em>paying into Social Security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Essentially, <strong>the government mandates that everyone purchase a retirement plan and forcibly takes money from people to compel them to purchase the <\/strong><strong><em>government <\/em><\/strong><strong>plan\u2014not a private alternative. <\/strong>This is the most coercive way that such a system could be designed. Taxpayers are forced to hand over their money to purchase a product that they might very well have elected not to purchase if they had been given free use of their own money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if they were still compelled to purchase a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/retirement-annuity-pros-and-cons\/\">retirement annuity<\/a> of some sort, many people might have elected a <em>private <\/em>alternative. But because they are taxed to pay for Social Security, they are deprived of such a choice (and would essentially be paying double if they still chose to purchase a private plan with their after-tax money).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moreover, the way Social Security is financed represents an unjust redistribution of income from the young to the old. A person retiring today is far more likely to receive more in benefits than they contributed in taxes than a young person just beginning to pay into the system.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is doubly unfair, as older people are more likely to have accumulated wealth through a lifetime of savings and capital accumulation, whereas young people are less likely to have wealth of their own. <strong>Social Security taxes the comparatively poor young to benefit the comparatively well-off old.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the end, Milton Friedman says Social Security is premised on a paternalistic assumption that government bureaucrats can plan your future better than you can and that you shouldn\u2019t be trusted to handle your own money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How does Social Security work? Why does Milton Friedman say Social Security doesn&#8217;t work? According to Milton Friedman, Social Security is unnecessary and unjust. Friedman posits that Social Security doesn&#8217;t allow people to make the best choices for themselves, and puts an unfair burden on the poorer young. Read more about Milton Friedman, Social Security, and his views.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":11210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,24],"tags":[204],"class_list":["post-26398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-society","tag-capitalism-and-freedom","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Milton Friedman: Social Security Doesn&#039;t Work - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"According to Milton Friedman, Social Security is both unnecessary and unfair. Freidman argues that private firms can handle money instead.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Milton Friedman: Social Security Doesn&#039;t Work\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to Milton Friedman, Social Security is both unnecessary and unfair. Freidman argues that private firms can handle money instead.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-01-31T00:06:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-02-09T02:14:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/cashflow-rich-dad-poor-dad-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Carrie Cabral\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2ababb7c63a94ff5d2190f71dc417d56\"},\"headline\":\"Milton Friedman: Social Security Doesn&#8217;t Work\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-01-31T00:06:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-02-09T02:14:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/\"},\"wordCount\":396,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/cashflow-rich-dad-poor-dad-scaled.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Capitalism and Freedom\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Economics\",\"Society\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/\",\"name\":\"Milton Friedman: Social Security Doesn't Work - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/milton-friedman-social-security\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/cashflow-rich-dad-poor-dad-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-01-31T00:06:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-02-09T02:14:04+00:00\",\"description\":\"According to Milton Friedman, Social Security is both unnecessary and unfair. 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