Jacob Hornberger takes on one of the sacred cows of politics. It’s easy to be critical of nearly everything that government does, but it’s important to think through what the actual solutions would be if government returned to it’s proper role of securing property rights and letting free people do the rest.

After these government programs become engrained in society, it becomes very difficult for most people to envision a scenario where they didn’t exist. and they can’t imagine doing without them. Ask most voters if they favor Social Security and I think you’ll find very few that would abolish it. Jacob does an excellent job of arguing why it’s just like any other socialist program and should be abolished immediately.

I think Jacob actually understates the amount of ethical and moral damage this program has done to Americans. Social Security bears a lot of the responsibility for undermining some of the core ideas of freedom and a free society. Ideas like future oriented thinking, self reliance, reliance on family, friends, churches, communities and charities. Government charity robs the giver of the meaning and satisfaction of being charitable, and robs the receiver of the gratitude and appreciation for the charity being offered. It replaces the goodwill between giver and receiver with resentment by both parties.

“That’s where genuine care and compassion come from — from the willing heart of individuals, not from the coercive and bureaucratic apparatus of the IRS, income tax, and Social Security Administration. People need to recapture their faith in freedom, themselves, others, and God and abandon their faith in Caesar and his apparatus of coercion.“