I've seen people on the right treat as if it's handout, welfare, etc, and want to either see it phased out in a sneaky way, outrightly disbanded, or privatized. Why?
whoa, hoss. You just asked several questions.
The answer to all three probably lies in the fact that it's huge. Nearly 600 billion dollars. 600 billion. That's a really, really big number. If you had 600 billion beer nuts you could cover the state of Texas in beer nuts. Twice. Or, if you had 600 billion inches of twine you could wrap that twine about the earth. 376 times. Well, you get the picture. On a practical level, 600 billion dollars represents 20% of the federal government's outlay. It's pretty much like Defense. 600 billion dollars worth of collective debt, cancelled, becomes 600 billion dollars worth of relief. If you could get rid of just those two little things, SS and Defense, then you'd be set. We'd start paying down our debt. Make the DoD and SS disappear, and within 6.93 years, we'd be Back in Black.
Of course, we need a standing Army and Navy. Unless you're a Libertarian you must agree with that. And, of course, there are some who haven't made wise decisions with respect to their retirement portfolios, so unless you're a Libertarian you must also agree that we need some sort of safety net regarding retirement. Therein lies the rub, yes? How much you rub it really depends upon just how hard you want to make it.
Now, there's also the separate issue of privatization. That's a completely different question. We'll get to that later once you have absorbed the initial reasons for concern over the ballooning federal deficit. And once you have acknowledged that privatization and banishment are two completely different suggestions.
