Recently my wife suddenly needed to go to a nearby hospital in the middle of the night. There are multiple public bus lines outside our door here in Pittsburgh. But they stopped running around 1 a.m. Thankfully we got a private cab to the hospital and rode one back. It was available at all hours of the day and night. Thank God for the private sector.
It’s difficult and often dangerous to depend on the government for almost anything. But statist supporters, no matter the problems, will often say government services aren’t fully funded; that almost all these services, no matter how egregious, should be expanded. Then they usually follow with the complaint that “the rich” aren’t paying enough in taxes, fees or “contributions.”
My next subject is Social Security. It is funded though the Orwellian name of the “Federal Insurance Contributions Act” (FICA). Social Security is a coerced government program that is neither insurance nor contributory. My wife and I collect Social Security. So some may ask how we can complain. The payments—which we and all other recipients have no legal right to receive according to the US Supreme Court—are lousy.
We could do much better if we had taken our “contributions” and put them into private investments. The latter is what we did with some of our “discretionary income.” This is the money our political ruling class have left to us over the decades. This is the money that they haven’t figured out how to take from us, yet they’re perpetually trying various “revenue raising” proposals such as a tax on household wealth.
Despite the poorly-run and financed Social Security, we live well today, no thanks to the regressive payroll tax, which was my biggest tax in my 20s and 30s when I was struggling to establish myself. For many young people, it is no different. They’re trying to figure out why FICA is such a pig, gobbling up so much of their earnings.
That’s not the worst. A Heritage Foundation study says the long-term return of Social Security for a young person “contributing” to Social Security over the next few decades will be somewhere between zero and minus 14 percent, said Rachel Grenzler, the author of a 1997 Heritage Foundation report on Social Security. Recently, the same foundation wrote that private investments are a better deal than Social Security.
Luckily, my wife and I didn’t depend on the Social Security sham to protect us, no more than we can depend on almost any other government service. We escaped in part thanks to a brilliant money manager called John Bogle. We invested in some of his funds on a regular basis for over 30 years. We achieved financial independence, not because of government, which often destroys thrift and financial independence, but because of a private sector investment product created for mass use called the index fund. Over the long-term, stock index funds generally return about nine and half percent a year. That is a return that has allowed us to live well. It’s also much better than minus 14 percent. Thank God for the private sector.
We left New York City some four years ago because local police—under the direction of a de-facto one party government—permitted rioting. We stopped using the state-run subways—the city of New York had to turn over the management of the city’s mass transit system to Albany some 60 years ago so the new mayor’s promise of “free buses” of the new mayor is the promise of someone who has no power to do so—because they were dangerous, especially for riding the subways from Manhattan, the center of the city, to outlying areas such as Queens and the Bronx late at night. We could not depend on the government to protect us or run services that people will use because they’re good.
Here in Pittsburgh, we have a similar problem. Bus service is irregular, especially in off peak hours. I used to experience the same thing back in New York City years ago riding the subways on Saturdays when every line seemed to change its name and route. It was like the parallel universe episode of Star Trek.
Here in Pittsburgh, there’s a plethora of deficit-riddled public transit. (No wonder they’re in the red. About 25 percent of the time the fair collection boxes don’t function on the buses. Fares can’t be collected. It’s a “free” ride). There’s even a light rail system here. As in other cities where I’ve seen it—from Dallas to San Diego—it is a white elephant. So few people use light rail here that they run two car trains. Yet there’s still plenty of room to stretch out. Many people reject the government system here. They use private cars. Some universities understand this. Many run private buses for students. They’re more reliable. Thank God for the private sector.
