Dutch: on Social Security

Failed at restructuring system to avoid bankruptcy

[After its passage], the Administration, overconfident, tried to restructure Social Security-which was clearly spending itself into bankruptcy-and discovered within days that “the will of the people“ did not extend so far as to mandate cutting the benefits of retirees.

Keynesian economic theory, codified by the social engineers of the 60s and 70s, called for high, progressive tax rates, manipulative government spending, and welfare-state ”entitlements“ centering around Social Security & Medicare/Medicaid. Reaganomics questioned the wisdom of all these tenets, with the exception of Social Security, by now clearly too much of an article of American faith even to be debated.