Keeping the Faith: American Values and Social Security

 Why Should We Have Social Security?

Why should we have Social Security or any other public pension system. Why do we feel in our hearts that it would be wrong to allow our old people to starve in penury? Why do we feel that we must uphold our commitment to provide benefits that people have worked for all of their lives? And how is any of this connected to the meaning of being American?

We should do these things because we want to live in a just and democratic society, and because we know that justice and democracy are closely connected. We know that we cannot have democracy without justice because an unjust society is inevitably unstable, and we know that we cannot have justice without democracy, either. The founders of our country also knew these things, and they wrote their understanding into the Preamble to our Constitution, which says,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Our Government Must Establish Justice

What does it mean to establish justice? What did "justice" mean to the founders of our country? Clearly, they were not referring narrowly to legal justice in the sense of fair and open trials. If that had been their purpose, they would not have needed to reform their government from top to bottom as the Constitution did.

They were referring to justice in a much broader sense. They were referring to what we now call “social justice.” They wanted a society in which the comfort of the few did not depend on the suffering of the many. They wanted a society with a broad middle class living a secure and prosperous life. They did not object to the wealth of the few, but they insisted that it should not be based on the suffering of the many. This view of social justice is a basic American value, and it is widely shared to this day.

Our Government Must Insure Domestic Tranquility

In the view of the founders, a society that lacked social justice would be plagued by social unrest and endemic conflict. Only a reasonably just society could be peaceful and stable. We continue to share this view, and its truth may be seen in the history of our most important failure. The founders were unable to eliminate slavery from our country, and the result has been not only a bitter Civil War but also an entrenched social conflict that has plagued us throughout our history.

Domestic tranquility is also important because without it, our basic rights become endangered. In our Declaration of Independence, the founders said, 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In a society that is full of conflict, life and liberty are endangered, and the pursuit of happiness become very difficult. Thus, we Americans believe that we cannot insure our basic, unalienable rights without domestic tranquility, and we cannot have domestic tranquility without social justice. This belief lies at the core of what it means to be American.

Our Government Must Promote the General Welfare

The Preamble to the Constitution shows that the founders believed that one of the purposes of government was to promote the welfare of the people. They understood that without appropriate management and direction, a society may create wealth in a way that impoverishes the people rather than enriching them. The founders saw that a just and tranquil society might not maintain itself automatically. They saw that new circumstances might require new actions on the part of government. So, they articulated a positive duty to promote the general welfare. This, too, is a basic American value, and at various times our government has acted to promote the general welfare in ways that the founders could not have foreseen. Examples include Abraham Lincoln’s establishment of the land grant colleges, Theodore Roosevelt’s trust busting and of course, Social Security.

Our Government Must Maintain Social Security

The need for Social Security follows directly from these basic American values that have come down to us from the founders of our country. A government with a duty to promote the general welfare cannot allow people to starve in poverty when they have worked hard all of their lives. The people who raised and nurtured us and who built the world we live in must not be abandoned in their old age. Moreover, a government with a duty to promote the general welfare cannot renege on commitments that it has made to its people.

If our government does renege on its commitments, the result will surely damage domestic tranquility and produce endemic social conflict, which will render our political system unstable. This is clearly a case in which the government must act to promote the general welfare in order to promote justice and insure domestic tranquility. Thus, Social Security is built on basic, American values that lie at the heart of our system of government and that come down to us from our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence. We must maintain Social Security if we are to be faithful to our values and to what it means to be American.

Your Retirement is on the Ballot

Social Security Needs Reform

The future of Social Security is on the ballot this year and with it is your retirement. The program that we all depend on faces a shortfall in funding by 2034, but there are two ways to make it solvent. We can raise Social Security taxes on the wealthy, or we can cut benefits to all Americans. The candidates have made their positions clear. Pres. Biden said in his State of the Union speech that he favors raising Social Security taxes on the wealthy. Mr. Trump has tried to avoid the question, but in a recent interview, he said, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and bad management of entitlements.”

Two Approaches to Reform

We can either increase Social Security's revenue or decrease the the benefits. Only one approach to raising Social Security's revenue has been suggested. It is to eliminate the cap on the wages that are required to pay the taxes. This year, the cap is set at $168,600. That is, a person who earns more than $168,600 per year does not have to pay Social Security taxes on the amount above $168,600. Biden has proposed eliminating the cap for people who earn more than $400,000.

Two approaches to cutting Social Security's benefits have been proposed. One is to cut the size of the benefits that people receive, and the other is to raise the age at which people become eligible to receive the benefits. Neither of these is acceptable. Millions of Americans depend entirely on Social Security to live in retirement, and the program supports only a very frugal life. Reducing the benefits would plunge millions of Americans into poverty.

An Attack on the Working Class

Raising the age of eligibility would be a clear attack on the American working class. People who work at desks could in theory work an additional year or two before retiring, but people who do physical labor would suffer terribly. Carpenters or warehouse workers depend on the strength of their bodies, and working additional years would be very hard for them. The same can be said for people who clean houses or care for the elderly. People like supermarket checkout clerks who must stand for long hours also find that they suffer as they age. Cutting Social Security benefits, no matter how we do it, would be nothing but a way of saving money for very wealthy people by causing great suffering for the working class.

 Social Security Must Be Reformed

Social Security must be reformed. As the system is now constituted, it is not financially sustainable because it pays out more than it takes in. If nothing is done, beneficiaries will face cuts in their benefits as soon as 2034.  

We Do Not Duck Our Responsibilities

 We have to find a way to reform the system because we are not people who would duck our responsibility to care for the old people among us. We will not abandon the people who nurtured us and worked hard to build the world in which we live.  Some people in our society can earn and save enough on their own to provide a comfortable old age, but not everyone earns enough to do so, and it would be wrong for us to abandon them in their time of need. So, we need Social Security.

We Recognize that Social Security Benefits Are Earned

 Moreover, we have a responsibility to fix Social Security in a way that preserves the benefits that people have worked for. We have to do this because Social Security benefits are earned.  They are contractual. They are not charitable contributions. Workers and their employers pay into Social Security throughout the workers’ working lives. An individual’s “account” may be seen as a combination of a savings account (the worker’s share) and deferred compensation (the employer’s share), and people who have worked hard all of their lives have a right to the benefits they have earned. If we cannot pay those benefits because we have allowed the system to fail, we will have cheated them, and our American community cannot be based on cheating.

We Must Be Financially Realistic

On the other hand, we have to be realistic because Social Security benefits are paid in the real world with real money. We cannot promise benefits that we cannot pay, and we have to recognize that, as things now stand, we will not be able to meet our commitments indefinitely.

We can meet our commitments if we recognize that the current distribution of wealth in the United States is unjust and cannot be allowed to continue. The top 1% of our people cannot continue to receive 18% of the income, and the top 20% cannot continue to receive 50% of the income. That is unjust. It is nonsense for us to say that with income so concentrated at the top of our society, we cannot meet our responsibility to pay people the benefits that they have earned.

Social Security is on the Ballot.

The choice is clear. In November, you can vote to reelect Pres. Biden and preserve Social Security for everyone, or you can vote for his opponent and for cutting Social Security benefits. If you want a secure retirement, you should vote for Pres. Biden. On the other hand, if you expect to die young and you don't care about anyone else, you can vote for his opponent.

Reclaiming Our Constitution for Social Justice

A Tradition of Progressive Interpretation of the Constitution Has Been Forgotten 

We progressives have forgotten how to use the Constitution to argue for social justice, but The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution by Fishkin and Forbath tells us how to reclaim that knowledge and how to use it in the political battles of our time. Fishkin and Forbath show us that the Constitution is not merely – as we now see it - a set of limits on the powers of government. The Constitution also sets out affirmative duties for the Federal Government and especially for Congress. The big conflicts of the past including those of the Populist era or those of the New Deal were seen by the people of those times as conflicts over the meaning of the Constitution and were fought out on those grounds in the political arena and not just in the courts.

Sources of Progressive Interpretation of the Constitution

The affirmative duties of the Federal Government come from several sources. First, the Constitution’s Preamble tells us that it was established in order to “…promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” The powers enumerated in the body of the Constitution should thus be interpreted in a way that is consistent with its purpose. For example, Congress might establish a national healthcare system on the grounds that it promotes the general welfare. 

The Preamble is not the only source of affirmative duties. Section 4 of Article IV says, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government ….” This clearly means that Congress has a duty to make sure through appropriate legislation that no state turns its democratic government into an oligarchy through restrictions on voting rights or through corruption But Congress's duty may extend much farther.

For example, we know that the excessive concentration of wealth in a few hands is likely to turn a democracy into an oligarchy. Does that mean that our federal government has a duty to prevent the excessive concentration of wealth? The people who passed the 16^th Amendment to the Constitution certainly thought so and said as much according to Fishkin and Forbath. Today’s conflict over the enactment of a wealth tax is thus a Constitutional question, and we can argue the case for it on constitutional grounds.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution also supports the idea that the Constitution includes affirmative duties for Congress. The amendment ends with the words, “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” Thus, Congress has both the responsibility and the right to use its power to safeguard our democracy. Finally, we have the Declaration of Independence, which declares that governments are established in in order to secure the basic human rights that we all share. Our country's founders believed that a government has an affirmative duty to protect and advance our "inalienable rights," and interpreting our Constitution as imposing such a duty is an important American tradition that we have forgotten.

Democracy of Opportunity

Fishkin and Forbath call the tradition of constitutional interpretation that emphasizes the affirmative duties of the Federal Government the "democracy-of-opportunity" tradition. The tradition has three strands, which are (1) an opposition to oligarchy, (2) a belief that democracy requires a broad, middle class with room for most people, and (3) a belief that democracy cannot be successful unless all races, genders and religious faiths are included. If we want to be successful in the struggle for equity and inclusion, we must reframe the struggle in Constitutional terms as a struggle to advance the general welfare and to maintain the conditions for a successful democracy. 

Abortion and the Working Class

 Criminalizing Abortion is Not Just a Women's Issue

Criminalizing abortion oppresses all members of the working class, but supporters of abortion rights have generally not recognized that fact. They have presented their case as a women's issue. They have said that a woman should have control of her own body and that it is wrong for men to tell her what to do with it. This is true as far as it goes, but it misses an important aspect of the issue. The anti-abortion movement promotes oppression of the working class.

Rich women have always been able to obtain abortions, and that will not change. Rich women in states where abortions are illegal will be able to travel to other states or to foreign countries, but working-class women will often be unable to do so. Thus, prohibiting abortions affects mainly working-class women.

A young working-class woman with no children may have an opportunity to acquire skills and improve her economic situation, but an unwanted pregnancy condemns her to poverty because caring for a child and working to support it leave her no time to improve her skills through education. In contrast, a young woman from a rich family may simply take a semester off from college and then go on to become a lawyer or an accountant.

An unwanted pregnancy affects not only the economic prospects of a working-class woman but  also those of her whole family. If she is a single parent, the economic effect of an unwanted pregnancy is obvious, but if she is married and her family loses her income, the effect will still be serious. Thus, the abortion issue is not just a women's issue. It affects her husband and her children, too. Therefore, a woman’s right to choose is clearly a class-related issue. Banning abortions does not affect rich people very much, but it oppresses all working-class people, and we should stress that in our framing of the issue.

Framing Abortion in Terms of Class

As always, we should begin by stating basic values, and here are some that we can use:

• All women should have opportunities to get ahead in life by learning new skills. Working-class women should not face artificial barriers that the rich do not face.
• It is unfair for rich people to invent moral restrictions that bind working-class women but can be ignored by the rich.
• In a society that prides itself on equality of opportunity, we should not condemn working-class children to poverty by creating artificial barriers to the employment and education for their mothers.
• We should not waste our human potential by creating artificial barriers to employment and education for working-class women.

·      Having enunciated these values and others like them, we will then be able to say things like:

• Abortion should be legal in order to give working-class women the same opportunity to get ahead that rich women already have.
• Abortion should be legal, so that working-class children will not be condemned to poverty.
• Abortion should be legal so that we do not waste a huge part of our human potential.

Why Frame Abortion in Terms of Class?

We should frame abortion in terms of class partly because such a framing reveals an important truth but also because framing the issue in this way provides a motive for working-class men to join the fight to protect a woman’s right to choose. This framing of the issue makes it clear that criminalizing abortion will not affect women alone. All working-class families will be hurt. Criminalizing abortion will make it harder for parents to provide for their families and to give their children a path to a better life.  Criminalizing abortion will make it harder for them to purchase homes or to provide for their retirement. Criminalizing abortion will hold them down. 

If we want the broadest possible support for a woman's right to choose, we need to make it clear that protecting that right will benefit everyone.