Can capitalism save social security?
Social security is on the path to bankruptcy as a new report suggests the program's funding will run out by 2035.
Progressive commentator Danielle McLaughlin said the reason for the entitlement program’s lack of funding is a result of an aging workforce. She adds that a fix could be found in making people pay more out of pocket.
“We can fix this with a little bit of an increase in the payroll tax. We can increase this with raising the retirement age to 70 years of age.” She said during an interview with FOX Business’ Charles Payne on Monday.
While Payne notes that McLaughlin's solution to save the socialist program is "leaning on capitalism", McLaughlin says that it isn't an issue because both systems have coexisted since America was founded.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 57 percent of Democrats had a favorable view of socialism in 2018 whereas only 16 percent of Republicans favored it. Only 47 percent of Democrats were in favor of our current capitalist system whereas 71 percent of Republicans had a favorable view.
Fox News contributor Deneen Borelli disagrees with McLaughlin’s plan, saying that Democrats just want to impose more taxes on hard working Americans. Instead, she believes that retirees should have more financial control.
“In my view, retirees should be the ones in control of their own finances and to invest because they will get a better return on investment and they will be able to pay themselves more money than they would from government through social security,” she said.
National Review columnist Kat Timpf said millennials have an unfavorable view of social security over fears they will never be recipients of the payout.
“Every time I see how much of my check goes into social security, I'm like well you’re welcome. You should be saying thank you because I don’t expect I’m going to get any of that money back.”
Timpf said she rejects the notion that that anyone who disagrees with social security is scared of socialism.
"Why are you bragging about something that's not working anymore? It's not expected to work in the future. We're talking about, if we don’t tax people more, we don’t have the money for reserves, that the benefit number could go down...up to 21 percent in the amount of benefits you could get from social security. That's not a program that's working, that's a problem that's failing."
Payne said social security is failing because the program was never designed to work in the first place, and having so many rely on social security as a safety net is problematic.
“A lot of people are looking at it as their primary and only source of money in the future and that...it had stopped people from saving on their own, from investing on their own, and doing the kind of things that would help grow this economy and their own financial fortunes because they believed the government will be there for them.”
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While it is important to look at what's not working with the entitlement program, McLaughlin suggests taking broader look at what capitalism has contributed and to recognize the capitalist system’s flaws.
“There aren't so many good jobs anymore that have pensions built in. You know our parents, or the generation before, you had a job for life and you had a pension, you could buy a home. It's not the way things are...we’re not getting the kinds of benefits our parents did.”
However, Timpf said that regardless of what system is in place, people shouldn't be so heavily reliant on a government who rarely does anything efficiently. Instead, she says we need to make capitalism sound more appealing to those who lean toward socialism.
“We need to make competition and freedom cool again. Instead of just people saying, 'oh, I don’t want to pay off my student loans so I will vote for Bernie,' people need to understand that nothing is free and that the government’s money is money taken from someone who worked for it."