New Blood for Social Security — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

New Blood for Social Security — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

This article discusses a proposal for bringing government workers into the social security system. There is something about tyranny being defined by the rulers not living under the laws they make for others somewhere in political theory, isn't there? I think the new political divide will be between the people and the mandarinate, the people that have to make their living in the market and the people that get checks from the government. The new class warfare will be between citizens and the government payroll one way or the other.

For a lot of this century these issues have been deflected by painting government employees as self-sacrificing heroes, the operative synecdoches always being fire-fighters and police. But one of the ways to counteract this is by bringing up easily understood contrasts. Such a contrast is highlighted by reference to the simple principle that you have to live under the laws you make for others. The social security exemption is an obvious example. Government officials who don't send their kids to private schools is another. The coming of government health care is going to offer a target rich environment.

The charge that they rulers are not living under the laws they make for others was used to great effect by Gingrich in the early 90s. The fact that Congress had literally exempted itself from most of the hiring and safety regulations it had imposed on the rest of the country was of little practical import but tremendous symbolic power. The issues of government workers not living within the constraints of the welfare state they are pushing the rest of the country into is a huge potential issue.