People with a passionate interest in taxes, economic policy, personal freedom, and politics, would do well to read the following:
"Free To Choose", by Milton Friedman, a nobel prize winning economist, and a frequent columnist in various publications.
"The Road to Serfdom", by F.A. Hayek, an austrian economist who wrote about his observations on socialist economic policies and their inevitable tendancy towards totalitarianism, based on him witnessing the construction of Nazi germany. Hayek predicted during the WW2 time frame that the recent eastern block communist nations would degenerate into authoritarian prison. To decide if he was right or not, you need only look at the case of divided germany. One socio-economical situation built a wall to keep its citizens from leaving. One turned into a cultural, economic, and industrial powerhouse.
Friedman's book laments the unfortuneate expansion of government power via economic regulation and manipulation, and the inevitable restrictions this creates on personal freedoms. The most striking and illustrative example of this in the united states is Appendix A of his book - which is an enumeration of the economic planks of the 1928 Socialist Party of the USA. That is, in 1928, there was a socialist party here, that was trying to get elected, and they layed out their vision for a socialist america.
They didn't get elected - infact, they hardly got any votes.
But every single one of their economic dreams for a socialist america has since come true. The water temperature has been increased 1 degree at a time ever since FDR and the new deal (and actually starting even before then.. Friedman argues that the Federal Reserve's inappropriate manipulation of money supply led to the crash that instigated the depression.. which gave FDR the political capital for masssive unchecked expansion in government power)
I can't state the facts any better or more clearly than Friedman and Hayek do. Everyone that cares to have an opinion about matters of taxation, economic freedom, and the role of government owes it to themselves to pick up Friedman's book.
As an aside, social security is architected incorrectly if you take at face value what its proponents claim it is designed to do. Social security is a regressive tax, the poorest pay the highest percentage of their income. This is a result of the contribution cap (its around 95k or something like that, isn't it?). Income above the cap is not taxed for SS reasons. This necessarily means that this tax is artificially high on the middle and lower income segments of society. Strike 1.
Strike 2 has to do with how social security pays out benefits. SS pays until you die. If you beleive that there is a correlation with material wealth and life span (hint: there is), then the net effect is that the lower income segments of society are paying a disproportionate share of the contributions, contributinos which get paid out disproportionally to the rich if for no other reason then they tend to live longer. There are other factors that make SS distributions a bad deal for the poor but i don't remember the off the top of my head.
Irrespective of your opinions on the merits of a program with the stated goals of SS, a relatively simple analysis shows that it is failing to meet them. If policy makers are true to their word about what the point of SS is, they would at a minimum restructure the taxation side so that there was a contribution floor rather than a contribution cap. Fixing the distribution side of the program is more involved.
The hard lesson learned throughout the development of western civilization is that moneyed interests will seek to retain their financial security via government manipulation. The key contribution of the British was to adopt an open econmic policy that allowed for better wealth mobility. The key contribution of the American system was to supplement that with an intentionally limited governement. Jefferson and his ilk understood that expansion of government power inevitably means reduction in individual freedom.
Progressives, like socialists and marxists (who, through no deliberate acts, but only through good but misplaced intentions, perverted themselves into the National Socialists, or the Nazis -- read Hayek's book), have high minded ideals and an agenda that is perhaps praiseworthy. However, their methods are at fault because they nearly universally revolve around government compulsion to acheive their aims. Each tenet of the progressive (and typically, democratic) agenda requires an expansion of government powers, and the correspoding reduction in individual freedom.
this in effect creates a government "machine" with more power than people feel comfortable with. Progressives tend to support this as long as they are running the show, but once an opposing ideology takes control (say, the republicans, although the notino of democans and republicrats having any real differences these days is somewhat suspect) of the machine, the Progressives lament all of the radical changes the opposition is able to make. "If only we were still running things, this wouldn't have happened", they say.
No. This will always happen. Someone will always displace the current ruler, and some new opinino will always displace the previously fashionable one.
This is why a government ethos which is fundamentally limited, and only with great care and reservation, expands its powers, is the most just, least invasive, and most ethical choice.
But don't take my word for it - read the books I mentioned earlier.
