The Theory of the Dysfunctional Congress

The apparent dysfunctionality of Congress is the hot topic of the year in Washington, so amid all the hullabaloo of Holidays this past week, I  couldn't help reading two thoughtful articles on the topic.  One of them I tend to agree with (from the Washington Post), and the other, from the AARP Bulletin, I have problems with.  Let's tackle the AARP article first, with a jaundiced eye, then the Washington Post in a later post, and then see if we can make anything out of this mess.
     The AARP article is a valiant effort containing a lot of food for thought that unfortunately, and possibly naively, relied heavily on an interview with Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, to explain some things.  The article cited campaign financing as an issue (it is.), and special interest lobbying (though that has been present from the beginning.)  But Norquist, who like most one-issue zealots believes his issue and solution is the answer to life, the universe and everything,  thinks government is dysfunctional because it has grown too large (surprise!), and that problems will go away if we cut government and taxes. He believes that demographic shifts have created large blocs (such as the liberal urban northeast versus the conservative south) having highly differing views about what needs doing.  Not only that, he thinks the extreme polarization of views that creates the dysfunctionality is a "good thing", because it means in his view that a majority is emerging supporting the goal of cutting government and taxes.
          Of course, the fact that he heads up the organization devoted to cutting taxes and has made that his life's goal may have influenced his views somewhat.  For on the face of it, his observations are silly.  The U.S. is, after all, only the 4th largest democracy in the world, behind China, India and Russia, and while the other three each have problems, they are not the dysfunctional issues faced by the U.S.  Also, mobility in America is such now that 20%, down in this recession from its usual 25%, of Americans move each year.  America is a mixing bowl, not a set of isolated compartments, and is more so each day.  And the pace of communications, also cited, is an issue only because the technology that generates the pace has not yet been adequately directed towards the problem.
     Perhaps a better statement of the first issue Norquist raises is to ask whether a republic structured like the U.S. has an inherent size limit, and in order to grow bigger must somehow change the way it does business.  In fairness to Norquist, he knows that structure is an issue with regard to size, and his solution is to limit the role of government. Of course, though he doesn't say so in the article, to a conservative that means getting out of regulating, staying hands off from education and welfare, and otherwise staying far away from all those things that the Preamble to the Constitution  terms Promoting the General Welfare. As I've mentioned before, Alexander Hamilton, the great Money Man of the founding fathers, obviously considered promoting the general welfare an entirely legitimate role of the Congress under the Constitution and worth spending tax money on.
      To shed a little light on the structure issue, let's take a peek at Federalist Paper #51, by James Madison, which addresses the whys and wherefores of the structure of government under the Constitution. By way of a quibble - the AARP article lays on Jefferson the responsibility for the structure of American government, but in fact Jefferson was in France 3000 miles away during the Constitutional Convention, which was chaired by Madison, and in fact played no role and grumbled afterwards that he would have done some things differently.
     Our (and Madison's) concern is with the purpose, not the efficiency, of the structure.  Let us be clear: Madison (in my view, the real father of the Constitution) defines the primary function of the structure of government as the preservation of liberty, not the efficient processing of the wants and needs of the people. To secure that liberty, he requires that the structure be made up of independent parts, each capable of thwarting the decisions of other parts.  His greatest fear is of "the tyranny of the majority."  For Madison recognizes that we are each at some time in some fashion a part of many minorities, subject to the uncaring will of strangers, that "men are not angels" and that majority will does not always coincide with justice.  His, and  the Constitution's, solution for preserving liberty in the face of the factionalism he knows will arise, is to force compromise through the inability of any one faction to seize all the reins of government.  And that creates a necessary dysfunctionalism, when all parties are not yet ready to compromise.  In the current logjam, government is operating exactly as it was designed to operate.  An immediate solution is for Norquist and for others from all parties to seek honestly a compromise acceptable to all.  The problem is Norquist, not the government.
      Norquist's vision is directly counter to the purpose of American government as conceived in the Constitution.  To get his way with tax reduction, he would sacrifice liberty, and liberty is the sine qua non of American government.
      But even after immediate solutions are found, ongoing dysfunction exists, and the fact that Norquist is wrong does not make it go away.  How to reconcile liberty with the increasing scope and size of government is in fact a major issue.  To deal with that and other parts of the puzzle will require subsequent posts.

The Peloponnesian Blues

It's hard to follow the tug of war over European finances that's been going on between Greece and Germany these past several months without thinking of Auntie Mame.  You remember how Mame was always telling her plain, repressed secretary, Agnes Gooch, to "go out and live a little."  Then comes the wonderful scene where Agnes, obviously pregnant, stands at the top of the stairs shouting down to Mame, "I lived a little; now what do I do?"  And of course, Greece looks a lot like Agnes, only much prettier and a lot less repressed.
My wife and I have old friends in Greece whom we've visited on several occasions.  On a visit in 1998, when talks about Greece converting to the Euro were underway, our friends expressed a lot of concern and apprehension about it.  They were worried about the probable rise in prices, but more than that, they were concerned for the effect on traditional Greece of moving into the EU fast lane with Germany and France.  Feeling they were already well on the way to losing the siesta, there was a lot more of the charms of Greece they forsaw being thrown away in pursuit of the Euro.  Now it looks like they may have been right on target.  Hard-working, earnest, frugal, cautious Germany(except when they're turning purple sunbathing too long under the broiling sun of Crete) is lecturing Greece on how Greece needs to shape up and become a kind of extremely southern Bavaria. And they certainly have a lot of virtue to their argument. The Greeks, getting used to living off the fat of the Euro with the old fashioned aid of cooking the books (probably originally taught as a course by Aristotle but modernized with the aid of Goldman-Sachs), are saying, you told us we'd be living well on the Euro, we're just doing what we've always done, and now you want to back away.  And of course, a big part of the charm of Greece that causes all those vacationing Germans to head there is just that laid back, laissez faire culture that's fundamental to how they view the world.  Meanwhile, both sides are wailing, why don't you do right?
Which brings me to my favorite old blues tune, by Lil Green and later by Peggy Lee, "Why don't you do right (like some other men do)?"  The Greek version is what I call the Peloponnesian Blues, "You promised lots of money when you took me in, then you got me drunk on Euros and started blaming me for sin, why don't you do right and get me some money,too?"
But of course, there's a larger issue they're struggling with.  The 21st century is building up steam and a lot of traditional economies are going to want to get on board in the next few years.  Unless they do so, we're going to have a sharply divided world of haves and have nots that can only lead to increased conflict.  Traditional countries are already showing a great deal of restiveness at what they see as the iron hand of the IMF and the Rich Countries.  I wish I had a neat solution, but right now none seems to exist.  To resolve differences only on the rich nations' terms, as is the current emphasis,  is going to require abandonment of traditional cultures, at a great loss to the traditional societies and to the whole world.  The dilemma is not going to be easily resolved, but just blaming the other party for the problem is definitely not part of the solution.  It's time for all parties to stop singing the blues, and learn to do right (like we all ought to do.)

Christmas Dreaming

The Holidays are a good time to cocoon a little and read something you might not otherwise have thought about.  My wife and I have a practice of turning off the TV for a while each evening after dinner during Advent and reading to each other classic Christmas stories.  The Christmas anthology I've mentioned in Recent Reads has stories we love, that look at Christmas from distinctly odd angles. One story is actually the account to his editor by a writer with  a bad case of writer's block of why he could not write a Christmas story, a magical tale in itself.  Another favorite is "The Three Wise Guys" by Damon Runyon, which tells with wonderful charm how three very dubious characters from a New York City bar, intent on recovering stashed loot from a bank robbery, instead find themselves transformed almost despite themselves into the three Magi at the stable, and become very wise indeed.  But our real favorite is not a reading at all, and for it we go back to the TV and to the DVD attached.  The story is Jim Henson's "Emmitt Otter's Jug Band Christmas", a tale combining the best talents of the Muppets and O Henry.
Emmitt Otter and his mother each want to give the other something they really love for Christmas, but poor as they are, each can only do so by winning the local Christmas Talent Contest. You can partly go on from there just by remembering O Henry, but not entirely. An endearing villain enters the picture in the form of the Nightmare Band, an acid rock group you wish you could have been a part of.
Who wins the competition?  Let's just ask what eight-year-old could resist a really great acid rock  line like, "I never brush my teeth 'cause a toothache makes me feel so mean." The story of course does not end there, nor does the fun of its telling.
We love "Emmitt Otter" because it brings out the eight year old in us, and reminds us that dreams are as essential to our spirit as is bread to our body.  For a while, it gives hope that the serious people of the world can briefly give up their stern missions long enough to do something silly like working together toward real solutions to the world's problems and to share a common dream.

Postscript: Tremors in the Paradigm

This is by way of a footnote on my previous post. In it I commented about how both Communism and Capitalism, in their adherence to economic determinism and rational market economics, were departures from the "sliding scale" of recognition of the circumstances of the purchaser found in the social market paradigm. On reflection, I realized that some might object, and point out the Communist maxim, "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs", and feel I had not been fair to Marx.  However, the context is important.  Marx wrote always in terms of class consciousness and class struggle, and deprecated the role of the isolated individual.  In writing about the Revolution of 1848 in France, he observed, "French peasants form a class in the same sense that a sack full of potatoes forms a sack of potatoes."  Thus, to continue and expand my previous metaphor, while Capitalism turns neighbors into isolated mutual predators, Communism turns neighbors into packs of mutual predators.  Both are antithetical to "neighborly democracy."

Tremors in the Paradigm

Sometimes, paradigm changes are hard to detect as they begin, and other times they begin loudly and, like a wet firecracker, sputter and fizzle.  So it’s hard to know right now what is actually occurring, but there’s definitely the smell of paradigm combustion in the air.  The Euro is undergoing a crisis of confidence before our eyes while both global financial markets and parliaments burn with indignation.   Arab Spring and Occupy are blossoming now across Eurasia, in places as diverse as St. Petersburg and a Chinese village.  Occupiers in the U.S. spread their sleeping bags from Wall Street to Oakland.  And the economists and politicians point in so many directions at once that the editorial page reader feels surrounded by invisible walls of enemies.

A few perceptive commentators seem to be struggling toward a realization of sorts.  Eugene Robinson describes the issues as more political issues of democracy than economic ones, Howard Meyerson sees fundamental problems from the human pain of downgraded and displaced jobs as a cause, and even an ardent conservative like Ed Rogers recognizes that, somehow, democracy itself is part of the issue.  In fact, in a wrongheaded sort of way, Rogers pinpoints the fact that large groups of participants in a democracy actually want something besides market optimization.

Adam Smith would probably have a much easier time diagnosing the problem than would most of his adherents.  A professor of moral philosophy and collaborator with David Hume, he had interests far beyond the economics for which he is famous. His other great work besides The Wealth of Nations was The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and in it he deplored “the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition.”  I suspect he would be horrified at the use put to his great phrase, “the invisible hand of the market.”  For that phrase, like a scalpel, immediately served to sever the irresponsible rich from the moral and social consequences of their economic activity.  And it cemented the shift from the social market paradigm which preceded Smith to the rational market paradigm which followed, i.e., it turned us all from neighbors to mutual predators.

In the social market paradigm, considerations include not just the costs of production and need for profit; they include knowledge and consideration of the circumstances of the purchaser. The price differs for stranger versus friend; a poor widow may get a price not available to a rich banker.  In effect, prices are on a sliding scale, and the purchaser’s position on that scale depends on things other than rational consideration of supply and demand.  The banker wielded power in the village, but only within defined social limits. Sanctions ranging from slow deliveries to expulsion from the village could apply to violators of the unwritten social norms.  We probably all have encountered such markets in local lemonade stands and in third world villages.  They are the economics of a world where people are neighbors, and they describe most human activity down through history.

Smith certainly deserves no blame for the misuse of his language, or for the death of the social market paradigm.  In the western world, it had fallen to its knees long before Smith, and a coroner’s report would surely show cause of death as “speed of transportation.”   Europe was at the peak of its great age of exploration; the rapidly increasing speed of transportation meant that new markets were reachable everywhere, and most of them were so distant given the then maximum speed of transport that social relationships between buyers and sellers were out of the question.  The time was ripe for a new paradigm, in which rationally efficient meant that consideration of social aspects of buying and selling were no longer feasible. And so we lived for almost three hundred years.

In the process, we thought we waged a great struggle between Capitalism and Communism, but that battle had already been lost by the time it came.  For both sides had as the same central tenet, the idea of “economic determinism.” And by that was meant, the rule of rational economic efficiency over social considerations.  Of course, removing social transactions from economic theory left only economic determinism.  So Marxism and Capitalism differed mainly in what each considered the best approach to achieving the efficiency objective while palliating the social evils that transpired.    

But times have changed yet again.  We live now in an age where supersonic jets and gigabit-speed communications mean we can again be neighbors in a global village; we again know about each other and feel the pangs of a social conscience even at great distances.  We recognize mal-distributions of wealth and irresponsible treatment of the needy in our societies or others for what they are – failed social market transactions – and we look to see consequences for those failures. “The invisible hand” no longer satisfies as an explanation or excuse.

And that is the common thread among Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, European Union protests, and the whole range of protest movements now afoot.  They are not only threats to the established order; they are the opportunity to find ways to satisfy our own economic needs while not forgetting  the needs of our neighbor; to purchase our bread without selling our soul.

Food and History

The foodie in me and the student of history together have a regrettable (particularly in the view of my children) tendency to look for nutritional explanations for historical change.  It is a vice that makes me notice all sorts of odd theories about “Foods that changed the World.”  I think I perhaps first picked it up when a social history professor of mine casually commented that perhaps it was possibly what Napoleon had for breakfast as much as Wellington that caused the French defeat at Waterloo.  Or maybe I’m longing for the perfect recipe for world peace, or for an end to world hunger.  Whatever.  My teenagers would shudder and gag  and accuse me of sabotaging their education  when I mentioned how lead leached from wine jars contributed to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, or how the lentils brought back to Europe from the Crusades provided protein to fuel the 12^th century Renaissance (the Great Pea Theory) or how tomatoes from the New World in union with pasta from China may have caused a decline in the protein in the Italian diet which in turn caused a slackening of the Italian Renaissance (from “Daedalus”  – remember that journal?).  Nevertheless, my search for foodie solutions to the mysteries of history continued on.

In recent years things have started looking up for the foodie school of history.  First, Jared Diamond blazed the way with his account, in Guns, Germs and Steel, of how lactic tolerance among ancestors of Europeans enabled development of a slight resistance to smallpox, which in turn made it possible for Europeans to conquer other lactic intolerant peoples by spreading smallpox like a weapon before them.  Then researchers reported in Scientific American that the development of rice culture may have been a major factor in preventing a prehistoric ice age that could have wiped out humanity before we even got started.  Foodie history was starting to look not so shabby.  Anthropologists jumped into the fray and developed a theory that all civilization began with the cooking of meat, which both provided extra protein energy and time away from digestive napping to do all sorts of things.   And for decades now, pioneers in third world development have reported that a major factor in lagging third world economies is malnutrition, particularly that associated with low protein intake.

Now, further inroads on the Naysayers have occurred.  Earlier this year, Scientific American   reported that at one key point in pre-history, a major drought throughout Africa lasting thousands of years nearly wiped out human ancestors, except for a small band from whom we are all descended, who survived on a diet of seafood.  Then a new, highly praised book appeared,  Extra Virginity: the Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller, which along with exposing the nefarious tricks of the shadier olive oil merchants, wrote movingly of the role of olive oil throughout human history.  And just in November, Smithsonian Magazine published a fascinating article, sure to become the core for a book, “How the Potato Changed the World”, that regaled us with the important role of the potato in human history.

Let’s see now: wine, olive oil, tomatoes, lentils, pasta, rice, cheese, meat, seafood, potatoes.  Surely there’s a recipe for world peace in there somewhere.  But let’s start by feeding the hungry or better yet, by helping them to feed themselves.  A good start would be Heifer International, an organization that delivers flocks or herds of animals, from chickens to water buffalo, donated by you, to third world villages to jump-start their economies.  Their URL is Heifer.org.

Happy eating!  You could change the World. 

George Will and the Ghosts of Christmases Past

George Will, in the persona of his columns in the Washington Post, has been a presence at our breakfast table for years.  His stately prose in defense of all things conservative bemuses and irks in ways that make the vitriol of a Charles Krauthammer seem petty (though that is a standard met by many).  What particularly bemuses me is Will's superb craftmanship in concocting special pleas.  What irks me is his use of that great talent for such forlorn causes.
Many years ago, I took a course on logic and semantics that the professor genially subtitled "How To Win a Crooked Argument." It was a marvellous review of logical fallacies, semantic loadings, invidious comparisons, analogy extensions, etc., that served to sensitize us to the multitude of forms a specious argument can take.  George is master of them all, and to study his tradecraft in the morning paper is a delight, sometimes.
But occasionally his true dreams show through, and in them we perceive landscapes that haunt.  Take for example, his column of December 8, titled "Indigestion over Obamacare."  George always includes enough truth to be interesting, so let us track some of his truths to see what they reveal. 
But first, let us applaud his skill in taking the views of one employer, without seeking the views of his employees, and making them serve as a supposed microcosm of supposed vices of the entire "Welfare State." That was a fallacy of scale truly worthy of George.  We will in his honor, of course forget the public policy maxim that "Extreme examples make bad policy."  We will also, in George's honor, forgive his uplifting of a "model" business with a 95 percent annual employee turnover rate as one on which his analysis of national public health policy is based.  As we forgive his surely absent minded failure to mention profit margins and executive compensation when citing "the growth of its (the business's) burdens under Obamacare."  And of course, his applause of tax evasion and of reluctance to pay workers compensation for potential employee injury is understandable.  .He surely would likewise have applauded the firm employer handling of discontent during the historic Pullman Strike.
Now, to work.  Mr. Will cites as a national issue the $1.75 trillion cost (in 2008) of federal regulations.  We shall posit that as true, if incomplete, (though some may differ.) For perspective, we note that the $1.75 trillion represents 22 percent of the net worth of American millionaires at about the same time, equivalent to a modest inheritance tax, if only there had been one.  (How's that for a comparison, George?) That will of course include the thousands of government work hours spent to figure out language that crooked employers can't evade, the billions spent on testing for food contamination and for fraudulantly engineered road and bridge construction, the millions of dollars spent by businesses on lawyers to find ways to evade safety and health regulations, etc., but probably doesn't include the savings of thousands of medical work hours of treatment for food poisoning and savings from the sick leave not spent for injuries from accidents that didn't occur because of regulations, etc.  Which is a little like judging the worth of World War II by the cost of munitions alone.
The same incompleteness applies to his other "truths" like citation of regulatory requirements to take breaks (what a horrid thought!), or his reference to 54 categories of regulations (almost equal to the varieties of soup grocers track on their shelves?)  One thing learned in classes like the one mentioned, and in management, is that things not said are as instructive as things said. In fact, they offer insights not otherwise available into the thoughts and dreams of the speaker.
George Will has in fact shown us that he dreams of a restoration of that happy time before Teddy Roosevelt when jolly bosses chomping cigars (no smoking bans then!) could make enormous profits from not paying the price of a living wage, having no concerns for effects on environment or safety, and leaving to the poor houses the care of the elderly and disabled.  In other words, he dreams of the life of Ebenezer Scrooge, before of course Ebenezer's encounter with the ghost of Marley.
It is time for George to reread Dickens, to see at least vicariously how the employees lived before regulation.  Then, instead of merely telling us the costs of things without reference to their value, the tactic of a true cynic, he should begin thinking of and saying what he is for.  Perhaps in the process, he may refind the spirit of the season so admirably captured by Dickens.  Merry Christmas, George!

CLIMATE TALKS...AND TALKS...AND TALKS...

An apocryphal anecdote goes that one of the Kings of France (a Louis, but which I must have slept through) was sitting alone before his fireplace when a coal burst out of the fire and landed on his waistcoat, setting it aflame.  He rang for a servant to come extinguish the blaze, but the servant was slow in responding,so he sat and burned to death.  I think of that anecdote when I read once again, and again, that climate change talks are stalled, usually because both China and the U.S., the two biggest players in what other nations characterize as a ping-pong match, are maintaining positions they each have held for 20 years.  Presumably they feel that the other gains a competitive advantage if they relax their position. Meanwhile, the Earth, containing both nations, burns.
They each are faced with the classic choice between a short-term loss which could lead to long-term survival and a short-term stalemate which could lead to disaster for all.  The expectation of short-term gain is at best unrealistic for each.  Or is it?  Logicians worked out centuries ago a strategy for getting past such impasses.  It's called "the Pope's mule".  Using it, a previously unused, possibly even not too relevant, issue (the "mule") is used to break the impasse.  Think of it as a medieval version of "thinking outside the box."
The mule in this case could be to forget about emission reduction targets as such and concentrate on targets for massive investment in green and other carbon reducing technologies.  At a time of world recession, such investment would serve for each nation the double purposes of job creation and retooling the economy for competitiveness in the 21st century.  Each nation would be challenging the other to build a bigger and better economy than what they now have, and in the process, to build technologies to overcome the emissions generated by use of outdated technologies.  The competition would be to see who is really better at innovation.  Truly workable new technologies would then achieve the goals previously considered damaging or unachievable in the present impasse.  Would it work?  Who can be sure?  But in the meantime, that coal keeps burning.

Again the Deficit, And Original Intent

I've always been intrigued by the idea of original intent, and (cautiously) wanted to follow it.  After all, Founding Fathers who freely cited John Locke, cribbed from Montaigne, and had proclivities for rum running had, somehow, to be at least closet liberals and couldn't have been totally off course in their thinking. It's a dangerous leaning on my part, because it turns out the Founders are not always predictable, and, like good analogies, sometimes can be stretched beyond their limits.  And the more conservative justices on the federal bench tend to rely heavily on original intent at the core of their argument.
Of course, politicians of all stripes these days also like to cite the original intent of the Founding Fathers in support of their policies. (Though no one has as yet found a convenient way to do so in regard to streaming movies to your cable neighbor's discontent.)  So from time to time I like to pick up my motheaten copy (actually, on my Kindle) and see what some Founding Fathers really said in the Federalist Papers.  Thus, recently I was perusing the Federalist and stumbled upon #34, which covers what Alexander Hamilton had to say about the federal deficit.
Hamilton, you will recall, was our Financial Founding Father. At the end of the revolution, the new country was virtually bankrupt, and all the states had enormous war debts. It was largely through Hamilton's efforts that the country became a prosperous republic by the early 1800's.  So, it was reasonable to expect a skilled financier to express conservative financial views. Imagine then my surprise to find that he was proud as a peacock to proclaim that the Constitution contains no limit on the federal deficit, despite significant efforts by some at the convention to include such a limit.  Instead, he was horrified at the idea of a debt ceiling!
His rationale was briefly as follows.  Unexpected things, like war, pestilence - you know the list, happen, and the nation must have the capacity to deal with the unexpected at all times. And, here is the wondrous thing, it must do so without removing the funding from previous programs the Congress has passed "to promote the general welfare"! It must act quickly then at the cost of incurring national debt, and cover the cost by increasing revenue through some form of taxation. His words sound like they could have been spoken on the floor of the House during the debt ceiling debate earlier this year, if only they had been.
Well, score one for the liberals.

Change and Social Security and the Deficit

As a way of introducing myself, I'm taking this opportunity to answer a question I'm fairly frequently asked by those who know my career background.  I worked many years for the Social Security Administration, mostly in jobs related to computer systems (though I did have time, and fun, serving on "America's front porch" in a field office).  Fairly early in my computer career I worked a lot with actuaries and statisticians, providing computer support for their analyses. I found actuaries particularly to be interesting people with vision not only for current issues, but for those way down the pike. 

Back in the 1970's they were already looking at American society in the mid - 21st century.  The vibes I got from talking with them and reading some of their journals was that, for both demographic and economic reasons, America is headed gradually toward a "multi-career" economy in which, for most individuals, 20 to 30 years of engagement in a particular occupation are interspersed with "sabbaticals" for retraining in another occupation and refreshment. In such a society "retirement" would come only by reason of frailty and extreme age, perhaps in the late 80's.  Such change would not come overnight but would involve a lengthy transitional economy in which retirement age would come later and later, coupled with increasing societal acceptance and support of  sabbaticals for retraining.

Which leads us back to current issues of what to do about Social Security and the Deficit issue, the question I am interrogated about at parties. First, given the long term vision, I find it entirely reasonable to raise the current Social Security retirement age to 70, possibly with an intermediate step to 68.  But that raising of retirement age should be coupled with increased societal support for occupational retraining, as a precursor of things to come.  Second, I'd like us all to remember what Social Security is and is not. 

Social Security is NOT an investment program intended to provide individual savings. Back in 1936, the nature of Social Security was an issue raised to the Supreme Court, and their decision (from an at-the-time very conservative set of justices) was that Social Security is a casualty insurance program designed to partially replace income lost from retirement or death, funded by an excise tax on employers, and quite constitutional. That may speak also, by the way, to the "mandatory health insurance mandate" so worried about by some of our politicians today.  Thus, I find the concept of private accounts not consistent with the basic rationale (and economics) of Social Security.

Third, I'm asked at parties, sometimes hopefully sometimes fearfully, about means testing of SocialSecurity benefits.  As a personal note, my mother, like so many retirees past and present, accepted her Social Security check gratefully as a compenstion for her hard work over many years, but would have rejected anything she perceived as Welfare as being somehow shameful (at the low point following my father's death, she was offered Welfare and turned it down).  Any means testing would probably quickly evolve into Social Security becoming a "poor person's payment" with the resulting stigma. Aside from that, Social security benefits are payments from a casualty insurance system, and to the extent any insurance-based income is taxable, they should be taxed as part of ordinary income.  In a truly progressive income tax rate structure, that makes them"means-tested" enough
A basic part of the differences in points of view on these issues today comes from having lost sight of the true nature of government programs.  Yes, Social Security is, economically, a major transfer program between the public and private sectors, but then so is the national defense budget.  Yes, it is intended to provide income to those in need, but it does so as a casualty insurance benefit replacing lost income. There are enormous social costs from neglect of those who have retired or been widowed or ophaned. Before 1950, when Social Security achieved its "steady-state"operation, over 50 percent of people in this country over 65 were living in poverty.  That Social Security has been able to reduce that poverty rate to less than 20 percent is a major, though incomplete, economic boon for America, and a well justified rationale for government action under the constitution.  Beyond that, it's a human accomplishment in which we should all take pride.