The slide back to serfdom started with Woodrow Wilson and went hyper with FDR. The Turbulent 60’s cemented the progressive policies that are now the bane of the free society our Founders left us. Beginning with Wilson’s turn to globalism and “one world”, through the explosion of controls over our lives with the “New Deal”, and continuing with programs intended to “right the wrongs of the past” like the War on Poverty and the Civil Rights laws that have come to pit one group against another, the state now finds itself the nurturer of tens of millions (still working with HUD and other programs to get real numbers) who are solely dependent upon them. But in a sign that all may not be lost, both sides of the aisle are working on changes to retirement laws that have elements of returning a little more control to us citizens.
Nearly every person in the country knows that both Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are eating up an increasing proportion of the federal budget. These behemoth programs (part of the New Deal and War on Poverty) have crowded out many other necessities like roads and bridges and the defense of our country. The Senate has introduced changes to private individual retirement accounts that allow for more people to address their own retirement, thus returning SOME of the responsibility for your own well-being back to you. The changes are minor, but at least I read them as token acknowledgment that we better start taking baby steps to address the elephant in the room; our growing entitlements problem. Pollyanna? Perhaps, but until we insist that our Representatives fully right the sinking fiscal ship we are all on, these small changes by our “leaders” are to be encouraged and fostered.
Current Day Publius 