Bet Your Life; P.L. Poirot

PAUL L. POIROT WHILE three top-level government executives who make up the board of trustees of the Social Security trust funds were preparing their 1970 report, a top-level official of the Social Security Administra tion was assuring us: "You have every right to expect that they'll find Social Security as sound in 1970 as it was in 1969."1 How often we've been assured of those twin certainties: death and taxes! After 33 years under a Social Security tax that has galloped from 2 per cent on the first $3,000 of earnings in 1937 ($60.00) to 9.6 per cent on the first $7,800 of earnings in 1970 ($748.80), why should anyone doubt that it's here to stay? What these experts are really trying to tell us is that there must be &omething sound about a 1 Russell R. Jalbert, "Sound Financing at Work," in the December-January, 1970, issue of Modern Maturity, P. 39. tax that yielded $26.6 billion of revenue in fiscal 1968 and $31.5 billion in fiscal 1969 - sound enough to bet your future on it.

And the reason why Social Secur ity doesn't have to build up re serves or be fully funded, as does a private insurance plan if it is to be actuarially sound, is that tax payers are automatically drafted and have no way to avoid paying the Social Security tax. They sim ply keep on paying - and at ever rising rates! So, when the experts tell us about the soundness of Social Se curity, they aren't talking about the actuarial soundness of an in surance program fully backed by invested reserves; they're speak ing rather of the certainty of taxes - saying in effect : There's no more chance of a taxpayer re volt next year than there was last year. The 1970's will mark the 200th anni versary of the latest effecti ve taxpayer revolt in this land of the free. ·Perhaps there is little chance that it might ever happen again. Yet, the percentage of earned income of individuals taken by government in 1970 is about dou ble the rate of a third of a century ago when Social Security began.

How sound is it to bet your life on tax revenues that will have to be collected at that high and acceler ative rate? , 241 Christian Charity versus Government Welfare THOMAS L. JOHNSON THE IDEA that government-spon sored welfare programs to assist the needy are compatible \vith, and justified by, Christian philos ophy is probably the most wide spread erroneous belief that per meates American society, and is hastening the destruction of free dom in the United States. This tragic flaw in the thinking of both well-and uneducated Christians has already brought misery to millions, and if this thinking per sists in this country, it will result in economic chaos followed by po Iitical totalitarianism. Government \velfare programs, even those providing temporary relief, are in complete opposition to, and destructive of, acts of Christian charity and are. totally inconsistent with Christian tra dition.