Daniel Davies wrote:
>>Or in other words, Social Security is a transfer program, not a
savings program, and it was an achingly stupid rhetorical move for the
Democratic Party to start defending it as a savings program.<<

Doug:>But they're trapped by the rhetoric that FDR used from the
beginning - in order to avoid tripping American suspicions about
"welfare," it was presented as "insurance." The truth of its being a
transfer program had to be hidden.<

Insurance programs are transfer programs. If I have a fire, the fire
insurance company pays me by transferring money from all the folks who
pay premia who don't have fires. 

Similarly, the SS system is insurance against poverty in one's old age,
disability, and survivorship. 

Jim Devine 

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