(11-08-2020, 05:12 PM)GethN7 Wrote: Yes. Social Security has such broad-reaching implications NO ONE, regardless of their politics, should mess with it, unless they handle it with the greatest care.
Social Security, on the other hand, is right up there with all the other basic "don't meddle with this unless you have expertly researched the options prior, and even then tread cautiously" positions, like our need to have a bare minimum for maintaining the postal system and need to regulate universal questions of law enforcement and civil defense that it would lead to anarchy and societal breakdown if we didn't.
Well, that's where you are misunderstanding (too) many of Republican and also Democratic Elders.
They CARE very much about Social Security , and they HAVE been researching the options; they have been doing it since the days of FDR. Because they WANT IT GONE. Same about the postal system, although that seems to be more recent. That eliminating the payroll tax would defund Social Security and bankrupt it is not a unfortunate, unforeseen side effect: IT WAS THE WHOLE POINT.
Why? Because their ideology is that no government program can improve the lives of people., and if there is any that does, it must be destroyed in order to prove that it actually couldn't do it. And it all comes from the fact that they will have less (economic/societal/etc) power over a prosperous people than over a starving, desperate people.
Therefore, according to them the only responsibility of a government should be the "law enforcement and civil defense" that you mentioned. Because it is needed to protect them from the "anarchy and societal breakdown" that starving, desperate people in revolt usually cause unless cowed by a military boot on their necks.