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Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so? We may argue with him, seek to persuade him that he is wrong, but are we entitled to use coercion to prevent him from doing what he chooses to do? Is there not always the possibility that he is right and that we are wrong? Humility is the distinguishing virtue of the believer in freedom; arrogance, of the paternalist. |
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Few people are thoroughgoing paternalists. It is a position that is most unattractive if examined in the cold light of the day. Yet the paternalistic argument has played so large a role in measures like social security that it seems worth making it explicit. |
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A possible justification on liberal principles for compulsory purchase of annuities is that the improvident will not suffer the consequence of their own action but will impose costs on others. We shall not, it is said, be willing to see the indigent aged suffer in dire poverty. We shall assist them by private and public charity. Hence the man who does not provide for his old age will become a public charge. Compelling him to buy an annuity is justified not for his own good but for the good of the rest of us. |
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The weight of this argument clearly depends on fact. If 90 per cent of the population would become charges on the public at age 65 in the absence of compulsory purchase of annuities, the argument would have great weight. If only 1 per cent would, the argument has none. Why restrict the freedom of 99 per cent to avoid the costs that the other 1 per cent would impose on the community? |
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The belief that a large fraction of the community would become public charges if not compelled to purchase annuities owed its plausibility, at the time OASI was enacted, to the Great Depression. In every year from 1931 through 1940, more than one-seventh of the labor force was unemployed. And unemployment was proportionately heavier among the older workers. This experience was unprecedented and has not been repeated since. It did not arise because people were improvident and failed to provide for their old age. It was a consequence, as we |
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