Social Security and the Time Bomb Approach

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Ed Fannie established Social Security in 1938. Seven years later, it blows up and costs the American people 300 plus billion on its way to the number we're not quite sure of. So that is when we look at it as a time bomb approach. Outside the United States, I agree with him outside the U.S. The world looked at what it was like in East Germany compared to West Germany. They had a remarkable social experiment there. And the evidence was overwhelming. You couldn't slip into the right-hand side of the equation and come to the conclusion that socialism was a great system.

Bryan Caplan of George Mason University and blogger at EconLog talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about two books: Eugene Richter's Pictures of the Socialistic Future and F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Both books warn against the dangers of socialism. Pictures of a Socialistic Future, published in 1891 is a dystopian novel imagining what life would be like after a socialist revolution. The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, explores the links between economic freedom and political freedom and the inherent similarities between communism and fascism. Both books look at the German roots of centralized planning and the nature of the people who rise to power when the State is powerful. The conversation includes discussion of the these topics as well as the rule of law and the amount of state control of the economy in Nazi Germany.