Lies the government told you by Andrew Napolitano (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

The government regulation has also had an effect on the interpersonal relationship between landlords and tenants. As a result of these artificially low rents, landlords and tenants will naturally harbor some animosity toward each other. One article describes: “No wonder landlords resent the legalized thieves masquerading as tenants; in turn, the parasites hate their host because he isn’t giving them even more. A couple of landlords have actually killed rent-controlled tenants to end their decades of sponging.”25

Landlords have also been taken advantage of by wealthy politicians. For example, it was uncovered in 2008 that New York Congressman and rent regulation advocate Charlie Rangel rented several rent-controlled Harlem apartments and combined them into an opulent home. Rangel defended his grand residence on the cheap by claiming that one of his apartments was really his congressional office. The building’s landlord would surely have raised objections to this arrangement if Rangel had not been a powerful politician who could put him out of business.26

The wisdom gained from this infuriating story is that it is not difficult to make rent control laws (which are supposedly in place to help the poorer members of society keep a roof over their head) advantage the wealthy. One article comments, “Ah, the ironies of rent-control: politicians with a millionaire’s net-worth and second homes in the Dominican Republic collect rent-controlled apartments like stamps while the handicapped squat beneath bridges.”27 While rent control was originally meant only to help wives and children while husbands and fathers were fighting in World War II, it has become an enduring and harmful legacy in some of America’s cities.

“Temporary” Government Program #3:

Social Security

The Social Security program was enacted through the Social Security Act of 1935. Its stated intention was to be a temporary program that would provide financial assistance after retirement. Money was taken from the payrolls of current workers and then redistributed to retirees. Based on this fact alone, it becomes apparent that from the start Social Security was not a temporary program. How could a temporary program take money from you now, and promise to give it back to you later?

The Social Security system is a hapless cycle and a Ponzi scheme. It is a program rife with poor planning, as FDR and the drafters of it did not predict that the average life span would increase in the future and failed to plan for population surges, like the “baby boom” which occurred shortly after WWII. Today, FDR’s program has left a terrible burden on the federal government’s budget and continues to take money out of the hands of those who earned it. The program has also infantilized America’s seniors by making retirement into an expected social norm, therefore leaving little genuine choice for the aging population.

Upon its creation, Social Security excluded many women and minorities from receiving its benefits. Typically, only practitioners of certain professions (jobs that were commonly held by white males) were eligible to get financial benefits from Social Security. People in many jobs—such as teachers, nurses, hospital employees, social workers, librarians, domestic servants, railroad workers, farm employees, and government employees—were not required to pay into or able to collect from Social Security. Consequently, the Social Security system tended to discriminate against those classes of people who made lower wages and were not easily able to save for retirement.

In subsequent years, the types of professions that were included in the financial benefits grew, but unfortunately so did the costs to taxpayers. Only by excluding large groups of blacks from Social Security—a government decision based on race—could FDR get this infantile socialism supported by Southern Democrats in Congress. Nevertheless, Social Security still failed miserably at being even an efficient or equitable socialist program, if there is such a thing. The problem with socialism, according to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is that sooner or later the government runs out of other people’s money. Indeed ours has. Because of its immoral, unlawful, unconstitutional structure, almost since its inception, Social Security has needed billions in taxpayer bailouts.

Milton Friedman criticized Social Security for redistributing wealth from the poor to the wealthy. The system winds up making people with large salaries pay a lower percentage of their total income than those making less money. Additionally, richer people tend to have longer life expectancies than poor people because wealthy people can often afford better quality health care and healthier lifestyles. Because the Social Security system pays until death, the wealthy often collect benefits for a longer period of time than do the poor.

The truth is that the Social Security system is a Ponzi scheme so elaborate and well funded it could make Bernie Madoff blush. Yet, while Madoff spends the rest of his life behind bars, the government is allowed to get away with its nearly identical scheme. Because who is going to put a stop to the government’s theft when the government fails to regulate itself ?

Through Social Security, the government takes your money, and then gives you an IOU in return. Economist Thomas Sowell exposes Social Security as a pyramid scheme and describes the many problems associated with it:

Social Security has been a pyramid scheme from the beginning. Those who paid in first received money from those who paid in second—and so on, generation after generation. This was great so long as the small generation when Social Security began was being supported by larger generations resulting from the baby boom. But, like all pyramid schemes, the whole thing is in big trouble once the pyramid stops growing. When the baby boomers retire, that will be the moment of truth—or more artful lies.28

So, just as in every Ponzi scheme, some people are going to get swindled out of their money. We see this today, as the government is running out of funds while trying to dole out money to the large number of retiring baby boomers. The baby boomers are a generation who paid a great deal of money into the Social Security