February 15, 2000

Asking for Your Own Money
Drug War Does Not Stop the Drug Market
First Steps to Internet Policing?

Asking for Your Own Money

President Clinton and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) signaled willingness today to enact legislation that would allow people over 65 to earn full Social Security benefits even if they are still working, according to The Washington Post. The limit on Social Security benefits for senior citizens still working has its origins in the Depression, when policymakers penalized older workers to free up jobs for younger people.

Of course, people would not need the permission of government to keep working and access their retirement funds under a private system. Director of fiscal policy studies Stephen Moore testified before congress on earnings limits and demonstrated how the "earnings test provision is anti-work, anti-senior citizen, and anti-tax fairness." Cato's Social Security privatization website features today an analysis of the proposed reforms and notes that "personal retirement accounts would do more for seniors than the current Republican proposal, which leaves the earnings test for those retiring at age 62 in place." The Social Security problem will be the focus of "Solving the Global Public Pension Crisis II: The Privatization Revolution," co-hosted by the Cato Institute and The Economist magazine on March 9-10 in New York City.

Drug War Does Not Stop the Drug Market

Drug Czar Barry R. McCaffrey is reporting a 140 percent increase in the cultivation of coca in Colombia over the past five years and urging Congress to pass the Clinton administration's proposed $1.6 billion drug war package for that country, according to The Washington Post. The report also indicates strong reductions in coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia and McCaffrey argues that the administration's plan "is critical if we are to stop the increased production in Colombia from outstripping gains made in the rest of the region."

Drug trafficking is subject to market forces. When drug production is thwarted in one area, it will crop up in another as long as there is a demand for production. Director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty Ian Vasquez shows in the Cato Handbook for Congress how the " U.S.-led interdiction campaign in the Caribbean has rerouted narcotics traffic through Mexico." In " Collateral Damage: The Wide-Ranging Consequences of America's Drug War," vice president for defense and foreign policy studies Ted Galen Carpenter explains the ill consequences of the U.S. international war on drugs.

First Steps to Internet Policing?

The White House today is hosting technology and business leaders together with government officials to discuss Internet security and last week's much publicized Web attacks. Tomorrow, Congress will hear testimony from Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh where they will ask for more funding and new powers to combat cybercrime. But civil libertarians warn about the encroaching government presence on the Internet where freedom reigns.

James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said his group worries "that the recent attacks will serve as justification for legislation or other government mandates that will be harmful to civil liberties and the positive aspects of the openness and relative anonymity of the Internet."

In "Nameless in Cyberspace," Jonathan D. Wallace makes the case that proposals to limit anonymous communications on the Internet would violate free speech rights making the point that anonymous and pseudonymous speech played a vital role in the founding of this country. In "Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations With Washington, D.C." (pdf), T.J. Rodgers shows how "the collectivist notion that drives policymaking in Washington is the irrevocable enemy of high-technology capitalism and the wealth creation process."