Property Rights

Brad Delong finds something to sort of like about turning Social Security into a system of private accounts:

There is one point where I have no quarrel with Lazear: his pointing out that private accounts are the beneficiaries by Right of property, which will be enforced by the courts, while legislated benefits are the beneficiaries' only by Grace of Congress. I'm not certain how much of a difference this is (for Congress has unlimited powers to tax incomes and to distinguish among different income streams as it taxes them), but it is a real difference.

A few remarks on this. One is that while I've heard much touching concern from certain privatizers about this "Grace of Congress" issue, the more typical conservatarian complaint about Social Security is that due to the ever-growing voting power of senior citizens it is, in practice, nearly impossible to cut Social Security benefits. So the whole issue strikes me as being of academic concern only. Beyond that, doesn't Congress have the power to reorganize the Social Security Administration as an independent corporate entity (with officers appointed by the government and with a restricted charter, etc., etc., etc.) endowed with a legal right to sue when the funds ostensibly entrusted to it are misused? Over course, Congress could take those rights away, but as Brad writes private accounts don't ensure that the money won't be taken away, either. A grant of legal personality separate from the federal government would raise the political barriers to confiscation of the trust fund, just as private accounts would.