KOCH - Yes That KOCH: "You Are Entitled To Social Security Payments"

[kpete]

THU SEP 29, 2011 AT 12:52 PM PDT
Charles Koch: Social Security for me, but not for thee
byJoan McCarterFollow


The Nation has a fantastic exclusive demonstrating the depths of Charles Koch's hypocrisy. To set the scene: It's 1973, and Koch is the newly-appointed president of the Institute for Humane Studies, a libertarian think tank that was sort of a precursor to Koch's Cato Institute. He's trying to lure Friedrich Hayek, "the leading laissez-faire economist of the twentieth century," from his home in Austria to the Institute as "distinguished senior scholar." Hayek originally refuses, on the basis of having had some serious health concerns, and wanting to be in his home country—with its generous social benefits and health protections.

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On August 10, 1973, Koch wrote a letter appealing to Hayek to accept a shorter stay at the IHS, hard-selling Hayek on Social Security’s retirement benefits, which Koch encouraged Hayek to draw on even outside America. He also assured Hayek that Medicare, which had been created in 1965 by the Social Security amendments as part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, would cover his medical needs.

Koch writes: “You may be interested in the information that we uncovered on the insurance and other benefits that would be available to you in this country. Since you have paid into the United States Social Security Program for a full forty quarters, you are entitled to Social Security payments while living anywhere in the Free World. Also, at any time you are in the United States, you are automatically entitled to hospital coverage.”

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...............the exchange between Koch and Hayek exposes the bad-faith nature of their public arguments. In private, Koch expresses confidence in Social Security’s ability to care for a clearly worried Hayek. He and his fellow IHS libertarians repeatedly assure Hayek that his government-funded coverage in the United States would be adequate for his medical needs. None of them—not Koch, Hayek or the other libertarians at the IHS—express anything remotely resembling shame or unease at such a betrayal of their public ideals and writings. Nowhere do they worry that by opting into and taking advantage of Social Security programs they might be hastening a socialist takeover of America. It’s simply a given that Social Security and Medicare work, and therefore should be used.<...>



http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/29/1021379/-Charles-Koch:-Social-Security-for-me,-but-not-for-thee?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A
Charles Koch Told Friedrich Hayek To Use Social Security, Letters Show
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-social-security_n_987701.html+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos%29

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I cannot express my contempt for Koch deeply enough.

I just can't.

[Scuba]

4. +1

[aquart]

2. So he enticed Hayek even while planning to betray him.

[banned from Kos]

3. This must refer to old man Koch who died around 1980

His two sons are recipients of their fathers work and nothing special themselves.


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self edit ---


Fred Koch died in Nov 1967 as a lifelong Bircher - my bad.

[MisterP]

5. just like Ayn Rand's transplant and Rand Paul getting half his money from Medicare,

this will have no impact and they'll just scream "the New Deal destroyed the economy by making the poor lazy with handouts," "progressive taxation is immoral and unconstitutional," "regulating what happens on private property is an unlawful taking," and "taxation is theft at gunpoint." They'll just keep cycling those four aggravating points over and over.
they don't care, they only want a system to reinforce their core belief of "leave me and my earnings alone! BAAAAWWWW!" It's classical bourgeois ideology.