Originally Posted by kane

While I agree that our generation may get screwed out of Social Security I don't think privatizing it is the way to go. Here is why. If you leave it up to people to save on their own most simply won't do it. If you make it mandatory that people have the money taken from their checks and put into an account then you at least get the money saved, but really how many people are savvy enough to correctly invest that money? How many would have put their money in companies like GM, Ford and AIG because they were huge companies and felt safe? Those people could have lost everything.

What ends up happening is that you now start asking Joe Bob the average guy to not only work a 40 hour week and take care of his home and family, but he also has to become an investor and he has to risk his future on the quality of those investments that he makes. If he just leaves the money in a basic account that draws a little interest then there is a pretty good chance that he won't wave enough in that account to live on when he retires.

Privatized social security is one of those things that sounds cool, but it is a disaster waiting to happen. We very well could end up with an entire generation that has no money to live on and we have no federal money set aside to help them. Social Security can be fixed, it just is going to take some people to make some tough choices and do the work. I would love to see Social Security continue but also start some kind of plan where people could opt to take say 1% less taken out in social security tax and have that money (plus whatever more you may want to add in) put into a separate IRA or something like that for each person. This way when you retire you can get social security, but you also have access to whatever is in that IRA as a second form of income.