[Schneed10]

Philosophically, I agree that the government should just stay the hell away and not have a social security program at all. It should be up to us as individuals as to how we want to plan for retirement.

But from a pragmatic standpoint, this is unrealistic. Too many Americans will use that money for other things, failing to save enough for themselves. They'll then be forced to remain in the workforce until they're 80 or dead, which will take up more jobs, leaving fewer jobs for those under 65, resulting in much higher unemployment rates and much lower productivity and hence GDP. Not having some sort of organized retirement system would be a social and economic disaster.

But what needs to change is the rate of efficiency the government gets from our money. Right now they sock it away in the Social Security trust funds, and earn 3-5% on it. That barely outpaces inflation. A big chunk of that money needs to get invested in the stock market, corporate bonds, commercial paper, real estate trusts, and international investments. Just by making this change, the forecasts for social security's solvency would be nearly 100% healthy, simply because the rate of return on those investments is so much better than what the government is currently investing in.

I mean think about it, if Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, Bill Miller and Joel Tillinghast can become some of the best investment minds as corporate guys, why can't the US government hire one of the best to help manage the money?

I don't care if you privatize or not. The bottom line is we need a much better return on investment from the social security trust, otherwise this predicament is only going to get worse. It's actually shameful that we haven't done this ages ago.