The Bottom Line

Thinking about why anyone should oppose more choice--because choice is good--in the plan to destroy Social Security I came upon this which I think pretty much sums it all up.

"Letting us all pick has real value. But all of us want the same thing out of our checks: high numbers. The choice, as such, has no value. The only thing that's really at issue is whether privatization would make people's checks bigger. The answer, on average, once all the costs are considered, is no.

While privatizing Social Security would only trivially increase individual freedom, it would massively increase individual risk. The median return to a private account would be about the same as the median Social Security benefit, but actual returns would vary significantly around that median according to a variety of factors including, most prominently, market conditions over which you have no control in the year in which you happen to retire. Some people would do much better than they do under the current system, but many would do much worse. In practice, this would restrict, rather than expand, the choices available to individuals. Under the current system, Social Security's guaranteed benefits allow middle-income people to invest additional money fairly aggressively -- exchanging a small risk of catastrophe for a high average payoff."

And this is the bottom line