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Social Security is a system for guaranteeing the rights of elders and others with needs to be safely cared for in our society. It was started by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930’s and has worked wonderfully well for a long, long time. Social Security has a trust fund that, at present, earns five and a half per cent interest. Currently tax receipts and interest bring more money into the fund than is paid out.
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Therefore the fund gets bigger all the time, at least for the next fifteen years. As of now it is valued at 1.7 trillion dollars. This fund is sacrosanct and is not to be touched for anything other than for the benefit of those it is supposed to protect - the people in need of it. It is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America! This is a sound program for years to come! The law demands that this Social Security trust fund remain in the government as the peoples’ money, with proper government bonds backing it. However, the law could be changed, by the consent of the people, so that the government bonds could be used for public investments in the stock market rather than what is being proposed by the president. He wants to instigate a Social Security system in which private individuals play the stock market by investing in it to augment their future reduced Social Security benefits. The president’s plan would make the individual private accounts take the risk of stock market investment, whereas the risk should be taken by the government. The government should play the stock market and leave Social Security the way it is now because the way it is now benefits the people in need. If the president is so sure that private account investment is safe and secure, let the government use the Social Security bonds to invest in the stock market. Should there be a turndown in the market, the government would then make up any shortfall instead of needy people with private funds compensating for any shortfall.
The advantages of this plan, government risk instead of private citizen risk, are: Where did Grandma get this plan? Franklin Delano Roosevelt is one of her best buddies up here in heaven.
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