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Opinion

Private accounts an unwise solution

Derek Dickson
Opinion Columnist

Social Security is no security for the youth and young adults of America. Theories are born everyday. It seems everyone has the answer to the Social Security crisis, but there's still no solution.

Part-time working students might not even notice the tiny amount of money that is taken out of their paycheck, and I hope they don't plan on ever seeing that money again. Once young Americans are eligible to collect Social Security, they will be fishing in a dry hole.

Congress' budget analysts estimate the program's trust funds will be depleted in 2052, which means beneficiaries will most likely only receive about 78 percent of their scheduled benefits.

However, in March 2004, the Social Security Board of Trustees estimated the trust funds would be empty in 2042. The future of social security is looking grim. President Bush wants to give younger workers the option of holding back a portion of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts, which makes sense -- at first. Privatizing Social Security makes sense until you consider a few things. Once the government allows citizens to keep the money that would have gone into Social Security, it will leave the government at fault. Or should I say, citizens will blame the government for not taking care of their money.

Those who are smart with their money could benefit from privatizing Social Security. I would want the option of keeping the money I earned anyway and investing it. Making my own retirement plan suits me better than letting the government handle it for me.

Privatizing Social Security would most likely fail even more than the program established now. Citizens would invest their money into stocks, which could plummet at any time, or agree to a retirement plan that wouldn't work well in the end. This would increase the amount of poor and homeless people in America.

Also, it would inflate the already growing problem of expensive medical needs for the elderly. If the stock they placed all of their retirement money in goes down the drain, so does their dream of retiring peacefully.

Another problem with investing retirement money is that the amount of money a person will have for retirement depends on how the market performs. Since the market is fluctuating constantly, depending on many aspects in the news, it's not a stable retirement plan either.

The Social Security program in place now isn't a bad program. It has worked for quite some time, but since the surplus in the 1980s, the government has been taking advantage of it. By using the money we have saved for our retirement, the government has put us all in a tough situation. Both monetarily and by jeopardizing the chance for America to retire to the back porch of its country home.

The solution to the Social Security crisis is for the government to quit "borrowing" from it. If Americans have nothing to fall back on when they retire, it's going to be a hard and painful fall for us all.

Dickson, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at DColeTexas1@aol.com.
 

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