Amen to Jamala Rogers. Private accounts will not fix social security. They would cost between one and two trillion dollars to fund. Margaret Thatcher’s British government tried them in 1984. The plan failed because the costs and risks of running private investment accounts outweigh the value of the returns.
Suppose your private investment account portfolio comprised Enron and TWA stock? It would be worthless now, as are most British private investment accounts. And very little innovation occurs in publicly held firms.
In January 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.” Neither should we.
Joseph J. Juciejczyk
St. Louis