Time is right for great idea - privatize social security

What makes the market go up faster than a trillion dollars of investment? Guaranteed billions more from privatizing social security. GW tried and failed in 2005, but now; the time is finally right.

You can catch the stocks in a buyers market.

I hope this is something the Treasury Department has thought about. I'm sure others within the administration has.

Good idea / bad idea?

im not dissing you in any way shape or form but i believe privatising social security is one of the worst ideas i have ever heard in my life for this reason:

people who rely on social security are some of the most vunerable members of the community, be they unemployed, disabled, old age. Private enterprises have the worst record when it comes to providing human services.

social security is about that providing some security for those people who fall down, a private businesses only concern is maximising the bottom line and you cant have that kind of attitude when your dealing with human misery.

reply to post by Demandred


I got to agree, although I haven't heard the details about what privatization would do, whenever you put money in the hands of private institutions don't expect them to do anything "SOCIAL".

BTW if the privatization would mean to move peoples money to investment accounts, how crazy of an idea that would look at this moment?

McCain voted for the 2006 Social Security Privatization Plan. He still supports the supplemental plan that places a percentage of the money into individual accounts from workers taxes into the stock market. It would pump billions into the market every month. This is the plan proposed by President Bush.

Expect it to come back to life.

The current situation is why it is a bad idea to place public funds into investments that can fail. No official has talked about all the individual State funding of retirement systems using public traded companies and mutual funds or what the result would be if they failed during the current economic mess.

[edit on 23-9-2008 by hinky]

Guess what the last time that Bush went in the campaign trail about privatizing social security he forgot to tell the people that the biggest investment on the deal was going to come from China.

Somethings are better to keep away from the American ears.

Anyway can you imagine if he has gotten away with that?

With all the financial institutions going bankrupt social security would have been in the middle of it all and not only the housing mess.





[edit on 23-9-2008 by marg6043]

...hmm. I thought there was more or less a great deal of nationalizing going in the US at the moment.

Love it or lump it, you guys are about to be the proud owners of subprime junk bonds.

I know in Australia it's hard enough to get employers to even pay maternity leave, so I highly doubt the private sector is going to 'give away' any money at all under any scheme.

However, if you're just talking about retirement funds being invested in the stock markets, that's something that has been part of the Australian superannuation system since the early 90s, with the government making co-contributions dollar for dollar.

Employers are required by law to put in 9% of wages into a superannuation fund.

With an aging population, that definitely makes sense. The Australian government has made it clear that there's not going to be enough to go around for the pension system - but it's a long term thing, it'd take a while to see the results.