Social Security Privatization Plan

With all the talk about Social Security reform I would like to add my thoughts about it. I think W. should approach this differently. W’s plan calls for taking the money and investing in the stock market. I think this is the weakness of the plan. Stocks are not good places to invest long-term. I would take the money, creating individual accounts, pool it into several large funds. Private investment groups would manage each fund. The money would be used to loan money to mid size profitable companies for capital improvement and building new factories thus creating new jobs. Some money could be used to allow foreign companies to build factories in the USA. Market rate interest would be charged these companies. No money would be used to build anything overseas. This would create a fund of American dollars being used to help build America into the future.

There are two issues that would need to be resolved. First, guidelines must be established about who can receive this money to avoid cheating. Second, guidelines need to be established to insure the funds don’t become another Teamster pension fund debacle. With the new style accounting techniques used by many American firms this would require much oversight. With this amount of money involved the fallen nature of man can easily take over.