Debate: Privatizing social security

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Should social security be privatized?

Background and context

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Economic growth: Does privatization improve economic growth?

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Yes

• Privatizing social security enables investment of savings Alex Schibuola. "Time to Privatize? The Economics of Social Security." Open Markets. November 16th, 2010: "If Social Security were privatized, people would deposit their income with a bank. People actually save resources that businesses can invest. We, as true savers, get more resources in the future."

• Private accounts increase investments, jobs, wages. Michael Tanner. "Privatizing Social Security: A Big Boost for the Poor." CATO. July 26th, 1996: "Finally, Social Security drains capital from the poorest areas of the country, leaving less money available for new investment and job creation. Privatization would increase national savings and provide a new pool of capital for investment that would be particularly beneficial to the poor."

• Private accounts prevent politicians taking from social security. Andrew Roth. "Privatize Social Security? Hell Yeah!" Club for Growth. September 21, 2010: "Fiscal conservative candidates should embrace it. While Americans in retirement or approaching retirement would stay in the current system, younger workers should have the option to invest a portion of their money in financial assets other than U.S. Treasuries. These accounts would be the ultimate "lock box" - they would prevent politicians in Washington from raiding the Trust Fund. The truth is that taxpayers bailout politicians every year thanks to Social Security. Congress and the White House spend more money than they have so they steal money from Social Security to help pay for it. That needs to stop and there is no responsible way of doing that except with personal accounts."

• Social security is net loss for taxpayers and beneficiaries. Lawrence Kotlikoff. "Privatizing social security the right way." Testimony to the Committee on Ways and Means. June 3, 1998: "Social Security represents a bad deal for postwar Americans. Moreover, the deal has gotten worse over time. Baby boomers are projected to lose roughly 5 cents of every dollar they earn to the OASI program in taxes net of benefits. Generation X=ers and today=s children will lose over 7 cents of every dollar they earn in net taxes. These losses assume no adjustment to Social Security=s taxes or benefits. But, as indicated above, major adjustments are inevitable unless the system is privatized. If OASI taxes are raised immediately by the amount needed to pay for OASI benefits on an ongoing basis, baby boomers will forfeit 6 cents of every dollar they earn in net OASI taxes. Those born after the baby boom will forfeit 10 cents of every dollar they earn."

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No

• Costly privatization of Soc Sec would dampen econ growth Greg Anrig and Bernard Wasow. "Twelve reasons why privatizing social security is a bad idea." The Century Foundation.: "Reason #3: creating private accounts could dampen economic growth, which would further weaken social security's future finances. Privatizing Social Security will increase federal deficits and debt significantly while increasing the likelihood that national savings will decline—all of which could reduce long-term economic growth and the size of the economic pie available to pay for the retirement of the baby-boom generation. An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the president’s proposal would add $1 trillion in new federal debt in its first decade of implementation, $3.5 trillion in the following decade, and trillions more thereafter."

• Privatization would not increase capital for investment. Eliot Spitzer. "Can we finally kill this terrible idea?" Slate. February 4th, 2009: "And that fact makes clear the fallacy of the next argument often proffered by privatization supporters: They claim that the flow of dollars into the private accounts and then into the equity markets will stimulate the economy. The problem is that for every dollar put into the market through a private account, the government would have to borrow a dollar in the market to cover existing payouts. Thus the supposed benefit is entirely eliminated, as the net impact on the capital available for investment is zero."

• Privatization during economic crisis would have been disaster. Privatization in the midst of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression would have caused households to have lost even more of their assets, had their investments been invested in the U.S. stock market.

• Privatizing social security would wrongly enrich banks. Privatization would represent a windfall for Wall Street financial institutions, who would obtain significant fees for managing private accounts.

• Privatization would hasten depletion of Soc Sec trust funds. Greg Anrig and Bernard Wasow. "Twelve reasons why privatizing social security is a bad idea." The Century Foundation.: "Diverting up to four percentage points of the payroll tax to create private accounts as the president has proposed would shorten significantly the time until the Trust Funds become depleted. In part, this is because funds now being set aside to build up the Trust Funds to provide for retiring baby boomers would be used instead to pay for the privatization accounts. The government would have to start borrowing from the private sector almost immediately to be able to meet commitments to retirees and near-retirees. As Figure 1 shows, the Trust Funds would be exhausted much sooner than the thirty-eight to forty-eight years projected if nothing is done. In such a short time frame, the investments in the personal accounts will not be nearly large enough to provide an adequate cushion.

• Privatization does not address long-term funding challenges. The program is "pay as you go", meaning current payroll taxes pay for current retirees. Diverting payroll taxes (or other sources of government funds) to fund private accounts would drive enormous deficits and borrowing ("transition costs").

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Personal wealth: Will privatization improve private wealth?

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Yes

• Private accounts provide retirees a higher rate of return. Michael Tanner. "Privatizing Social Security: A Big Boost for the Poor." CATO. July 26th, 1996: "privatization would provide retirees with a much higher rate of return on their investments."

• Privatization gives investment decisions to account holders. "LETTER: We should privatize Social Security." Wausau Daily Herald. October 25th, 2010: "Additionally, the scare tactics of Feingold make it sound like the Social Security money those under 55 invest would have to go to Wall Street. That is not the case at all. The investment choices could be desigend so they would be at the individual's discretion. For those who feel the government can do a better job of investing their money than they themselves can, I would encourage them to give thought to allowing the government to handle not only the money they have contributed to their Social Security, but all of their savings as well. With its record of mismanagement, and a $14 trillion deficit, forgive me if I am not going to stand in line to join in."

• Social security taxes damage ability of poor to survive. Americans living at the poverty level must usually spend every cent of their disposable income just to survive. Few in the lower-middle class have the funds available to put into a wealth-generating retirement account. Thus, they must rely on social security income to pay the bills when they reach retirement age. Unfortunately, the current social security payouts are at or below the poverty level. The money you earn in benefits based on what you pay in is less than what you'd earn in a passbook savings account.

• Privatizing social security helps the poor. Michael Tanner. "Privatizing Social Security: A Big Boost for the Poor." CATO. July 26th, 1996: "Critics of Social Security privatization often warn that such proposals hold serious dangers for the elderly poor. However, a closer examination of the evidence indicates that the poor would be among those who would gain most from the privatization of Social Security. By providing a much higher rate of return, privatization would raise the incomes of those elderly retirees who are most in need. Although the current Social Security system is ostensibly designed to be progressive, transferring wealth to the elderly poor, the system actually contains many inequities that leave the poor at a disadvantage. For instance, the low-income elderly are much more likely than their wealthy counterparts to be dependent on Social Security benefits for most or all of their retirement income. But despite a progressive benefit structure, Social Security benefits are inadequate for the elderly poor's retirement needs."

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No

• Odds against individuals investing retirement accounts wisely Greg Anrig and Bernard Wasow. "Twelve reasons why privatizing social security is a bad idea." The Century Foundation: "Reason #5: The odds are against individuals investing successfully."]: "Privatization advocates like to stress the appeal of 'individual choice' and 'personal control,' while assuming in their forecasts that everyone’s accounts will match the overall performance of the stock market. But studies by Yale economist Robert J. Shiller and others have demonstrated that individual investors are far more likely to do worse than the market generally, even excluding the cost of commissions and administrative expenses. Indeed, research by Princeton University economist Burton G. Malkiel found that even professional money managers over time significantly underperformed indexes of the entire market." [read extended quoted in argument page.]

• Privatized social security accounts vulnerable to downturns Most stock market experts will point out that the long-term return on stocks has always been positive, despite temporary setbacks now and then. In other words, the market may go up 150 percent one decade, then down 50 percent the next, then up 60 percent the next, then down 25 percent the next. Overall, the return may be positive, but what happens to the retirees that hit age 65 during one of the downturns? Hopefully they were wise enough to gradually put most of their money in safer investments, but there's no guarantee they did the right thing.

• Advocates of privatization overestimate performance of accounts. Eliot Spitzer. "Can we finally kill this terrible idea?" Slate. February 4th, 2009: "Furthermore, as Paul Krugman has pointed out, the would-be privatizers make incredible—even impossible—assumptions about the likely performance of the market to justify their claim that private accounts would outdo the current system. According to Krugman, their worldview would require the price-earnings ratio in the market to be around 70 to 1 by midcentury. That would make the market at the height of the last bubble look grossly undervalued. Their performance numbers simply do not work."

• Privatized social security will cut tax revenues and social services. We all know that the social security system is severely underfunded; it's headed for bankruptcy sometime in the 2040s. Implementing private accounts will take 4 percent of the 12.4 percent taxes from every worker out of the trust fund. Thus, almost a 3rd of the revenue generated by social security taxes will be removed. Drastic benefit cuts or increased taxes will have to occur even sooner, which is a recipe for disaster.

• Privatized social security cannot be assured to beat inflation. Social Security payouts are indexed to wages, which historically have exceeded inflation. As such, Social Security payments are protected from inflation, while private accounts might not be.

• Fees on Soc Sec accounts diminish value of privatization

• Privatizing Social Security negatively impacts women

• Privatization threatens disabled worker/family protections

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Liberty/ownership: Does privatization improve individual liberty?

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Pro

• Privatized social security restores individual liberty and ownership Andrew Roth. "Privatize Social Security? Hell Yeah!" Club for Growth. September 21, 2010: "Voters are tired of big government. They are tired of bailouts and government taking over various private sector industries. With personal accounts, voters now have a chance to reduce the power in Washington, and reclaim some of the economic liberty that was taken away from them. Candidates for Congress should adopt that message and support it loudly."

• Privatizing social security offers ownership in economy. Michael Tanner. "Privatizing Social Security: A Big Boost for the Poor." CATO. July 26th, 1996: "An important side benefit of Social Security privatization is that it would give every American--including poor Americans--an opportunity to participate in the economy by owning a part of it. In effect, a privatized pension system would act as a nationwide employee stock option plan, which would allow even the poorest workers to become capitalists. Through Social Security privatization, workers would become stockholders. The division between labor and capital would be broken down."

• Private accounts can be transferred within family Andrew Roth. "Privatize Social Security? Hell Yeah!" Club for Growth. September 21, 2010: "These accounts would also be personal assets, much like a house or a 401k account. If you die, you can pass it along to your heirs. With the current system, you can't do that. You have no claim on that money even though you may have spent a lifetime paying payroll taxes."

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Con

• Conservatives want to destroy social security because it works. Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman. "Inventing a crisis." New York Times. December 7th, 2004: "For Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending can make people's lives better and more secure. And that's why the right wants to destroy it."

• Private accounts would require costly new govt bureaucracy Greg Anrig and Bernard Wasow. "Twelve reasons why privatizing social security is a bad idea." The Century Foundation.: "REASON #8: PRIVATE ACCOUNTS WOULD REQUIRE A NEW GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACY. From the standpoint of the system as a whole, privatization would add enormous administrative burdens. The government would need to establish and track many small accounts, perhaps as many accounts as there are taxpaying workers—147 million in 1997. Many workers’ accounts would be so small that they would be of no interest to profit-making firms. [...] the government would need to hire ten thousand highly trained workers just to oversee the accounts and answer questions from workers. In contrast, today’s Social Security has minimal administrative costs amounting to less than 1 percent of annual revenues."

• Social Security allows retirees to draw on own investments. James Roosevelt, President & CEO Tufts Health Plan. "Social Security at 75: Crisis Is More Myth Than Fact." Huffington Post. August 11, 2010: "And those "baby boomers" who are going to bust Social Security when the retire? They have been paying into the system for more than 40 years, generating the large surplus the program has accumulated. Much of the money that baby boomers are and will be drawing on from Social Security, is, and will be, their own. That fact is conveniently forgotten by the critics."

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Crisis? Is there a crisis requiring a response like privatization?

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Pro

• Social security is in crisis

• Social security unsustainable with retiring workforce. "Privatizing Social Security Still a Good Idea." San Diego Union Tribune: "The problem is that the system is unsustainable, as should be evident with the impending retirement of 70 million baby boomers - brought to you by smaller corps of younger workers who will be taxed to the gills to pay for it. Consider this: In 1946, the cost of supporting one retiree was divided between 42 workers. Now we're approaching the point where the cost of each retiree will be divided between only two workers. That is bound to put enormous strain on those workers. The real trouble begins in 2016 when - according to the experts - more will be going out in benefits than coming in as payroll taxes."

• Social security is basically a giant ponzi scheme. "Why is Social Security often called a Ponzi scheme?" CATO Institute. May 11th, 1999: "Just like Ponzi's plan, Social Security does not make any real investments -- it just takes money from later 'investors,' or taxpayers, to pay benefits to earlier, now retired, taxpayers. Like Ponzi, Social Security will not be able to recruit new "investors" fast enough to continue paying promised benefits to previous investors. Because each year there are fewer young workers relative to the number of retirees, Social Security will eventually collapse, just like Ponzi's scheme."

• Privatization is the least bad option. Lawrence Kotlikoff. "Privatizing social security the right way." Testimony to the Committee on Ways and Means. June 3, 1998: "As described above, the U.S. Social Security System is badly broke and is treating the vast majority of its current contributors very badly. Privatization is far from a painless panacea, but it does represent an opportunity to resolve, once and for all, most of the System's financial woes and to rationalize a program that is intragenerationally as well as intergenerationally highly inequitable, replete with inefficiencies and economic distortions, and extraordinarily uninformative about the benefits it is providing in exchange for its mandatory contributions."

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Con

• Social security not in crisis; no need for privatization James Roosevelt, President & CEO Tufts Health Plan. "Social Security at 75: Crisis Is More Myth Than Fact." Huffington Post. August 11, 2010: "The truth is that Social Security is completely solvent today, and will be into the future because it has a dedicated income stream that covers its costs and consistently generates a surplus, which today is $2.5 trillion. Estimates are that the Social Security surplus will grow to approximately $4.3 trillion in 2023, and that reserves will be sufficient to pay full benefits through the year 2037. After 2037, Social Security would still be able to pay for 78 percent of benefits even with no adjustments to revenues or benefits."

• Medicare shortfalls often conflated with Social Security Paul Krugman. "Social Security Scares." New York Times. March 5, 2004: "Medicare, though often lumped in with Social Security, is a different program facing different problems. The projected rise in Medicare expenses is mainly driven not by demography, but by the rising cost of medical care, which in turn mainly reflects medical progress, which allows doctors to treat a wider range of conditions."

• Budget shortfall has more to do with misguided tax cuts, spending. Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman. "Inventing a crisis." New York Times. December 7th, 2004: "It's true that the federal government as a whole faces a very large financial shortfall. That shortfall, however, has much more to do with tax cuts - cuts that Mr. Bush nonetheless insists on making permanent - than it does with Social Security. But since the politics of privatization depend on convincing the public that there is a Social Security crisis, the privatizers have done their best to invent one."

• Opponents use twisted logic on Soc Sec surplus/deficit

• Plenty of ways to reform social security w/o privatization Robert L. Clark, an economist at North Carolina State University who specializes in aging issues, formerly served as a chairman of a national panel on Social Security's financial status; he has said that future options for Social Security are clear: "You either raise taxes or you cut benefits. There are lots of ways to do both."[1]

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Voluntary: Will private accounts be voluntary? A good idea?

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Pro

• Private social security accounts are voluntary. Andrew Roth. "Privatize Social Security? Hell Yeah!" Club for Growth. September 21, 2010: "Democrats will say supporters of personal accounts will allow people's fragile retirement plans to be subjected to the whims of the stock market, but that's just more demagoguery. First, personal accounts would be voluntary. If you like the current system (the one that is raidable by politicians), you can stay put and be subjected to decreasingly low returns as Social Security goes bankrupt. But if you want your money protected from politicians and have the opportunity to invest in the same financial assets that politicians invest in their own retirement plans (most are well-diversified long term funds), then you should have that option."

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Con

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Case studies: Has privatization worked elsewhere?

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Pro

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Con

• Privatization of Soc Sec has disappointed in most places Greg Anrig and Bernard Wasow. "Twelve reasons why privatizing social security is a bad idea." The Century Foundation: "Reason #4: privatization has been a disappointment elsewhere.": "Advocates of privatization often cite other countries, such as Chile and the United Kingdom, where the governments pushed workers into personal investment accounts to reduce the long-term obligations of their Social Security systems, as models for the United States to emulate. But the sobering experiences in those countries actually provide strong arguments against privatization. A report last year from the World Bank, once an enthusiastic privatization proponent, expressed disappointment that in Chile, and in most other Latin American countries that followed in its footsteps, “more than half of all workers [are excluded] from even a semblance of a safety net during their old age.” [read extended quote in argument page].

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Public support: Where is public support on Soc Security privatization?

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Pro

• Public supports private social security accounts. Andrew Roth. "Privatize Social Security? Hell Yeah!" Club for Growth. September 21, 2010: "Not surprisingly, this is an attractive idea. A recent poll showed overwhelming support for personal accounts. Republican voters support it 65-21, but even Democrat voters like it, 50-36."

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Con

• Americans support increasing taxes to fund Social Security. Stephen Dick. "Op-Ed: Yes, leave Social Security alone." CNHI News Service. November 19th, 2010: "the American people, despite voting for Republicans, have said over and over in polls that they would pay more in taxes to save entitlements, such as Social Security and Medicare. With Republicans back in power, when it comes time to cut spending, they'll be looking at Social Security until the American people tell them to back off. "

• Support for privatization is driven by misinformation. Max Skidmore. "Why Privatizing Social Security Is a Terrible Idea." History News Network. February 28th, 2005: "There can be little doubt, at least among those who view the issue objectively, that it is purely iIdeology (or misinformation), not economics, that generates the enthusiasm for privatization."

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Pro/con sources

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Pro

• "Why is Social Security often called a Ponzi scheme?" CATO Institute. May 11th, 1999
• Andrew Roth. "Privatize Social Security? Hell Yeah!" Club for Growth. September 21, 2010
• Edward Crane. "The Case for Privatizing America's Social Security System." CATO Institute. December 10th, 1997
• "A Liberal Plan to Privatize Social Security." BogSource.com. November 20th, 2010
• Michael Tanner. "Privatizing Social Security: A Big Boost for the Poor." CATO. July 26th, 1996
• Martin Feldstein. "Privatizing Social Security (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report)." (Book). May 1, 2010
• "Privatizing Social Security Still a Good Idea." San Diego Union Tribune.
• Lawrence Kotlikoff. "Privatizing social security the right way." Testimony to the Committee on Ways and Means. June 3, 1998
• "LETTER: We should privatize Social Security." Wausau Daily Herald. October 25th, 2010

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Con

• Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman. "Inventing a crisis." New York Times. December 7th, 2004
• Greg Anrig and Bernard Wasow. "Twelve reasons why privatizing social security is a bad idea." The Century Foundation.
• Paul Krugman. "Social Security Scares." New York Times. March 5, 2004
• James Roosevelt, President & CEO Tufts Health Plan. "Social Security at 75: Crisis Is More Myth Than Fact." Huffington Post. August 11, 2010
• Stephen Dick. "Op-Ed: Yes, leave Social Security alone." CNHI News Service. November 19th, 2010
• Protect and Strengthen Social Security. AFL-CIO
• Joan Walsh. "Privatize Social Security? Hell no!" Salon.com. September 23rd, 2010
• Eliot Spitzer. "Can we finally kill this terrible idea?" Slate. February 4th, 2009
• Henry Aaron. "Privatizing Social Security: A Bad Idea Whose Time Will Never Come." Brookings Institute. Summer 1997
• "Current Plans to Privatize Social Security: Bad in the Best Case Scenario." One Wisconsin Now. June 9th, 2008
• Max Skidmore. "Why Privatizing Social Security Is a Terrible Idea." History News Network. February 28th, 2005
• Dean Baker. "Privatizing Social Security: The Wall Street Fix." Economic Policy Institute. July 1, 1996

See also

External links and resources

• "Voters in Tennessee not scared off by hardline Privatization stance." Charlotte Conservative News. November 17, 2010
• "Should Social Security be privatized?" ProCon.org
• "Should Americans Be Able to Put Some of Their Social Security Contributions in Private Accounts?" Balanced Politics