Social security as we know it now may change drastically in the future if some politicians have their way. It may be taken from a government-managed system where the interest rate is about 1.8% to a private system that has not yet been determined.
Government officials for reform argue that we could get higher interest rates if it is put in private investments. They claim social security is going bankrupt and needs to be changed. But, as far as I’m concerned private investments interest rates are not guaranteed. Look what happened to Enron retirees who depended on the stock of one private company, it was even listed as number 20 on the S&P 500 at one time.
Take a look at the current Medicare benefits after they got into the hands of private companies. It became one huge fiasco with millions of horribly confused senior citizens. Their families, who tried to decipher the myriad of drug plans with them, were just as confused.
Those against social security reform argue that we don’t know for sure if social security is going bankrupt and if so, the government should only add minor changes to the current system to save it.
Social security should not be treated like an investment, it has several safeguards for older elderly people, especially women (who tend to live much longer than men), that would not be in place in a new "investment type" system.
My personal model is that the government should not risk money that elderly citizens need to live off, now or in the future. Unfortunately social security is the only source of retirement for far too many senior Americans. This is the main reason I don’t feel social security should be invested as stocks or mutual funds. Who controls the money would determine how it is invested, and that would be the gamble.
The current model has a progressive benefits formula, a cost of living adjustment, helps women who haven’t been working but who married a worker with benefits, and it pays survivors benefits to women whose husbands died or are disabled. All of this could change for the worse under the new system.
Since women are still working less because they stop working to raise kids, move with their husbands job promotion, take care of elderly parents, and live longer than men, they will depend on social security now and in the future at about the same rate their grandmothers did.
So, in my opinion, the system should be left alone except for minor adjustments. My fear is that major for profit investment companies, are currently somewhere behind the scenes, cooking up a formula so they can benefit from investing social security money, while we risk losing that valuable form of supplemental retirement before we are eligible to use it.
Lois Center-Shabazz is the author of the award-winning book, Let’s Get Financial Savvy!and the personal finance website Msfinancialsavvy, http://www.Msfinancialsavvy.com.
