Don't forget that you STILL have to fund the retirement benefits of everyone on SS now. There's no investment account, grandpa takes almost all of that dollar you me and jungle put in as soon as it leaves our paycheck.

This is why a big portion of Bush's partial privatization plan was borrowing a bunch of money to pay the shortfall that would be caused if you and I started a mandatory 401k account - the shortage caused immediately from going from a pay as you go pension to a defined benefit pension. This borrowing portion tipped his hand in my opinion. Why is it ok to borrow now and not later for a slightly modified version of SS?

The proposal included rules that kept people from investing in single stocks, limiting you to a few index funds with very low expense ratios which would then be converted to an annuity at retirement age which would have probably would have amounted to more than Social Security. It was all a little too complex for the average joe and easily propagandized by the then scaremonger "party of no".

I didn't really have a problem with it actually, but not because I bought the BS that SS was about to collapse under its own weight.