A NEW DEAL FOR SOCIAL SECURITY

by Peter J. Ferrara and Michael Tanner

If Social Security was a private business venture instead of a government program, it would be shut down as an illegal pyramid scheme. Now that Baby Boomers are approaching retirement age, the huge rise in benefit payments will eventually bring the system to its knees. But what are the alternatives? Should the government invest Social Security funds in the stock market? Should Social Security be privatized, and, if it is, what should we do about those too near retirement age to benefit from a private system? Ferrara and Tanner explore such issues in detail, including a critical review of possible downsides to privatization plans. And they also discuss the impending crisis in Medicare, in which increasingly expensive medical treatments coupled with longer lifespans threaten even bigger deficits than those in the Social Security retirement fund accounts. Ferrara and Tanner show that the best long-term hope for Social Security is to gradually transition to a system under which individuals deposit their share of Social Security taxes in personal IRA accounts. They propose ways to protect persons already receiving Social Security benefits or who are near retirement age when such a plan is implemented. As the Social Security crisis looms ever larger, this book is sure to spur lively debate and new thinking on the problem!