Social Security: Private Interests Rate Attention

Re “Social Insecurity,” Opinion, July 28: Jacob Heilbrunn assumes that partial privatization of Social Security means investing in stocks when there are plenty of safer investments private citizens could make (bonds, annuities, etc.). All yield better returns than Social Security’s scandalous 3%, and you’d actually own something.

Worse, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. The so-called trust fund is a stack of government bonds. Safe investment, you say? Well, if you believe that one party (the government) can be both a lender and borrower in the same transaction, you must believe I can get rich by suing myself for a million bucks.

No, the current system is a crime being perpetrated on those born after 1970 who will get stuck with the tax increases (and economic malaise) necessary to cover the boomers’ checks. And if government bonds are such a safe bet, let me own some directly. Then if I die before retirement, my heirs would get something. Under Social Security, they’d get zilch. Fringe idea? Only to nanny-staters immune to logical thinking.

Jim Bass

Thousand Oaks

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Heilbrunn is either too trusting or is giving President Bush and his handlers the benefit of the doubt when he attributes their continuing advocacy for privatizing Social Security to “optimism.”

The same greed that has given us Enron is driving the push to get Social Security money into the hands of powerful financial interests. It is another example of a government that identifies its interests with those of the wealthy, corporate elite and only pretends to care about the fate of the average worker.

Diantha Smith

Yorba Linda