A lot of people in their 20s and 30s have suspected that Social Security will disappear before they reach retirement age. They have visions of a future controlled by aging ex-yuppie baby boomers spending their fat government checks as the younger generation slaves away to support them. But, if Congress and Wall Street get their way, a more accurate vision of the future will be a few (very few) people living well from their massive personal investments, while the rest of us fall into deep poverty in old age, trying to live on inadequate personal savings. That's what privatizing Social Security would do.

Social Security as it works now is not perfect. In fact, a lot of the things that are very wrong with Social Security are the same things that are wrong with our society as a whole: too little money for those who really need it, and too much for those who have more than enough already. And it's administered by the government, which doesn't care who suffers if a check is lost or someone is accidentally cut off. But there's no denying that, right now, a Social Security check is the only thing that keeps a lot of retired folks going, and no one with any common sense and empathy would want to return to the days when elderly people were abandoned by their overburdened relatives to die in poverty, live (just barely) on the street, or waste away in work houses.

Bill Clinton and members of Congress are exploiting the fears of younger people when they insist that Social Security will go bankrupt by the year 2028. Their calculations rely on the stupidest of presuppositions: that there will be no increase in the upper limit on wages taxed for Social Security.

Let me rephrase that. Most folks don't understand how the Social Security payroll tax works. It's the only tax that is completely phased out at an upper limit, and it has no lower limit. It's arguably the most regressive tax in existence. No matter how little you make, you still pay it, but higher income people only pay tax on the first $68,400 in wages they make. Anything they make above that is off limits to the Social Security Tax. No one in Congress or the White House, however, has suggested that we reverse this situation and set a bottom limit so poor folks don't have to pay the tax, while wealthy and obscenely rich people pay according to their ability. Among people of all income levels who have been polled about solutions to the "Social Security Crisis," raising the wage limit on the tax is the single most popular solution by far. And adding a small capital gains tax (i.e., taxing the money made from selling stocks, bonds, and property) could also rake in millions for the Social Security trust fund. So forget about the Social Security fund going bankrupt; it's a lie being told by financial companies and politicians to push their own agenda.

The real problem with Social Security is the Congressional/Wall Street assault on the Social Security trust fund. Privatization schemes all call for returning the Social Security tax portion of workers paychecks back to workers to invest however they want. For many people, this is an invitation to just spend the money now, particularly as wages lag behind inflation and personal debt increases. Among those who don't spend the funds, many will never invest them because of lack of money-management skills, fear or mistrust of banks and investment houses, and a reasonable fear of being ripped off by unscrupulous brokers and financial planners. On the other hand, some of us are eager to get our hands on the funds, because we're sure we can do a better job of investing it than the government does. But, let's look at that assumption for a moment.

Many people view the U.S. stock market as a guaranteed lottery: you buy your tickets and the stock market always pays out. In fact, it's really a Ponzi scheme that favors the guys on top. Right now, the market is in a wild up-swing fueled by the faith of middle and upper-middle class people who are desperately and belatedly trying to save for retirement, their children's educations, and to finance the "American Dream" by gambling on the stock market. But the market favors the very wealthy: people who can afford to tie up most of their money in very safe, relatively low-risk, low-return investments over a long period of time. People with lower incomes who need to make money quickly have to gamble on high-risk, high-return investments. They also will have to draw on those investments at specific times in the future, which will put them at heavy risk of being forced to sell when the market is down. Trying to time the market fails more often than it succeeds. For example, the market could easily enter a downturn the week before you retire. More likely, it could go into a prolonged slump just after you retire, and your savings may only last you three years, instead of three decades. You may think that you can move your investments from high-risk ones into low-risk, low-return ones as you near retirement, but again this involves a risky timing factor--you still have to accumulate a lot of money early on, and you will have to invest in high-risk investments to do that. If you lose a large portion of your savings when you're 55 years old, you're back to square one, and you'll need to invest in those high-risk, high-return securities again.

The advantage of Social Security is that it pools your retirement money together with millions of other people's and keeps it out of the stock market, so the risk that it will disappear in a market downturn is nil. Of course, it also ties up that money so you can't spend it on anything else or gamble it away...which is what Wall Street wants you to do.

Financiers want to get their hands on your retirement money for two reasons: they can make a big profits in administrative fees, and they are hoping that the billions of dollars now tied up in the Social Security trust fund if poured into the stock market will stave off a potential stock market collapse when the Asian financial crisis finally reaches the U.S. (the warning signs are already here). Even if you avoid hiring a financial planner and invest in so-called "no-load" mutual funds, you still pay administrative fees to fund managers that are deducted from your total capital gains and dividends for the year.

And consider where money goes when it's invested in the stock market: into the pockets of corporations. If you buy bonds instead of stocks, you still may end up buying corporate bonds. If you select only government bonds, your money flows into the pockets of wealthy private interests. Just remember what projects here in Seattle have been funded through bond issues and other government largesse: a luxury parking garage, the new Nordstrom store, the Seahawks stadium, and a new symphony hall, just to name a few. Let's keep in mind that Seattle politicians and media are against funding the monorail extension because local government can't issue many more bonds for large-scale projects.

Social Security is not going broke, and should be left alone; although it's certainly flawed, it's much better than privatization would be. And there are a whole host of other ills that need to be "reformed" first. Let's provide our elderly and younger folks with some necessary support services, such as: affordable and safe housing, healthy and safe food, low-cost or no-cost preventive healthcare, and reliable transportation. The stock market can't and won't provide these things for us.