The government should not have complete control over social security money. The people should have the opportunity to invest their money if that is what they want to do. Nothing will change under the Obama administration however, they won’t let any control get away from them.

The more the government controls, the more complicated one’s life becomes. Ask an auto dealer who participated in Cash for Clunkers!! Just ask them the percent they have been paid!! Better question, ask them how much money they are down at present for trusting the government!

SS is NOT “insurance” or a savings account. SS IS one of the most successful universal welfare programs in the plus a capped flat rate income tax which is used for current budget needs. Any talk to the contrary is silly and contrary to the SS law.

The argument about “people would save and invest” doesn’t compute. People are either savers or spenders by their nature. People who will save do already save and most lost 30% of their savings in the last year. All killing SS would do is to double the number of old people living in poverty.

Social security should be scrapped considering the Supreme Court ruled in 1960 that no one has any legal right to social security benefits irrespective of the mandatory payroll “contribution.”

The truly wealthy have a portfolio distributed across a variety of investment instruments, some more risky than others. This portfolio would include an animal called an annuity. While annuities are not glamorous, they are reliable, paying out at a stated rate, even during bad times, which is more than a portfolio of stocks could claim, especially recently.

I work in the public sector. Another branch of this sector successfully won the right to take their retirement program “off line” years ago. These people managed their own accounts, and lost TONS of money BEFORE the market even crashed last year, and because they have a strong lobby, were able to convince the legislature to allow them to come back into the fold. While I don’t advocate making them have to live in the streets when they retire, the bottomless pit created by their investment losses has make the state budget deficit that much bigger than if they had stayed with the annuity system in the first place, because now the rest of us living in the state are paying more to make up for those losses, so they can have a retirement plan no better than the one they left.

Social Security is the “poor man’s” annuity. For those of you who advocate changing the nature of this program, I suggest you read up on asset allocation.

In addition to my expectations of a pension, my Social Security, and my 457k, I also have a certain amount of money in the stock market, which I actively manage. I am successful enough that I have completely recuperated losses from 2008, and should show an increase for 2009. However, I spend 2 to 3 hours every day reading about the economy, the market, currency trends, political events, etc. How many of you can spend that kind of time?

The life expectancy rate for 1932 was 62 years across both genders, all races. We have added almost 20 years to that number. Will all of you have the mental acuity to manage your money when you are 80? How many of you have parents who have slowly declined to the point where you have had to admit they have Alzheimer’s? How many of you are having trouble getting them to turn over their financial affairs now that they are having more difficulty with day to day matters? How many even live close enough to see this decline until it has become a huge family problem? Let’s say they were able to elect to manage their own Social Security accounts years ago. On top of all the financial problems this recession has brought your family, now imagine you have to cover whatever Social Security payments your parents now draw, because they blew their self directed account, and are now in the hole, like public employees in my previous example.