No else one is paying attention any more, so maybe I shouldn't, but the Department of the Treasury has released its Issue Brief No. 4 promoting privatization of Social Security. The paper aspires to an above the fray tone, basically by assuming that everyone agrees that we should privatize Social Security and that the only dispute is on how to do it. That is a ridiculous assumption, of course. Here is a small excerpt:
Yeah, right. Personal accounts and privatization are two completely separate things. Why would anyone think they were the same thing?
The institutional reforms considered in this issue brief, including several variants of personal accounts, are discussed solely in terms of the contribution they make to ensuring that attempts to pre-fund Social Security actually result in an accumulation of resources to fund future benefits. Accordingly, elements of these reforms that do not directly bear on the question of pre-funding—for example, the inheritability of personal accounts—are not discussed. In addition, it should be emphasized at the outset that none of the mechanisms for pre-funding considered here involve the privatization of any function of Social Security.
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