Privatization for Social Security

Re Perspectives on Social Security, Commentary, Dec. 7:

Allowing Social Security funds to be invested in the stock market would overload Wall Street with cash, with disastrous consequences. Many analysts think that the market is overbought now, due to unprecedented public participation. Fund managers find it increasingly difficult to invest the mountains of cash they now receive. A tsunami of Social Security funds would turn the markets into a free-for-all of grab-the-cash.

CEOs and other corporate officers would appropriate a large share of the loot. Merger and acquisition mania would make hordes of investment bankers and lawyers wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. IPOs, options, futures and other risky goofball ventures would fleece the retirement savings of get-rich-quick dreamers of all ages.

Investing Social Security funds in Wall Street is just another scheme of the rich to fleece the middle and lower classes yet again.

AL SMITH

Redondo Beach

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Teresa Ghilarducci warns that privatizing some of Social Security would “divert payroll taxes into individual accounts.” Divert? Taxation is diverting money to the government that we (individuals) earn. How arrogant to assume otherwise. And how typical of the left, which purports to represent the common man but does not trust him to invest his own money.

JIM BASS

Thousand Oaks

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The present good, but delicate, economy has prompted a great number of schemes to “privatize” such things as Social Security, utilities and portions of the infrastructure. These ideas are generally originated by the groups that made regulations on banking, transportation and public utilities needed in the first place.

A much wiser and more foolproof hedge for the U.S. government would be to purchase crude oil at the historically low prices. Social Security backed by oil would be like the dollar when backed by gold. Purchasing oil from countries such as Mexico, Venezuela and Russia would supplant a great amount of foreign aid and allow these countries to purchase American exports. Removing the cheap foreign oil from the market would save a subsidy for American producers at no cost to the taxpayer.

WAYNE R. HARRINGTON

Burbank