Let's Get Rid of Social Security: How Americans Can Take Charge of Their Own Future

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Can the Social Security system be restructured without risking the benefits of current recipients while at the same time controlling for the political sleight-of-hand that has brought the program to the point of collapse? Author E. J. Myers shows just how easily it can be done once America's biggest retirement program is removed from political control and put into the hands of America's workers. His plan to privatize the retirement system in an income-generating investment structure would safeguard the benefits of current retirees and those about to retire while creating a bold new program for younger workers that could secure for them a retirement package beyond anything Social Security could ever promise - just by modifying a federal retirement plan already in place. And all this can be done without altering the current level of Social Security tax or benefits, without forcing the federal government to repay the hundreds of billions of dollars it has "borrowed" from the Social Security Trust Funds, and without forcing future generations to pay for the retirement of their elders while they are saving for their own.

FROM THE CRITICS

BookList - David Rouse

Because there is a current surplus in the social security trust fund, the worrisome issue of social security reform has taken a backseat to medicare, medicaid, and welfare in the debate over the balanced budget. Though revenue shortfalls are not anticipated until 2010, demands for an overhaul of the system are already starting to surface. One of the more drastic suggestions is to privatize social security. After documenting social security woes, problems with federal and state retirement plans, and private pension-plan shortcomings, Myers presents his version of privatization, which calls for individual security retirement accounts to be handled and invested by a publicly owned, quasigovernmental entity called the Social Security Investment Banking Corporation, operating much like a mutual fund. Myers is identified as a Houston businessman and, significantly, he credits conservative chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Bill Archer and his staff for research assistance.

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