GVTucker,
The question about where to invest soc. sec. money is purely academic, since the soc. sec. system doesn't have any money. It has liabilities as far as eye can see, and the only asset is the ability to force the working people to pay taxes.
The way to fix it is to start accumulating some assets. You can do it inside the soc. sec. system or outside. Amy just pointed out the difficulties in doing it yourself. I am currently going through setting up a 401K for a small business, and there is a lot of bureaucracy and overhead involved, but it will give our employees a chance to provide for themselves, and not be entirely dependent on soc. sec. system.
But I am all for increasing the contribution limits for IRAs. Amy, it is actually a lot worse for the outsiders who are limited to IRA. In 401K, you can set aside 10,500 yourself, but the employer can match this. The overall limit is 30,000, I believe, including the employer match.
With IRA, you are limited to 2,000 and even that goes away if your income exceeds some treshold. That's totally dumb. Why not let people save money when they have high income for the time when they will have little or no income? Answering the question would take us to an ideological argument, so let's just not go there.
Joe |
