Never Privatize Social Security Letter Of The Week: From July 1 1997

Don’t let Congress privatize our Social Security system.

Multinational giants like IBM, American Express, A.I.G., Alex Brown Inc., countless banks and brokerages are spending huge sums on Congress to sell the idea. In January, their Advisory Council on Social Security released three plans to gain long-term solvency.

One of those plans would divert $4.2 trillion from Social Security taxes into risky, uninsured individual stock market accounts managed by banks and brokerages.

We’re talking a sum larger than our national debt, three times bigger than our 1996 federal budget and more than all American mutual fund investments. The temptation is great.

This isn’t so much a movement as an attempted bank heist, for ideology and profit, of a government social insurance program.

If the market rises, Wall Street collects billions in fees, retirees get their hard-earned money and everyone will be happy.

But what if the market falls? Billions in fees still will go to brokerages and banks. But a nightmare of poverty-stricken old age faces current workers and future retirees. That risk is unacceptable.

We remember the Roaring ‘20s promises and the crash of 1929. The market took 25 years to fully recover.

President Roosevelt created our Social Security system so no American worker would suffer that tragedy again. For more than 60 years, the stock market was a roller coaster but Social Security was stable.

Remember 1929. Don’t gamble with our hard-earned retirement savings. Notify your Congress people now. Vern L. Klingman Billings, Mont.

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