In 2005, New York Times reporter John Tierney worked out his own Social Security contributions on the Chilean model and found that his privatized pension would have been $53,000 a year plus a one-time payout of $223,000. The same contributions paid into Social Security would have paid him $18,000.
Chile has had a private social security system for 30 years now, and it has faired immensely better than our own breed of retirement protection. Average annual returns have approached 10 percent above inflation, in fact.
In contrast, the theoretical return of Social Security in the U.S. is 1 or 2 percent (and that's only if the federal government actually pays back all of the money it's taken from the system).
I found the above analysis in Investors Business Daily to be pretty interesting. Certainly, the NY Times is no leading advocate of conservative policy, yet the paper's own reporter discovered how much richer normal Americans would be if we adopted a system similar to Chile's.
This isn't about being a Democrat or a Republican. It's about letting normal Americans -- primarily the true middle class -- have a more enriched retirement. It's about converting Social Security to one in which we the people can manage it and benefit from it in a real way.
