With the stock market crash, isn't it a good thing we didn't privatize Social Security?

[Joe Finkle]

Yes, yes it is. That's not to say Social Security is safe. As another poster pointed out not long ago, it is a giant ponzi scheme. The Federal Government does protect it from collapse, but there aren't enough protections in place for the impending retirement of the baby boomers, which will cause an increase in those drawing on the fund and a decrease on those paying in. Those are the circumstances that cause ponzi schemes to collapse. Without a giant cash infusion, the system is in tremendous trouble.

There's nothing wrong with investing social security in general, but it must be done the way many states invest their retirement funds, as one source of the revenue used to pay the retirees, supplementing direct contributions, because as the economy goes up and down these funds have trouble paying off their recipients. If you truly privatize, as Republicans have long advocated, you screw over people who retire in bad economic times and reward those who retire in good economic times, which is often just a matter of luck.