Funding Social Security & Privatization

More than one million centenarians will be living in the U.S. by the middle of the 21st century. At the outset of the 21st century, men aged 65 and older are expected to live another 16 years and women of that age another 20 years. Improved standards of living and public and private health care services have made long lives more common. Research shows that the average elderly person is expected to have about $1,000 per month from Social Security and other sources. However, according to one analyst, ôWhile covered by Medicare, many of these people still spend out-of-pocket as much for drugs, eyeglasses, etc., as they did when Medicare was first started in 1965. The trade-off is in food, shelter, and the fun things in lifeö (Smith, 2001, 3-4).

As the number of elderly drawing social security increase and as the numbers of people doing so continue to live longer lives, experts have predicted the bankruptc

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xpected to occur in 2016. Further, privatization would benefit the elderly who most are in need of it, the poor. In addition, privatization would generate new sources of capital for social programs that benefit the working and elderly poor. Such a new policy would also eliminate the discrepancies in the current system with respect to the wealthy elderly receiving more payments than the poor elderly because of life expectancy differences based on income. The new policy based on privatization would also allow heirs of those who die the ability to collect income based on the payments made by the deceased, as opposed to this money being left to the government. The discrepancies that occur based on the current average earnings calculations of social security would also be eliminated by a switch to privatization, since the pattern of career earnings differs across population groups, different between men and women, and workers with different levels of education. Privatization would also eliminate the push for elderly Americans to work longer by increasing the minimum age of retirement. The key to the success of reaping the benefits of achieving these goals will be based on the ability of individuals to save and invest adequate mo
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Approximate Word count = 2463
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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