but let's just take one of your points that the government ought to privatize Social Security. Seems to me that when the program began it was because there were scores of old folks dying in the streets. If this program was such a candidate for private enterprise, why in the hell didn't some entrepreneur back then see the market potential and find a way of sucking all those pathetic old farts into some investment opportunity that would save their asses?

From what I've seen of people in the retirement planning industry their potential clients all have a sizable portfolio or there is no real profit motive for the company. SS was designed for the lower income common person that when faced with putting aside some portion of their income for an uncertain future, chose instead to buy food, clothes, and housing. I'm afraid your concept just doesn't square with human nature and unless you want to wade through the destitute grandmothers and grandfathers littering our streets again, you may wish to rethink your idea.

Private industry's main emphasis is not on the success of their clients but on the profit they can make off of them. That's not a complaint. It's how free enterprise works and flourishes but it points out why social programs that must be concerned with the individual and not their cash do not fit with that model.

Art