| > I wish i could just opt out of social security and invest the money myself. I'd like to emphasize that SS/OASDI is not an investment program in the first place, it is an insurance program. The two kinds cannot be directly compared, and have very different mechanics and features. You might already have known that, but the misconception is distressingly common in America--which I blame on misinformation from big-bank lobbyists. > You inherit all risk. But you opt out of the taxes. You must prove retirements assets are being contributed to. Is inheriting all the risk even possible? Suppose someone signs some dark legal contract in blood, like: "I refuse all public assistance, let me die in a ditch because I shall make my own fate." What happens if they commit crime (perhaps out of desperation) and are sentenced to time in jail? Now there are three outcomes which all suck differently: 1. The government caves and supports them anyway with taxpayers funding their jail-food and jail-shelter. This distorts the original incentives, and recidivism is going to be a bitch. 2. They are let go, to commit more crimes? Locals won't stand for that. 3. They are indirectly executed by being forcibly exiled to a walled-off isolated place with no food and no shelter, as their families (quite reasonably) cry about the brutality on TV. Then there's the issue of dependents, and mechanisms for fraud, and both of those are much bigger cans of worms than I want to open in this edit... |