Privatizing Social Security

Re “Social Security Council Favors Shift to Stocks,” March 26:

The Social Security Administration wants to get into the stock market? Do Orange County’s bankruptcy and the 171-point mini-crash caused by mutual fund involvement in the market/bond trade preclude any such notion?

BRUCE ROLAND

Ojai

* If Americans are expecting to convince “Generation X” that Social Security will still be around when they need it, the idea of privatizing the program isn’t the answer. Allowing people to choose how their contributions are invested is no promise that individual investments will be successful.

The fate of workers who are not retired would be jeopardized. Social Security is an intergenerational social insurance program, not a series of individual retirement accounts. Minimum estimates are that a one-cent national sales tax would have to be imposed for 70 years to pay the costs for transition to privatization. Let’s not destroy Social Security under the guise of saving it.

EUGENE WILLIAMS

Moreno Valley