Wednesday, August 13, 2008

A Simple fix for Social Security

A very simple solution to the funding and saving of Social Security can be found in a simple reorganizing of the way FICA funds are handled. The first thing is for Congress to establish a National Savings and Security Bank. Next all Americans would have an account that their FICA funds are deposited in. The next step is to apply the fractional reserve requirement used by other banks. The next step is instead of a simple IOU being used to replace the surplus funds that are presently being paid by FICA withholding with a promissory note. A recent year the surplus was more than $365 Billion. The note or loan would then be funded by account credit and not by removing the actual funds from the bank. Yes if you are thinking this would be money creation you are correct. Banks create account credit every day. The fractional reserve requirement means only a fraction of the funds lent have to be on hand to be available for withdrawal. Additional loans could be made to local and state governments for their project needs. The opportunity to deposit extra money as a side fund to be received at retirement in additional to the normal Social Security could also be added. Some kind of profit-sharing method could be used to determine the earnings of the side fund. The existing program would remain the same.
If this very simple change had occurred at the beginning, the funds would be in the trillions today. If started immediately, it would save the program. The payments of the loans with interest plus the FICA would balloon the value of the funds many times the value of just the FICA alone.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like it Allen...and I like the way you think...I would also add... it would be nice if the billions upon billions of dollars "borrowed" from the social security fund by the defense department, the CIA, NSA and all organizations of the same ilk be paid back, there would be much less of a problem today as well.

Chick Dobson

some day this cyber idiot will know what an HTML tag is, and why one should use same.