The Market Center Blog

Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation

For Immediate Release
Monday, January 10, 2011
202-285-0244
www.freedomandprosperity.org
 

New CF&P Video Explains How Personal Savings Accounts Would Save Social Security

(Washington, D.C., Monday, January 10, 2011) A new video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P) exposes Social Security's unsustainable finances and points out that policies to address the giant unfunded liability, such as tax increases and benefit cuts, would make the program an even worse deal for workers. Entitled, "Saving Social Security with Personal Retirement Accounts," the mini-documentary is narrated by Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute, and it explains how personal retirement accounts are the only way to address the long-term fiscal problem while also helping workers enjoy a better retirement.

As documented in the video, Social Security has changed significantly since the 1930s. Both the payroll tax rate and the amount of income subject to taxation have expanded drastically, so today's workers get a much lower return than those who entered the program in its early years. Future workers will have to pay even more to get even less.

Faced with the same demographic and fiscal problems as the American Social Security system, many nations, such as Chile and Australia, have successfully chosen to modernize their old age programs with personal retirement accounts.

The video provides six reasons why the U.S. should follow their lead:

1) Social Security is broke;
2) Payroll taxes already are too high;
3) Social Security is a bad deal for workers;
4) Personal accounts are safer than Social Security;
5) Personal accounts boost economic growth; and,
6) Personal accounts are working in other nations.

Links to the video: YouTube | Dailymotion

"Like other entitlement programs, Social Security is facing a fiscal crisis," said CF&P Foundation President Andrew Quinlan, who added that, "but we should seek fiscal sustainability and good retirement policy, and that means personal accounts."

"Other than demagoguery, the only obstacle to personal accounts is the transition cost, but there's an even bigger cost to bail out the current system," said the video's narrator, Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute. "About 30 nations around the world have implemented some form of personal accounts," he also noted, "and reform is working every place from Sweden to Hong Kong."

Executive Summary

There are two crises facing Social Security. First the program has a gigantic unfunded liability, largely thanks to demographics. Second, the program is a very bad deal for younger workers, making them pay record amounts of tax in exchange for comparatively meager benefits. This video explains how personal accounts can solve both problems, and also notes that nations as varied as Australia, Chile, Sweden, and Hong Kong have implemented this pro-growth reform.

CF&P Foundation has also released more than three-dozen mini-documentaries since 2007. These videos include Tax Competition Primer, VAT-Hidden Tax, Global Flat Tax Revolution, Cutting the U.S. Corporate Income Tax, Promoting Prosperity, Obama's So-Called Stimulus, Obama's Deferral Proposal, Case Against Class-Warfare Tax Policy, President Obama's Dishonest Demagoguery on Tax Havens, Six Reasons Why the Capital Gains Tax Should Be Abolished, The Rahn Curve and the Growth-Maximizing Level of Government, a three part series on the Benefits of Tax Havens and a another three-part series on the Laffer Curve.
Link: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/videos/videos.shtml

Web Links:

Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRh5zKleh0I

Dailymotion
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgi10p_ss-reform

 

For additional comments:
Andrew Quinlan can be reached at 202-285-0244, andy@freedomandprosperity.org
Dan Mitchell can be reached at 202-218-4615, dmitchell@cato.org

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