Personal savings vs. social security.(Letter to the Editor)

I thoroughly enjoyed your recent cover story on the flagrant Social Security dilemma, including the article "Weighing Benefits" by Thomas R. Eddlem (February 21 issue).

Your articles, though, failed to emphasize enough the additional tax burden and bureaucracy included with Bush's privatization plan. How much taxpayer money is going to be required to create and manage 200 million-plus private accounts within the Social Security system? How many more government employees/bureaucracies will be required to operate and manage these private accounts? Why would we even desire to attempt to have private accounts within the Social Security system? They will never truly be private accounts when the government is the "custodian."

Your articles also failed to emphasize that we need more individual responsibility and saving for our own retirements, and less reliance on income redistribution through Social Security. We need to discipline ourselves, when we are working and generating income, to create our own private retirement accounts. The Social Security System was never designed to be a retirement plan. We need to begin relying less on Social Security and more on ourselves.

JUSTIN P. ERTELT

Fargo, North Dakota

I just read your cover story on Social Security. The investment figure you used was 10.6 percent of income going into a private fund. The president's plan only allows 4 percent of income to be invested in a private fund, so your comparisons are misleading. The government will limit what funds people can put their 4 percent into, so why doesn't the government just put that much money into those funds now?

Right now all the excess money being paid into Social Security is being borrowed by the federal government and backed by Treasury Bonds. Morally, those ...