In response to Bill Bauer’s letter of March 17 expressing concern about potential future cuts or reduction in increases of Social Security benefits, the solution is to fully privatize our Social Security program.

Recently, certain politicians have announced that they would campaign for the partial privatization of Social Security. Under these proposals, taxpayers would be allowed to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in the stock market.

This plan has been attacked as being “too risky.” Such silly claims do not hold water since any private investment would be a better financial deal than Social Security today. The return on current Social Security contributions are less than you would receive on a passbook savings account.

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In addition, your money will not even be invested, but will be used to pay those currently receiving benefits. You in turn will be paid not from any returns generated by your funds, but directly from contributions by new “investors.”

And what if there aren’t enough new “investors?” Simple, as Mr. Greenspan said: Your benefits will be cut.

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No thinking person would buy into this Ponzi scheme. Yet that is precisely what Social Security is. Workers’ current premiums are used to pay for immediate government spending – while future benefits come from the Social Security taxes extracted from younger workers. The solution, privatize Social Security.

As for Mr. Bauer’s other issue and comment on income taxes that “Our country is then left with a few wealthy elite who pay few taxes:” Published data notes that the top 25 percent of income earners pay 83 percent of the income taxes and the top 50 percent of income earners pay 96 percent of income taxes.

The “wealthy elite” or the top 1 percent of income earners pay 34 percent of income taxes. (Source: The Tax Foundation). These numbers speak for themselves.

Wayne Powell

Breckenridge