It was such a good idea that GWB used it as one of his major platform points.... and then the stock market fell by 50% a few months later and everyone realized it was a horrible fucking idea, but we were too busy learning how to grow food in our backyard and hide from terrorists attacks to fully talk about it. It's bad enough that people had their retirement in housing and the stock market, had they had ALL their savings in the stock market they'd be COMPLETELY fucked if they wanted or had to retire around that time. Many of them still are fucked because they can't sell their houses even for half the price they were told they would get by appraisers, realtors and bankers.

Diversifying your retirement with private AND government funding makes the most sense. SS is a basic retirement to keep old people from having to live in tent cities and homeless shelters.. which still costs us money and often costs more money than just putting them in low income housing. That and the fact throwing old people on the streets is not a very traditional value or non douchebag type thing to do.

We can pay about the same for them to life on the streets as it costs to put them into little one person apartments.

You have to accept the reality that if you get rid of social security all kinds of other costs go up and you lower the standard of living of your country. And yes.. fully privatized retirement is certainly a bad idea as history has proven. It doesn't work.. people don't save, it creates chaos and unhappiness and then society winds up paying for it anyway.

Imagine a something like the 2001 attacks and following economic crash without social programs to hold the country together. We'd be right back to a run on the banks and bread lines without these government buffers to protect us from the trillion dollars blunders of the wealthy.