Letter: Working people have a right to share in wealth

Thursday, Aug. 8, 2002 | 9:19 a.m.

I can understand letter writer Vernon Bostick's frustration with Wall Street and fear of Social Security privatization ("Stock market for insiders," July 31).

However, the problem for those who so passionately oppose Social Security privatization is this: Where is the money coming from? Where will it come from in the future? It certainly isn't coming from those 535 Rumplestilskins in Congress, is it? Nope, it's coming from the labor, productivity, inventiveness and entrepreneurship of the working people of this country. That's the only place it can come from, and the stock market is the embodiment of that labor.

One of the great ironies of American economic life right now is that it is the government employee retirement plans that recognize the power of the stock market.

Their system of investing in a broad-based basket of stocks across the entire spectrum of the American economy has resulted in trillions of dollars of real assets in the hands of those inside of government. Meanwhile the people themselves, outside of government, are left with empty promises from a Congress that will change the rules anytime it is politically expedient to do so. (Any Notch Babies out there?)

Working people have a right to share in the wealth their labor produces -- to accumulate real assets over a working lifetime. Even partial privatization can do that, especially for young people starting out. We older folks should not get in the way of allowing that to happen.

KNIGHT ALLEN