Letter: Wall Street really can’t be trusted with safety net

Monday, March 21, 2005 | 9:21 a.m.

We know Social Security needs an overhaul -- it's becoming outdated. So let's fix it, not kill it.

The Bush administration keeps repeating that it won't touch the retirements of current senior citizens. That's an insult. Our own welfare isn't what concerns us. We are worrying about Bush's propaganda specialist, Karl Rove, convincing our offspring that Wall Street is as reliable as the U.S. government for overseeing retirement funds.

The U.S. government guarantees a safety net for its citizens in their old age. But what if we (old retirees), in preparing for retirement, instead of investing in Social Security had invested in Montgomery Ward, Enron, railroads, airlines or factories that have moved to Asia?

Bush administration officials ballyhooed the Chilean privatization scheme until some economists pointed out that a World Bank study showed that half that country's workers wouldn't be able to save enough to receive the minimum pension when they retired after paying into their accounts for 30 years. Are we supposed to believe that an administration that has saddled future generations of our descendants with trillions of dollars of debt, through borrowing from our former enemy, China, will do better?

PAUL GWIN