"Today, the top 20 percent of the United States population controls 80% of the wealth. We have a wealth gap that is unhealthy. It leads to class envy and political hyperbole," writes Senator Rick Santorum in his influential book, It Takes a Family. "The current financial divide in America is between those people who save, and therefore are able to acquire assets, and thus the potential to build wealth, and those people who have not yet grasped that they have that opportunity."
One way to help our fellow Americans to save, acquire assets and build new wealth is the Thrift Savings Account Plan for Social Security. The Thrift Savings Account Plan would allow Americans to take the hard earned money that they currently pay into the system (at a two percent rate of return) and place it in a private investment account (at an historical average of a six percent rate of return).
By returning Americans abilities to take ownership and responsibility for otherwise untouchable taxed income, in order to invest in diverse low risk securities investments, they would be able to see their money grow, be inclined to invest more, and be permitted to pass unspent savings on to their children. The Thrift Savings Account Plan would turn millions more Americans into active savers, investors, and members of the American ownership society. Further, the plan would release new capital into The Cause of Wealth in Nations- the free market, and thus create new jobs. In short, the Thrift Savings Account Plan rocks!
In razor sharp contrast, under the status quo, the average American will pay eighty-four thousand dollars into the system that they will never get back. Further, the wealth gap will continue to grow, creating class envy. What's worse? There is no guarantee that future generations will receive social security benefits at all. Under current law, the government can pull the plug on social "in-security" at any time. How did it come to this?
Ostensibly, leftist politicians claim to want to "fix social security." In reality, they want to institutionalize dependency at any cost. Their goal is to make middle-class Americans depend on them, financially! Leftists want the government to collect our money so that they can bribe us with it later for votes, it is the leftists way.
In order to lure Americans into handing their hard earned money over, leftist politicians love to make the argument that private-accounts are ''too risky,'' but what I love to do is point out to people that these same politicians turn around, and use a special Congressional loophole, to sign-up for private-accounts themselves. Further, whenever they claim that diversified private-accounts are too ''insecure,'' I let the truth be known. Since conception, there has never been a 20 year period, in which the market has not risen by a minimum of four percent, which is double social securities current rate of return! Heck, even online banks now offer savings accounts that pay a 5 percent rate of return, which is double and a half what our money makes under so-called "social security." To be quite frank, under the liberal system, we are all getting screwed!
The leftists lack of faith in diversified private-accounts either demonstrates a lack of faith in the entire Free Market System, the system upon which this nation stands, which might explain why they continually fight for socialist policy, or, it shows that they would rather do nothing than something. It shows that they could care less about the Americans that they claim to represent, and that they care deeply for playing politics, via scare tactics, with our generation's future.
With declining birth rates and a generation gap, we are looking into the eye of a perfect level 5 Social Security hurricane. Don't let the donkeys in Congress postpone fixing the levees of Social Security any longer. Contact your federal representatives today, and demand that they champion private-accounts, and thus, our future!
Ryan Sorba
