re: Social Security - Help me understand better

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George W Bush made a proposal to allow 2% of Social Security contributions to be invested in the stock market.He was excoriated for suggesting that and he dropped the idea quickly.

His inspiration was the Chilean form of social security.It’s a compulsory private pension plan where workers have 10% of their salaries withheld and their money is invested in the Chilean stock market.
It’s done great things for their economy and raised them from poverty into a prosperous nation with a fairly high standard of living.

That’s not the only factor.Chile has a stable government after many decades of various dictators,coups and so forth.

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Chile also has socialized medicine and price caps on prescription drugs. Those 2 items alone are a sizeable chunck of a retiree, a disabled person or an orphan in the United States who has to depend on SS for subsidization of those costs. That 2% would have prevented most of those people from receiving that subsidy.

Chile also has a long and storied history of having social programs in place which would be decried as communism in the United States. Chile is not the best example to bring to the table....because their controlled economy would not be tolerated in the US for a minute and it is that control that keeps the standard of living as high as it is....