On social security

I'm just going to add my two cents worth here on these private acounts for social secirty. I'm all for allowing people to have more choice in their lives, BUT.... the whole idea of "social security" is.... SECURITY. Has anybody looked at what social security can pay out? It's a tiny amount, just enough to keep someone housed and fed. That's what it's there for. Shifting part of it to a risky private account tied to the stock market seems like a recipe for disaster to me. What if we had another stock market shock? We could face a situation where a whole generation of reitrees are suddenly getting a lot less payouts than they'd like, and a depression-like stock market event is exactly when the government has less resources to bail them out. It seems like another case of the rich getting richer (the influx of money into the stock market will mostly help corporations and their major shareholders) and the poor taking on more, not less risk. If we're really serious about getting people to save a bit more and take responsibilty for their retirement, we should keep moving in the direction of offering tax credits for IRA's and other private accounts that already exits. Maybe simplifying the whole process, and really making the benefits clear to individuals would be the way to go if this is the real goal.