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Economic Commentary

A Simple Proposal for Privatizing Social Security

In an area as contentious as federal budget policy-witness the tortuous road to the just recently settled budget for fiscal year 1996-lawmakers agree about one thing: The Social Security system as we know it is unsustainable in the long run. Unfortunately, this recognition has yet to yield any concrete action. The system remains the proverbial third rail of budget politics-touch it, and your political life is over.

The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series editor is Tasia Hane. This paper and its data are subject to revision; please visit clevelandfed.org for updates.

Suggested Citation

Altig, David, and Jagadeesh Gokhale. 1996. “A Simple Proposal for Privatizing Social Security.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary 5/1/1996.

This work by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International