America's working families have an enormous stake in the future of Social Security.
Without Social Security, more than 50 percent of people 65 and older would live in poverty, compared with 10.5 percent today. For many women, Social Security is their only source of support in retirement. Millions of disabled workers and the children of disabled and deceased workers also rely on the system's secure monthly benefit checks.
Clearly, radical changes to Social Security are not something that we should undertake lightly. The economic security of too many American families depends on it.
Yet people who want to privatize Social Security -- that is, replace Social Security's guaranteed family benefits with individual investment accounts -- think that if the public believes Social Security is in big trouble they can be convinced that radical change is necessary.
So, privatizers start with the argument that Social Security is going broke fast.
That's far from the truth. Today, Social Security is secure. It has more than enough money to pay out current benefits and is actually building up a large surplus to help pay benefits when the baby boom generation begins to retire.
The system does face a potential shortfall beginning in 33 years, but it's not going broke. Starting in 2032, the government predicts that the money coming in will cover between 70 percent and 75 percent of promised benefits. So the challenge for us is to come up with responsible ways to strengthen and protect Social Security for the future.
Individual investment accounts aren't up to that challenge. They cost too much and they place too much risk on working families.
Privatizers aren't advertising that the price tag for individual investment accounts includes raising the retirement age to 70 or older, slashing guaranteed benefits, and cutting back Social Security's protections against cost-of-living increases. It's hard to see how any of these so-called "reforms" would strengthen Social Security's protections.
Consider the retirement age. In 1983, Congress voted to raise the age at which you can collect full retirement benefits from Social Security. If you were born after 1959, you won't be able to retire with full benefits until you are 67. Yet, the major proposals to privatize Social Security would increase it to age 70.
I have a different idea. I want the people who advocate raising the retirement age as part of privatization to leave their desks and go to work digging foundations for new construction or lifting hospital or nursing home patients from bed to wheelchair.
Maybe then privatizers would learn what working families already know: People wear out.
And what about the argument that workers will be better off with individual stock accounts?
What they don't tell you is that large groups of workers will end up with less, even if the stock market behaves the way they forecast over the long run. Stocks are risky. Prices can go down for long periods of time.
Consider that beginning in 1973, stock prices tumbled by 48 percent before they finally bottomed out nearly two years later. The stock market did not regain the 1973 level again for more than seven years.
This all adds up to one thing. Working families can't afford privatization. They can't afford the risk that individual accounts substitute for Social Security's guarantees.
And they can't afford the retirement age increases, cuts in guaranteed benefits, and reduced protection against increases in the cost of living that privatizers want them to pay. We need to strengthen and protect Social Security, not tear it apart.
Linda Chavez-Thompson is executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, 815 16th St. NW, Washington, DC 20006.