Your Opinion: A plan to fix Social Security

Dear Editor:

There is a way to create 2,000,000 jobs that will not cost the government one cent. Return the Social Security retirement ages to 62 and 65.

This might seem to require additional government outlay; however, this is not the case since this will be only a small fraction of the $2.5 trillion of treasury certificates in the Social Security trust fund. The newly employed who will fill the retirees jobs will pay far more money back into the system than the new retirees will take out for several reason. They will be paying in for a far longer time than the retirees will be drawing out allowing years of compounding which is the secret of the success of the Social Security system.

Also the Federal Reserve considers a controlled inflation rate of three percent to five percent a year as its desirable policy. The amount paid to the new retirees will seem very small by the time the newly employed begin to collect. The $2.5 trillion surplus is something early critics of Social Security would have considered to by beyond the wildest dreams of a demented person because the entire U.S. government budget then in 1937 was less than 10 billion dollars.

The government has paid trillions to bail out the billionaires of Wall Street but continues to loot the Social Security system of its surplus. The retirees pay billions in tax on their benefits on their federal income tax return which goes into the general fund of the government instead of the lock box. Both the new retirees and newly employed will be consumers. Some of the newly employed will leave welfare programs of various sorts.

This plan is so obvious yet none of the geniuses in our government see it.