Thanks to Jim Lucier and Peter Ferrara of Americans for Tax Reform, I have some more news about the "insurance" disaster of Social Security that should have you demanding a privatized system as soon as possible.

The deeper one gets into Social Security's formulas, bureaucracy, and politics, the more one begins to suspect this is a system intentionally convoluted, for such complexity drives up the opportunity costs of discovering just exactly what is happening to your money. For example, in the last piece I mentioned that the government takes 7.6 percent from your paycheck to pay for the system. This figure came from a Social Security Administration official. In fact, the government is really taking more of your money, since employers are required to match your contribution. If you think I exaggerate the problem, visit the Social Security Administration's web site (http://www.ssa.gov) and try to follow as they "explain" the calculation of benefits, "bend points," and the myriad of exceptions and caveats.

Questionable motives aside, the danger of such a complex system to both men and women is that they are unaware of the failings and inherent insecurity of the system. We are forced to pay into the system every month, and this mandate tricks us into believing our futures are safe. It gives a new meaning to the term "a false sense of Security."

In the previous piece, I examined the disparate treatment of working men and women. Now, we look at the inequity of treatment between single and double income families.

Though a dual income family will put more into the system than its single income counterpart, the single income family comes out ahead. Consider this: In a single income family, the working spouse contributes as much as 15.3 percent of his or her income into the system and will allegedly receive 100 percent of his or her benefit, plus another 50 percent of that benefit for the dependent spouse. That family ends up with 150 percent of the money they contributed to the system. On the other hand, in a dual earner family, each spouse pays 100 percent and, assuming the wife makes more than 50 percent of her husband's total income, they will each receive 100 percent of their Social Security benefits, or 200 percent for the household. The single income family comes out with one third more in benefits than the other family. This is not insurance -- it is wealth redistribution.

In the previous piece, I questioned the ethics of subsidizing stay-at-home mothers at the expense of other working women. There are those on the right who believe this redistribution is just since it provides incentives to keep mothers at home with the children. But the truth is, as Peter Ferrara points out, the current redistributional system is so bad, so inherently flawed, it overwhelms itself. It turns out that in a private system, both single and double income families would be substantially better off.

The rate of return on your "investment" in Social Security will probably be under 2 percent. By comparison, the average rate of return, after inflation, on money invested in the private sector has been 8 percent over the last 70 years. These numbers come from the Americans for Tax Reform Social Security web site (http://www.atr.org/atr/calculator/), where you can calculate the money you have spent on Social Security and the money you could have made in the private sector. Almost everyone, no matter what your personal circumstances, comes out ahead under a private system.

Feminists are ominously silent on this issue, though they have repeatedly shown their allegiance to government paternalism. Gloria Steinem and her cronies have complained about the large number of elderly women living in or near poverty, and yet it is one of the government's most sacred programs which is currently ensuring that their Boomer peers will be even less financially secure in their old age.

-Katherine Post

Director of the Center for Enterprise and Opportunity