We all know that Social Security is fast approaching insolvency. Every paycheck, the government takes about 7.6 percent out, ostensibly to save for your retirement. Instead, it goes in one end and out into someone else's benefit check. The government estimates that Social Security will be bankrupt by the year 2029, at the latest.

Last week, syndicated conservative columnist Deroy Murdock wrote about the racial implications of the old pay-as-you-go Social Security system. It turns out that Social Security has "disparate impact" on minority workers.

Murdock makes two points. Using research from the Cato Institute and the RAND corporation, he points out that black workers tend to be lower income workers, and lower income workers tend to start working at an earlier age than higher income earners. Therefore, most black workers are paying into the system longer than most white people are, yet retirement benefits are based solely on 35 years of work. The government takes its percentage out of every paycheck you earn but anything over those 35 years does not go to your own retirement, but into the general fund.

The second point is the difference in life expectancy between blacks and whites - as Murdock wrote, "Because blacks tend to die sooner than whites, [blacks] often find themselves outlived by their benefits." Murdock recommends moving to a private system where payees determine how to invest their savings. I agree. If you ask those low-income, minority workers, I'd bet they would prefer to decide for themselves how to invest their 7.6 percent.

As a corollary to Murdock's story, there's a case to be made that Social Security discriminates against working women. If a woman works while she's married but earns less than 50 percent of what her husband earns, she automatically gets 50 percent of the amount of his benefits, regardless of her own earnings. Women who fall into this category are therefore stuck to a pension "floor," as Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute calls it.

The logic behind this provision goes as follows: women who do not work, or do not work enough, are protected in old age by this guarantee of a subsidy. But by garnishing a woman's wages then determining at age 62 whether her accrued benefits are less than half of her husband's, government forces an "either, or" decision. This paternalistic "choice" is false -- it assumes women can't plan and invest for their future as successfully as the government.

The other story here is a tremendous subsidy for stay-at-home women, paid for by working women and minorities who may be in greater or at least equal need of retirement assistance. Remember, this is assistance they have already earned. In discussing Social Security reform, there are some on the right who want to preserve this subsidy in the name of family values. But top-down tinkering is not going to fix the crisis of American family life - the first step is giving people the power to make choices for themselves instead of relying on Uncle Sam for pay out.

This is not to say that stay-at-home-women do not deserve assistance, only to say that they are smart enough to plan for their families' security without the government's proven bad investment advice. Even the government admits that Social Security is on the fast track to implosion and will soon neither protect working women or stay-at-home women. The answer is to turn Social Security over to the private sector, where the returns will be higher, people will have the incentive to plan aggressively for their own retirement, and we will all have the freedom to make our own lifestyle choices.

-Katherine Post

Director of the Center for Enterprise and Opportunity