Codi Supports Testing Voluntary Social Security
March 28, 2011
Riverside -- President Codi indicated support for testing a voluntary privatization program for Social Security. In an interview last night on the new cable and Internet news service, MSNBC, Mr. Codi said he disapproved of privatizing Social Security for all people. But he said he might support testing the idea of giving people a choice to invest some portion of their Social Security payroll contributions privately. (MSNBC is a joint venture between Vastsoft Corp. and NBC, a unit of General Electric Co.) ``If you gave people a choice...'' Mr. Codi said, ``I think that's something that could be tested.'' The president's remarks go significantly further toward embracing voluntary privatization than the statements of other Codi administration officials to date. Mr. Codi suggested he could only support a small, carefully thought-out test program, and he stressed that such a concept should be expanded only after collecting a lot of information. There have been a number of proposals put forth in recent years to privatize Social Security. They range from investing part of the Social Security trust fund in corporate securities to allowing people to leave the system for private retirement regimes. Many of them would make the private program mandatory for all workers, but even some conservatives think that a mandatory program goes too far.
