United Airline pensions show why Social Security should be private

Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics has a personal attachment to the way the United Airlines bankruptcy is destroying retirements. I had been meaning to write to make this point -- the crash of defined benefit plans like this is exactly why we need to have social security privatized. If we cannot depend on a pension provided by big business which must operate in accordance with all manner of laws and regs requiring investment for the future, how can we depend on the political whims of corrupt politicians?

Here's how Tom puts it:

United is a textbook example of why Social Security should be at least partially privatized. For decades employees like my father faithfully paid into a pension system in return for assurances that a certain amount of money would be there for them when they retired. When push came to shove, however, and the company ran out money, those promises were broken.

If United's employees had instead put that money into a 401K account, it would still be sitting there. They would own it, be able to see it, control it, and spend it or invest it as they liked.

Social Security is nothing more than a big defined-benefit pension plan. Now that we're getting a glimpse of what the future Social Security tragedy is going to look like, it seems immoral for Democrats to resist the idea of allowing people the option to control a portion of their own Social Security contribution.