Pro-privatization arguments

Pro-privatization arguments

The conservative position is often pro-privatization. There are countries other than the U.S. that have set up individual accounts for individual workers, which allow workers leeway in decisions about the securities in which their accounts are invested, which pay workers after retirement through funded by the individual accounts, and which allow the funds to be inherited by the workers' heirs. Such systems are referred to as 'privatized.' Currently, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and are the most frequently cited examples of privatized systems. The experiences of these countries are being debated as part of the current Social Security controversy.

In the United States in the late 1990s, privatization found advocates who complained that U.S. workers, paying compulsory payroll taxes into Social Security, were missing out on the high rates of return of the U.S. (the averaged 5.3% compounded annually for the 20th century^[36]). They likened their proposed "Private Retirement Accounts" (PRAs) to the popular (IRAs) and savings plans. But in the meantime, several conservative and libertarian organizations that considered it a crucial issue, such as the and , continued to lobby for some form of Social Security privatization.