True statement, at that junction I was still thinking good old us treasuries. If
they had simply sold T bills on the SS surplus and kept general funds seperate was
the intent of my point.
I don't advocate the "government" doing any investing, and the only way to that
point is allowing the private citizen to do it.

Greg wrote:

If the politicians (Government!) had put a lockbox on it and
invested the surplusses through the years, there wouldn't be a problem
for a long time!

The problem with the "government" doing the investing is they would be the
majority stockholder in most of the companies in the world today. They have
collected and not distributed to retirees close to 2 trillion but if that was
invested in the Dow since the 30s it would essentually be the Dow.
Do we really want polititians running companies? The Soviets tried that and
they are broke.

BTW if you do want to see a system that did do this and was successful look at
the Florida State retirement system. They are rolling in money ... but they
didn't let political pressure affect their investments (like positions in
Phillip Morris)