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二、美私有化方案 The National Association of Securities Dealers is investigating whether some brokerage houses are inappropriately pushing individuals to borrow large sums on their houses to invest in the stock market. Can we persuade the association to investigate would-be privatizers of Social Security? For it is now apparent that the Bush administrations privatization proposal will amount to the same thing: borrow trillions, put the money in the stock market and hope. Privatization would begin by diverting payroll taxes, which pay for current Social Security benefits, into personal investment accounts. The government would have to borrow to make up the shortfall. This would sharply increase the governments debt. Never mind, privatization advocates say, in the long run, people would make so much on personal accounts that the government could save money by cutting retirees benefits. Even so, if personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all. However, privatizersclaim that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits. | 
