A very informative narrative on social security and inevitable privatization. Read the full narrative interview, this guy is pretty thought provoking on a full range of social and cultural future thinkin.

• We currently have passed legislation that delays the onset of full Social Security to 68, and there is a good deal of talk that we're going to push it to 70 -- a good deal of talk in Congress. At the same time, people are retiring earlier. The average age of retirement is now around 62, which is pretty high compared to Western Europe. It's 59 in France. So, it's very likely that by the time my son retires, there'll be 10 years of no government support for retirement, which he'll have to finance himself. So, that's more than 50 percent privatizing the retirement system.
  
  We're probably going to shift gradually, despite the opposition to it, to private accounts, which exist in some countries, which require everyone who enters the labor force to put aside 30 percent of their income into a fund to cover retirement, health care, and education. In some countries, they permit you to borrow against that fund to buy houses.
  
  And, it's approaching what American academics have. You cannot teach in American universities without having TIAA-CREF. In American universities, you're required to put aside between 12-and-a-half and 17 percent (it varies from university to university) into this fund so that when you retire you don't end up with a tin cup sitting on the administration building saying, "I was a good teacher once, please help me."
  
  So, that's a forced retirement system. It has the advantage over Social Security that the government can't take it away.
  
  Secondly, 24 hours a day I can call up and find out what am I worth today. It's my money and, I can leave it as a legacy to my children or grandchildren. Not only that, everyone who did as I did, when CREF became available, and took three-quarters in equities and one-quarter in bonds, is a multi-millionaire today.