  Social Security for Beginners  By James Kwak, The Baseline
Scenario | name.   • Print   • Email  In Monday's Atlantic
column, the part that upset the most people was (not
surprisingly) the following paragraph on Social Security:  "The
dollars are in programs like Social Security ($740 billion),
which, per dollar, has a relatively small impact on the economy.
Social Security doesn't say what businesses can or can't do, and
it doesn't say what people can do with their money: it mainly
moves money from people's working years to their retirement
years, which means that in part it's doing something that they
would have done anyway."  One commenter, for example, said that
Social Security does tell you what you have to do with your
money: you have to buy an annuity. Another said that if he could
opt out of Social Security right now, he would, since he thinks
it is a losing proposition for him.  I don't think that any of
the criticisms really addressed the main point I was trying to
make: that Social Security has a