In 2005, Congress debated giving U.S. workers private savings accounts to invest their Social Security contributions in the stock and bond markets. Sixteen years later, we review how that would have worked out for workers.

Other topics discussed include:

How the public and private sectors are both critical for a functioning social security systems
Which countries pay the highest social security benefits
How have other privatized social security plans worked out around the world
How workers prefer defined contribution plans even though they are worse off than if defined benefit plans were still widely available
How worried should we be about aging populations and rising dependency ratios
Why Social Security won't go away