All polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans have little hope of getting back a single dollar for the 15% of their wages they're pouring into Social Security. 

 Democratic politicians deny what every working American knows: The Social Security system is bankrupt and close to collapse. 

 Republican politicians want to keep Social Security afloat through tax increases and benefit reductions - including raising the retirement age, invoking a means test, and changing the cost of living index on which yearly benefit adjustments are calculated. 

 Libertarians say that the only way to avoid the inevitable collapse of Social Security is to get the government out of it. 

The Libertarian Party would sell trillions of dollars worth of unneeded federal assets, and use the proceeds to purchase private retirement annuities for everyone dependent on Social Security now. This means your parents and grandparents would have guaranteed contracts with private companies who have never broken their promises - unlike the U.S. Congress. 

With a growing consensus developing in favor of transforming Social Security into a system of individually owned, privately invested accounts, critics of privatization have begun warning that individual accounts would be too complex and costly to administer. However, a careful examination of the administrative issues involved in individual accounts shows that, while administrative issues should be carefully considered in designing a privatized system, individual accounts are both administrable and affordable. 

The cost of administering existing retirement savings programs indicates that administrative and money management expenses for a system of individual accounts could amount to anywhere from roughly 1.17 percent to 1.83 percent of assets, or roughly $35-$55 per worker for the first year. After five years, as the size of the average account increases, the cost would be anywhere from roughly 30 to 65 basis points, or $54-$117 per year. For the great majority of businesses with outside payroll services, the col-lection function would entail little, if any, additional cost. For those businesses that do payroll without the aid of technology, there would be some modest additional reporting requirements. 

This cost is slightly higher than that of the current government-run Social Security program. However, in exchange for slightly greater administrative costs, workers in a privatized system would receive a greater rate of return on their investment and better and more secure retirement benefits.