Advance funding of future pensions is therefore impossible without additional funds from either new taxes or lower benefits. Because of the inevitable transition costs to a new system of individual accounts, the return for current workers, young and old, would be lower than the return on the present system. In fact, addressing the possible shortfall in Social Security by conventional means would provide a higher return than would plans for individual accounts well into the next century. There are some perfectly good reasons to consider advance funding of pensions through mandatory increases in savings. But there is no reason to omit the fact that doing so will require paying more or getting less for quite some time.
Real choices involve real trade-offs.