It does not ensure that workers who have labored a lifetime in low-paying jobs will have a secure base at retirement. And it does not guarantee that individuals will have lifetime income protection from their investments Privatization requires huge changeover costs. This leaves Social Security underfunded because it does not have that money to fund benefits. As a result, taxes would have to be raised, benefits would have to be cut, or the government would have to borrow more. This is true regardless of whether individual accounts are mandatory or voluntary.
Privatization puts survivor and disability protections in jeopardy.
Diverting money out of the Social Security system into individual investment accounts could require substantial reductions in survivor and disability benefits. Since revenues diverted from the Social Security Trust Fund would no longer be available to pay guaranteed benefits, those benefits might have to be reduced significantly. This is a critical issue which has been largely ignored by proponents of individual investment accounts. This is true even for younger workers who have not had many years to pay into the system. But if any part of Social Security were replaced with individual investment accounts, workers who die or become disabled and their families would face greatly reduced guaranteed benefits and would be forced to rely on their own investments to make up for the lost income.