Nevertheless, the idea might be easier for people to understand and accept if the policy were seen as contributing a surplus to the reserves. The surplus in the social security accounts is automatically contributed to the reserves. By present calculations in about five years the surplus in the unified budget will begin to exceed the surplus in the social security accounts, That is, the rest of the budget, excluding the social security accounts, will begin to run surpluses. One possible policy would be to contribute these surpluses, in addition to those in the social security accounts, to the social security reserves. That might continue until the reserves were sufficient, along with future payroll tax revenues, to pay the promised benefits for some long period into the future.
Privatization has two meanings.
The first is that the funds of the system should be invested, in whole or in part, in private assets, instead of in Treasury securities, as they now are. The second meaning is that the funds should be owned, in whole or in part, privately by individual covered workers or beneficiaries. These two meanings are not necessarily connected. One can imagine a system in which each covered worker receives each year a Treasury non-negotiable bond with his name on it, equal to some fraction of his contribution for that year, and redeemable for cash when he begins to draw his benefits. This bond would be his private property, and the system could be called privatization.