The reason is that the worker will only get any money from these accounts if he or she dies young. This means that all the administrative expenses experienced through the workers' lifetime are simply transfers to the financial industry. These costs will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars over the seventy five year planning horizon. Even the highest income workers, who get the worst returns from Social Security, will get no benefit from their accounts, unless they die young. This means that managing these accounts will be a complete waste of time for the vast majority of workers.
Surveys suggest that workers often feel stressed for time.
They also view the paperwork associated with responsibilities such as tax filings or H.M.O. claims extremely annoying. Under such circumstances it is irresponsible to impose additional burdens with no reasonable likelihood of gains. The actuaries use stock return projections that are suggested to them, when they score plans like Archer-Shaw. For example, the Clinton Administration asked them assume 6.75 percent real returns when evaluating its proposal to place part of the trust fund in the stock market. The actuaries do not have their own projections of stock returns because the stock market has never in the past been relevant to the solvency of the program.