And again, the reliable safety net would still be there, you are building that same straw man. I never suggested taking away the reliable safety net.I'm no dummy brother and neither are you. To suggest that there are factors that you cannot see when planning for your retirement is absolutely relevant when discussiing planning for your retirement .. THUS, a reliable safety-net is critical for the health and well-being of American citizens.
No one is denying that making good plans foir retirement is essential because no one wants to have to rely on SS for their dole source of income in retiurement .. but we aren't talking about the best laid plans, we're talking about people, and there are a great many of them .. especially today, who have made all the best laid plans, then find themselves hurting for income to survive, which ususally happens because of unforseen health issues.
If you're so intenet on "saving a small portion to invest" .. what's stopping you? Surely you can manage to save a smallportion from what you already spend to invest ,, and leave the portion you contribute to SS alone just iun case your best laid plans don't work out .. of which you have NO GUARANTEE.
That would seeem to me to be the real best laid plans.
The strawman here is the false notion that the only "small portion" you have is what you contribute to SS.
The weakest portion of your argument is insisting that I suggested "getting rid of the reliable safety net". Nobody here has suggested that at all.
The remainder of my safety net would still be there, while the extremely small portion that I was allowed to invest may not.
What I said is that some people would not otherwise save at all, in this way they can take a small portion that would otherwise go to that insurance and invest it in a way that it can be passed on to future generations as well as enhance their retirement. Another poor assumption on your part is the risk level of the allowed investment.
If you feel uncomfortable "risking" it in specific conservative investments so that you can pass on some of your lifetime of payments to your children there would be no need to invest anything at all. Those who do will have something that they otherwise would not (some could not if it wasn't forced) to pass on or use to enhance their retirement beyond the subsistence level that the government insures.