I’ve been talking about this all along. The “success story” was never real:
Everyone who followed the debate about privatizing Social Security back in 2005 has vivid memories of the Chilean model. Sometimes it seemed impossible to get through any discussion of fixing Social Security without hearing a free-market paean to the way Chile had given its workers control over their own retirement investments, followed by a demand that the United States get on the same boat.
Therefore, it seems worthwhile to note that the Chileans are now bailing water.
The Chilean government recently announced that in 2007 it plans to pursue far-reaching reforms aimed at creating a larger government role in Chileans’ old-age security. The reforms are urgently needed. It has been nearly a generation since the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet began to supplant Chile’s government-supported retirement system with a plan for Chilean workers to save 10 percent of their salaries in private accounts. Today, roughly half of Chilee’s labor force has either not participated or has not accumulated enough to generate what the government considers a minimum payout of about $140 a month.
The overarching problem for Chile — and the real lesson for the United States — is that private savings are not a substitute for a guaranteed core tier of old-age support. The first measure of success of a retirement system is not how much certain individuals manage to sock away, but whether the system as a whole provides basic dignity for all. By that measure, Chile’s privatized system has failed and Social Security has succeeded.
