Just as in Chile, for 30 years now they have paid much less into their personal account savings and investment system than required by Social Security, but receive much more in benefits.

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Properly structured personal accounts would actually give them more for retirement than the existing Social Security system possibly could.

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In 1981, the South American nation of Chile, then with a Social Security system just like ours, with the same problems, adopted a personal account option similar to Ryan-Sununu, with astounding success.

FORBES: A Winning Plan For Social Security Reform

And in this case, delivering an individual worker credit through the payroll tax system muddies the waters between personal income taxes and taxes paid to support Social Security.

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His nearly 100 patented creations include a dictionary, a train-switching system and, most recently, a service that turns an ordinary pager into a personal security device.

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Since the system is designed to determine the legal status of workers based on names, Social Security numbers and potentially personal biometric identifiers of every working age adult in America, worries about the system becoming a tool for ever-expanding federal purposes are legitimate.

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