Social Security is heading off a cliff. The Boston Globe’s advice: do nothing.

Who left the B-team in charge at the Globe this weekend? Today’s uninformed editorial called “Risking the nest egg” critiques President Bush’s “ownership society” in a desultory manner while offering no solution to the looming entitlement crisis:

The government has kept its promise to pay Social Security benefits to the elderly for 64 years. Bush's plan would threaten that commitment. He would drain resources from the system just when it is coming under stress from the retirement of the baby boomers. And there is no guarantee that individual accounts would earn enough of a return to compensate for the decline in the guaranteed Social Security benefit that is the inevitable consequence of any privatization plan.

Newsflash: Social Security is already threatened as FICA revenues will be outpaced by payouts in about a decade; the Social Security trust fund will be empty in 30 years. There is no guarantee now for younger workers that Social Security will survive, at least without massive tax increases. For those younger workers, they can expect a return of approximately 1% on their Social Security investment until retirement. Even a simple bank savings account, or U.S. Savings bonds, would produce a better return that, compounded over a lifetime, would result in extra thousands of retirement savings.

Those Americans who already have the resources to make private retirement investments would have the experience and access to financial expertise to make the most of their Social Security accounts. Those with fewer resources could find their accounts hobbled by excessive fees, incompetent advice, and poor returns.

Oh, the feckless poor of America: they just can’t figure it all out. Isn’t this the basis for all socialistic theory? We just can’t trust the proles to control their own lives. It’s so much better that we control their money, which, by the way, we’ll need some more.