With the stock market in the dumper lately, the idea of Social Security reform is dead, right?

Wrong. Andrew Biggs of the Cato Institute points out that, as wretched as the last couple of years' returns have been, a worker retiring at age 65 today would still be better off having invested his retirement money in a stock market index fund than in Social Security. If allowed to invest in a mix of stocks and bonds, the returns would be better still.

It might be expedient for advocates of private retirement savings to place their emphasis not on how good the stock market is, but rather, on how bad the existing, government-managed alternative is.