President Bush and his conservative base want to privatize Social Security, ostensibly for the benefit of younger workers. I am 20 years of age, but I believe I have a better idea to ensure the solvency of the Social Security benefit system:

1. Eliminate the Social Security payroll tax and replace it with a 10 percent flat national sales tax, a consumption tax on all goods and services, exempting only medical, dental and prescription goods and services. The current payroll tax is highly regressive. It hits low and middle wage earners the hardest. An executive earning $200,000 per year pays a Social Security tax rate on earnings less than half of a worker earning $86,000 per year.

2. Hire a professional fund manager to invest the Social Security tax proceeds. Someone with impeccable credentials and expertise, like former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, comes to mind. With prudent investing of the 10 percent sales tax proceeds, I believe not only would there be enough money to fund the current benefit system, there would be money left over to fund Medicare and Medicaid for the next 100 years. The age of eligibility for Medicare could even be lowered to age 55.

3. Employers without the payroll tax would hire more workers bringing the country back to full employment. Payroll taxes are “job-killers.” A sales tax is fair to everyone. Drug-dealers, illegal immigrants, the underground economy, and workers, “off the books” could not escape paying their fair share of the sales tax.

Social Security needs to be mended, not eliminated with “private accounts.”

CODIE MORGAN

Snohomish