Argentina attempts to nationalize personal accounts system; workers object

Joaquin Cottani at the RGE Monitor reports on some interesting pension developments in Argentina that shed some light on Social Security policy in the U.S. Argentina, like most Latin American countries, bases its pension program on personal retirement accounts. Individuals contribute to their accounts during their working years, then at retirement use the account balance to purchase an annuity paying them a monthly benefit for life.

But the government of Argentina, led by President Cristina Kirchner, is attempting to end their personal accounts system. Is this a response to public pressure from Argentines who want the supposedly greater security and lower risk of a government-provided benefit? Not at all. In fact, it's a scheme by the Argentine government to paper over its current budget deficit and has parallels to what has gone on in the U.S. Social Security system for the past 25 years.

In the Argentine personal accounts system, workers pay contributions to their account fund, not to the government-run pay-as-you-go program. Argentina's government, however, is running a budget deficit and is setting their eyes on workers' account contributions. If workers are forced back into the pay-as-you-go system, the government gets access to their contributions which can be used to cover up deficits elsewhere in the government. Of course, the government is also obligated to pay these workers retirement benefits in the future – but these "implicit debts" aren't counted on the government's balance sheet , as they aren't counted on the U.S. balance sheet, and so the Argentine government effectively ignores them.

The Argentine government first tried to bribe workers back into the pay-as-you-go system by promising increased benefits later. This shows how eager the government is to get its hands on the workers' cash today. But few workers took the deal, and so now President Kirchner is apparently pushing legislation that would force Argentinean workers back into the pay-as-you-go program.

How does this relate to Social Security in the U.S., in particular the budgetary debate between the current pay-as-you-go system and proposed reforms using personal accounts? Since the last reforms in the mid-1980s, Social Security has been running payroll tax surpluses – collecting more in taxes than is needed to pay benefits. This surplus in Social Security helps cover up deficits in the rest of the budget. In fact, many analysts think that the Social Security surpluses encourage deficits in the rest of the budget. Moreover, when the rest of the budget borrows from Social Security, this borrowing isn't counted as part of the publicly-held national debt, the debt measure that most people focus on. In short, if we didn't have the Social Security surplus, both the budget deficit and the government debt would look a lot bigger than they do, and folks in Congress would be feeling more heat to do something about it. This is the situation that Argentina's President Kirchner is trying to restore.

Now, what happens if we allow people to invest part of their Social Security taxes in a personal account? Well, that immediately erases the Social Security surplus, which means that the budget deficit and the debt would start to look bigger. Now, some on the left blame this increased deficit/debt on the accounts, when in fact all the accounts do is reveal a budget shortfall that already existed. Moreover, to the degree that larger accounts create short term deficits, they also create assets that help pay Social Security benefits in the future. In other words, this claimed increase in the debt is mostly a function of government accounting, not of reality.

Update: Here's an editorial from the Wall Street Journal on the same topic.