They can always print money if/when they need it. "The market" just cannot compete with Social Security. (Winning the lottery - i.e. buying MSFT in the first week and holding it until 2000 doesn't count. There aren't many of those.)

Take a family member I know, for instance. He argued with me about "always paying the max" and that he'd never get his back. Until I showed him the max tables for every year from the time he was born until he retired. He got everything back + interest that he *and* his company paid into it, adjusted for current dollars, in less than five years. And that doesn't count the 0.5 times his take that his spouse gets who never earned enough to qualify on her own. That five year period ended twenty-three years ago and there is still a 2 trillion dollar surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund.

Like paying for healthcare, retirement planning is better done at the government level.