Change now or go belly up.

• Position: Social Security system

The Social Security system will have to undergo dramatic changes within the next 10 years if it's going to survive into the 21st century, Robert Myers, former chief actuary of the U.S. Social Security Administration, believes the system "will outlive us all," but that corrective action needs to be taken soon to ward off any collapse. Peter Ferrara, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, takes the opposite stance, predicting that a crisis will begin to emerge in 2005, when tax revenue for the trust funds is insufficient to cover benefit payments. To avoid this, he advocates shifting to a decentralized private retirement system.

Myers rejects such a plan because he doesn't believe employers would pass along those excess funds to employees for their investment purposes, but would set up their own schemes instead that would not benefit all workers equally. Social Security never was meant to be the sole source of retirement income and should be used as a basis to build upon with wise investing and other savings methods.

For Ferrara, a private retirement program is more beneficial to' workers because they would receive higher returns on the same sums paid into Social Security during their working lives and it would allow them greater freedom of choice and control in funding their own retirement vehicles. In addition, such a plan would build a vast...