This is where President George W. Bush was not willing to go in the entitlement reform debate. He endlessly discussed the program’s solvency, but failed to address the fact that we live in an age in which so many American have personal retirement accounts of some kind, and Health Savings Accounts have (at least prior to Obamacare’s implementation) become increasingly popular.

The problem with the argument is that it is easily countered by scare tactics. Markets don’t always go up. It is especially easy to scare people after a massive market downturn, to make them believe that their money is safer in the government’s hands.

But it isn’t safer. The current budget debate illustrates that even a crisis is not enough to make government cut spending by any serious amount. The Mediscare and Social Insecurity scare tactics gloss over the facts: Social Security benefits will be reduced automatically under current law — at some point in the 2030s, when the trust fund is depleted — and Medicare is completely unsustainable in its current form — not even massive tax increases can fix that.

The bottom line is that people probably won’t ever like being told the truth: Government might be able to help seniors avoid dire poverty, but it cannot give you real security in retirement. You’re going to have to save up and rely on family, no matter who you are or what you do.