For the moment we are no longer talking about partially privatizing, reforming, or otherwise changing Social Security. But while it's in our minds, we might note expert opinions from elsewhere. An official report of the Financial Services Authority in the UK notes that people who opted out of the government pension in favor of a private alternative are now worse off than those who stayed with it. Why? the BBC asked Ros Altmann of the LSE on the Today Programme (audio link)."Stock markets don't always go up," she replied.

John H. Lederer - 8/27/2005

The FSA report is probably no longer correct. It found that the median investor in private funds would have probably done slightly worse than those who stayed in the governemnt program (on median about 4 pounds a week worse). Data was end 2004 data.

However, the London Stock Exchange has been doing very well, see, e.g.
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1y&;s=%5EFTMC&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=&c=%5EFTMC
It is likely that those privately invested are now doing better than those in the government program.