A Lesson From Mexico

October 6, 1999

Tuesday's USA Today reported on the disappearance of a Mexican government pension fund into which 2.6 million Mexicans working in the United States had contributed as much as $150 million. Under the bracero program, which ran from 1942 to 1964, the Farm Security Administration deducted 10 percent of the wages of Mexicans temporarily working in the United States. After transfer to the Mexican government these wages were to have been invested in a special pension fund. Today, the Mexican government can find no trace of it.

Luckily, Mexicans now have the option of starting their own personal pension accounts, where their retirement savings are safe from this type of government mismanagement. If Americans had personal accounts, they might not be once again looking at the government spending their payroll taxes on things that have nothing to do with Social Security.

Mexico has learned that the safest place for retirement savings is an account controlled by workers. It's about time the United States caught up.

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