We’ve heard rumblings that President Trump may want to expand the idea of Trump accounts by allowing young workers to put some (or all) of their payroll tax payments into a personal account where the money is invested in an index fund of 60% stocks and 40% bonds.

This plan would overnight turn a tax (a negative) for workers into an investment fund that earns much higher returns (a positive).

UP’s co-founders Steve Forbes, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore have sent Trump a letter urging him to do so.

Steve Forbes ran for president on this idea 30 years ago. We have just updated the numbers and discovered that virtually every worker upon retirement would receive a monthly benefit from a personal account three times larger than what Social Security will pay out. The Wall Street Journal estimates that the average worker will get $300,000 of Social Security benefits in retirement.

Under personal accounts even with a rate of return that runs below the stock market’s historical average, these same workers would have $1 million – not $300,000.