Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren wants to establish a federal commission to regulate subprime mortgages and other “dangerous” financial products that are foisted on unsuspecting consumers. For a number of reasons, that’s a bit like using a sledgehammer on a problem for which a scalpel is more appropriate. But if it comes about, Don Boudreaux informs us about a really dangerous financial product that the new commission needs to examine:

If such a commission does its job, I suggest that the first dangerous financial product that it attacks be Social Security. Not only are Social Security’s returns lousy; not only are its “customers” never vested their “contributions”; not only does the institution providing it have no sound plan to keep it solvent; not only does this institution intentionally mislead its clients about its insolvency (witness its discussions of the illusory “trust fund”) – but its “customers” are forced to buy it. That is a dangerous financial product!