[natedogg]

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Nothing is "given" to the general fund. Treasuries are SOLD to SSA. The proceeds from the sale pay the deficit like any other borrowing pays the deficit.

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For anyone who is being misled by this, ask yourself: If you buy a bond from yourself, have you done anything?

The next time you want to spend a big chunk of money, write the amount down on a piece of paper first and call it a "bond". Then start making payments to yourself later to pay off the bond, and tell yourself you are doing anything more than playing around with some numbers that are irrelevent to your actual financial position.

That's the social security trust fund.

natedogg

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Even if you think its appropriate to treat all government agencies as one big agency, your criticism still is only valid as a criticism of the spending. If the spending is justified (eg if you must have a new car to be able to produce an income) then you have two choices for that spending, reduce your assets or increase your liabilities. There is no difference on an accounting basis.

Buy that car from your savings ("borrow from your savings account", and pay your savings back with the cash flow that isnt tied up in repaying a finance company. Is that playing with numbers? No, its either a prudent or imprudent financial decision depending on your circumstances.

If you don't like the government to have the alternative of deficit financing then stop the spending, because even if borrowing from another agency = borrowing from themselves, its still a spending problem, not a financing problem and doesnt have a damn thing to do with Social Security.

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That is an impressive prevarication except that congress isn't borrowing money from a third party, they are borrowing it from their own revenues, which qualifies the excercise as nonsense.

Yet again, I must challenge you to actually articulate what it is you think Social Security's goals should be, what it should accomplish.

I understand that you might be confused about the trust fund because it's very easy to get confused about this, and that is part of the scam.

The issue is not deficit spending. It is that your Social Security Tax is just another tax and not in any way bound to your benefit. It is a just tax like any other, and your benefit is just an expenditure like any other, which you keep trying to refute but haven't. And this undermines much of what Social Security pretends to be, and serves to justify an onerous tax on the working class, which you have also failed to refute as you go off on tangents.

Try imagining that the "Social Security Tax" was to be renamed "Paying for the war" tax. All the money collected goes into the same communal general fund and all the allocations by congress are the same. And Social Security benefits remain unchanged, not to mention your (lack of any) right to the benefits.

Do you understand now?

natedogg