On Apr 27, 2011, at 10:16 PM, Matt Cramer wrote: > It depends who the "you" in "yourself" is. The 1983 fixes generated a > surplus in workers' savings and that surplus was invested in bonds. The > savings will now bridge us until we can execute the necessary politics > to get SSA again fully-funded.
Why is this so hard to understand? Social Security is an obligation of the U.S. Treasury. They write the checks, after all. In an attempt to meet a projected excess of outflow over inflow at some point in the future, the system has accumulated surpluses that it invested in non-tradeable T-bonds. Someday, the SS system is going to have to redeem those bonds to pay beneficiaries. How does the Treasury come up with the cash? It will either have to raise taxes, cut spending elsewhere, or borrow anew. It's not like the Treasury is some external party to the deal. What savings are there? They're purely internal bookkeeping entries. Doug _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
