On 4/27/2011 10:40 PM, Doug Henwood wrote: > > 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.
I understand that. But isn't the formulation important? I pay FICA, I can see the SSA's balance sheet. That is a part of the pie that belongs to working people. Those bonds are bonds that belong to working people. When I pay FICA, it feels like I am paying into the public pension, not just paying another tax. So yes you are right it is all one pie and they are just book-keeping entries but the entries are formulated in a way that "guarantees" they belong to working people, in a stronger way than differently-funded programs guarantee services. You can't take a worker's FICA and use it to bail out a banker, damnit! Well, yes you can, but you have to do it by lending it to the gov't and at least workers get a bond. Not ideal, but certainly different than just transferring workers' income tax to the rich. At least we have the book-keeping entry. Matt -- GnuPG Key ID: 0xC33BD882 aim/google/MSN/yahoo: beyondzero123 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
