RE: RE: RE: what does that us national debt look lSocial Security is neither unfunded ...
From the Congressional Budget Office this past Wednesday:
Social Security will pay out $45 billion more in benefits this year than it will collect in payroll taxes, further straining the nation's finances. The deficits will continue until the Social Security trust funds are eventually drained, in about 2037.
Now, from Karl Denninger's comment on his site market-ticker.com:
There are no Social Security Trust funds.
None. They do not exist.
And we're about to find out exactly how bad that subterfuge, entered into in the 1980s, is going to be for us and our children. The damage starts right now.
There is currently $4.652 trillion in so-called "trust funds" that are in fact IOUs in the Trustee's file cabinet. They are not legally debt. But in order to spend any of it, they will have to become legal debt. It is for this reason that when I run my deficit numbers, I count these alleged "Trust" funds - because in order to spend them, Treasury has to count them too.
Karl Denninger nails it. It's IOUs. No moolah in the the trust funds. Again, I repeat: social security is UNFUNDED.
. . . nor [is social security] an entitlement program.
Entitlement - noun: the right to guaranteed benefits under a government program, as Social Security or unemployment compensation.
(Social Security Act passed by Congress in 1935.)
Yes, you could argue that each worker owes a million dollars, but they are only paper dollars, not real dollars.
What is the difference between (American) paper dollars and (American) real dollars? I was unaware that the U.S. had a dual currency system.