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Thursday, May 24, 2007
Social Security Facts
Here are a few facts about Social Security:
1) The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Trust Funds have increased their assets in every year since the Greenspan Commission recommendations were adopted by a Dem congress and signed by Reagan in '83. The "Social Security Trust Fund" is about 2 TRILLION in the black right now.
2) That's right. The Social Security System is sitting on a $2,000,000,000,000 nest egg, which has been very conservatively invested.
3) This situation is is EXACTLY what was planned for in the 1983 law. The Greenspan Commision described a set of immediate payroll tax increases and benefit cuts that would create a large pool of money that would be used in the future to pay the Baby Boomers' SS benefits while their scarce offspring worked, paying not enough into the system in real time.
4) That 2 trillion is your money, paid every week for over 25 years in regressive Payroll Taxes and even more regressive Self Employment Taxes. It has not been "spent". It has been invested in US Federal Securities, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. These are interest bearing securities.
5) The SS Trust Funds are not "lumped" into the General Fund. Their accounting is still scrupulously separate. Unfortunately, since LBJ, they have been reported as part of the big "Federal Budget", as though they were just like revenues from the Income Tax. They aren't.
6) Anybody who says there is a "Social Security Crisis" is trying to steal the two trillion dollars from you. Another dead giveaway is the term "worthless IOUs". The IOUs are worth two trillion, and it's your actual money, that you paid into the system under a CONTRACT. They want you to forgive the debt, but there is no reason for you to do so. They hire the best publicists in the business to talk you into giving your money to them.
7) They think you're a sucker and a dumbass.
- posted by de Selby @ 11:34 PM
