In any case, these obligations are just as ironclad as any other legal obligation. The government owes the money to the bondholder (the Trust Fund); repayment is not optional. Some right-wing talking heads have actually hinted at deliberately defaulting on US Treasury Bonds, for the political purpose of killing Social Security. Now there’s a patriotic American talking.

That is the language I can and am willing to compute.

If and when it all comes together (for me) and it is as you say,
my own Senators and Representative are going to have to acknowledge
reality or admit openly that they won’t.

A question, though:

If they say to me

“We did not do it, but yes, that’s the case. So now, tell me, since the Treasury is broke, where do you propose we ‘find’ the money?”

Where do you think, Jim, I will look for the answer ?

Here is one of many columns that Krugman has written on the subject:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/6822964/the_fake_crisis/

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

and

The Century Foundation

For a recent short piece, here is Paul Krugman:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/about-the-social-security-trust-fund/

The 2002 piece (his own) that Krugmman links to in this column is also well done and I recommend it – don’t skip over it.

Believe me, your point about the money not being where it is supposed to be is no different whatsoever from the points that I have been making. It is supposed to be invested in such a way that it is safe for its intended purpose when the time comes to draw it down; it is, for all practical purposes in the pockets of GW Bush’s political base, which he himself called “The Haves and the Have Mores.” It is the latter groups who are screaming that our nation cannot afford for the general fund to repay its debts that it owes to the Social Security Trust Fund.

Since 1935, the law has required that all surplus SSTrust Fund balances be invested in the safest securities in human history, US Treasury Bonds (in fact Treasuries define the benchmark of safety in the field of finance). Only pure politics coming from the Right would conceivably make these anything but the most appropriate place to park these funds.

SS began in 1935. The first pension payouts ocurred in 1941. The three main categories are pension, disability and survivor benefits. About a third of check recipients are in the survivor and disability categories, the other two-thirds pension. The present wage cap (2010) is $106,100 – that is, all wages of current workers above that go payroll-tax-free (so the payroll tax is overwhelming paid by wager-earners, not the upper classes. The payroll tax is 12.4% for Social Security (half each from employer and employee). Full pension benefits begin at age 66, with heavily discounted benefits available beginning at age 62.

The political trickery that has been in effect for some decades was to begin considering the SSTrust Fund and the Gen. Fund as a “unified budget,” as if there were no difference between the two – “it’s all the government.” Nothing is further from the truth. The side of the government created to provide Social Security has loaned all of its surplus balances to the side of government that wages the wars and gives agricultural subsidies to obscenely wealthy farm owners (to use two examples), i.e., the general operations of government. This is done by the SSTrust Fund using its surplus cash to purchase Treasury Bonds which are issued by the Treasury (General Fund), ands which the SST keeps in its portfolio. When the Boomers begin to retire, these bonds will begin to be redeemed, and the Gen. Fund is required to repay the borrowed money. Since the Gen. Fund has been depleted by (a) the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and (b) multiple wars both on- and off- budget, the money “isn’t there” to repay these loans (presently at around $2.6 trillion). The political Right wants you to believe that repaying these bonds is somehow a bad thing; they falsely claim that “our children & grandchildren” will be subsidizing undeserving greedy retirees over the coming decades.

In fact the opposite is true; Social Security is the part of the government that is solvent, the general fund is the part that is bankrupt. The boomers (workers since 1983) have “over paid” FICA payroll taxes into the SST for the past 27 years so that the money will be there upon retirement. Rather than being a battle between generations, it is in fact a battle between economic classes wherein money from working stiffs’ pockets flowed right into the pockets of Bush’s “haves and have mores” in the form of high-end tax cuts that we couldn’t afford, had no positive economic effect, and polls at the time showed that the large majority of Americans didn’t want.

I do not defend the working class as some sort of ideological reaction; I point out exactly where the money came from and where it now sits (“follow the money”). I let the fiscal, economic and fiancial facts speak for themselves.

The payout from this ‘fund’ is for:
Old age retirement beginning now at age 62 ?
Children of a widowed parent
Disability ?
Other ?
I will follow up on this because as you put it it IS obscene and criminal in nature. However I want the actual facts altogether before I go further.
Is there a web site where it has been all put together in one place ?

I think the ‘liberal’ in you is mad because of who has the money at the expense of who ?

The conservative in me may get angry if we have a serious problem because the money is not where it is supposed to be.

Same problem but possibly two different views.

There is no more hideous or shameful truth in our country in this era than this swindle of working Americans by this economic elite. To prate on about some fear of the poor dragging down the rich is so far from actual American experience as to be worse than cartoonish. Look reality in the face for once.

Wasn’t this the English rule that prompted the founding of he United States of America?

But Jim, opposition to the recent Supreme Court decision -I would like to join in- is NOT a move to redistribute wealth. If it is, I don’t see it.

But my question is not to be contrary to the current necessary reaction to the current extremes but to ask for acknowledgement that if the politicians
had to respond to strictly a one man- one vote situation how long could that go on before the wealthy would have to resort to tyranny ?

Your knowledge is appreciated but sometimes is seems liberalism has affected your view, at least as expressed, beyond the bounds of common sense. I guess this is the nature of ‘reaction’ whether liberal OR conservative.

Not a criticism . . just trying to process the views expressed.

or, said another way, the fact IS that
“there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us” ~ Joe Stack (1956-2010)

“At its core, [it] is about dominance of the political and electoral system by wealthy people and corporations and about legitimizing a political and electoral system that is unrepresentative, money-driven, corrupt, outmoded, and dysfunctional.” ~ David Kairys

this too has previously been said:
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” ~ Frederic Bastiat, (1801-1850)