Social Security Funding, as seen on Facebook:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

[Fridays Child]

1. +1 and

[h2ebits]

2. Wish I had thought to say this.

+1

[Moostache]

3. But, but, but....entitlements, welfare queens, its those dark skinned lazy people who are the issue.

Obviously the title needs a <sarcasm>...

I hate the fact that the powers that be not only stick to their austerity playbook not matter how many times they are called out on it and proven wrong, but also they just keep repeating the same old lies...makes me want to harm small furry animals and that's just not right.

[Recursion]

4. Sentence 1 and sentence 2 don't seem to make sense together?

Either the Federal government doesn't fund Social Security, or it's going to be providing it a lot of money in the near future? I guess it depends on whether repaying counts as "funding".

[rhett o rick]

5. Repaying does not count as "funding".

If we look at the books we will find that the SS account is several trillion in the blue while the WAR account is several trillion in the red. We need a war tax to repay the WAR account. SS is a distraction to not tax to repay for our wars.

By-the-way the Infrastructure account is about 2 trillion in the red also. Thanks to the DimSon.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. Thank you for that explanation.

It's good to have someone who knows what's what chime in!

[rhett o rick]

7. Thank you. It's not rocket science. I hope you are doing good CP.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. I am doing well, and thank you...

[Recursion]

11. Obviously I understand that

I'm talking about selling this to the larger audience.

[rhett o rick]

12. So would you recommend rewording? nm

[Recursion]

14. I wish I had the right idea

If I had, I'd be back on the Hill consulting with DCCC

[FogerRox]

13. Yup, not entirely accurate. The Fed Gov doesnt owe the SSTF one cent.

[4_TN_TITANS]

9. Remember Al Gore's "lockbox", anyone?

Bush did precisely what Gore warned about in the 2000 campaign. Our SSI surplus was reduced to a pile of Treasury bonds. Why can no one in the MM communicate this?

[Recursion]

10. Gore's idea was awful. He wanted to take the surplus and redeem bonds.

Let me jump back: it wasn't awful in a world of adults: in that world it's actually a great idea. In the world where we have a Congress of sociopathic 9-year-olds, it was a bad idea.

[Jim Lane]

15. One core point of this message is simply false and we shouldn't be spreading it.

The quoted message states in part:

The Federal Government owes money to Social Security. That amount of money alone would fund SS for the next 60 years give or take.

Social Security is primarily a pay-as-you-go program. Current revenues (chiefly FICA taxes) are used to cover current expenses (chiefly payments to beneficiaries).

A pay-as-you-go program works fine if the basic demographics are fundamentally stable. Ours aren't stable, however, because of the baby boom (or, more precisely, the baby bust -- the decline in births that began in the early 1960s as the baby boom ended). Because this problem was foreseen, the boomers were taxed more than was necessary to maintain current payments, so that a trust fund could be built up to help cover their retirements.

The trust fund, however, serves only to make up the shortfall. Over the next 60 years, the principal source of each year's Social Security payments will continue to be that year's FICA tax revenues. The money in the trust fund alone would not fund Social Security for the next 60 years, but only for a few years (probably three or four but I haven't crunched the exact numbers).

This isn't a big deal because no one is talking about repealing the FICA tax while maintaining full Social Security benefits. Nevertheless, it doesn't help us to propagate misunderstandings about how the system works.

[grahamhgreen]

16. Kick

[Lady Freedom Returns]

17. K & R.