Social Security has ZERO to do with the Deficit.

[Dragonfli]

145. I think I understand you, but believe you have been a bit misinformed by the barrage of planned and

Last edited Tue Sep 24, 2013, 01:36 PM - Edit history (1)

funded misinformation campaigns put forth by the well healed Pete Peterson groups that have been trying to weaken and eventually destroy SS for a long time.

The money we contributed legally and specifically for no other purpose should have been used to pay benefits, you are absolutely correct, I agree completely. Where the misinformation comes in is that it has been used that way, no other money besides our contributions have been used to pay these benefits.

The root of the conservative con job (and it is a con, a theft, a raid, however you wish to put it) is that during the early 80's it was projected that the system of pay as you go using only present contributions to pay present beneficiaries would run into a generational numbers problem when retired "baby boomers" would outnumber those still a generation behind creating the potential issue where for the first time there would not be enough contributors to cover the retirees benefits during the same time. It was known it would be a temporary population issue that would pass, but an issue nonetheless that could and should be planned for in order to avoid the need to use money from the budget and not just our workers retirement and disability fund (FICA) to fund our retirement and disability insurance. It is actually illegal to use budget money for such a purpose so such would not even be a viable solution anyway.

The decision was made to collect more to cover the potential future shortfall (that's why there is an extra 2.7 trillion dollars in the fund that has not yet been used to pay only benefits, it is still that money's purpose to do just that, pay benefits, but it is planned for the time when not enough present contributions are available to cover outgoing benefit payments. Much like if you knew that in the winter you would not have enough money in your monthly budget to cover your heat bills each month and so during the summer months you decided to put a little extra in the bank so it would be there to pay the extra you would need months in the future to cover your heat bill.

We have already put the extra in the bank, we did not spend it on anything else, we wasted nothing on anything else, it is simply that the bank withdrawals are not being made by us yet, because we still don't need it.

It was placed in US bonds rather than a savings and loan because they are far more secure than any bank account and give more consistent and often better interest than a typical savings account. US bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States and if those Bonds become "no good" because the creditors faith and credit are "no good" then everyone that saves using such Bonds would no longer trust our bonds and THAT would destroy our credit and economy. We sell bonds as saving instruments to many others, including foreign Governments - our credit is good and our bonds are good, our fund is fully funded in a secure account.

The Peterson and banking collaborative con job is that when the bonds were issued the money collected by the "bank" or US treasury was spent OFF BOOKS! The bank allowed the money to be spent without showing up on the budget as the deficit spending that it was at the time, this was done to spend money while making it look like the budget was not affected by the extra money spent. It made the politicians look good. It made giving money away to the richest by not collecting fair taxes look good. It made fighting wars without raising taxes (as used to be proper form to fund wars) look good. That is the con. Our money is still ours, the bonds are good (our Treasury can not default on them without destroying the value of all bonds).

It is a crooked group of bank managers in my analogy falsely telling you that the money put away in the summer for your heat bills was spent by his other clients when he approved their loans and so you should not make a withdrawal to pay your heat bill out of your savings account but should cut your use of heat instead. An absurd suggestion by a crooked bank manager that is running a con to make himself look better than he might for loaning too much of the bank's customers money and trying to jimmy the books to hide it.

The "bank" has the money. It is SS money in a SS savings account, still pigeonholed to be used on the analogous "heat bill" but it would make the bank managers (politicians) cooked books look bad and maybe get them fired if they can't trick you into not making your pre-planned withdrawals. As an added frustration, the Petersons just think it is wrong for you to have heat because they like the extra tax cuts the con provides them and are helping to con you into thinking your savings account is spent because the bank loaned money to other people (even tho it doesn't work that way as we all know). By continuing to make it appear that the tax cuts they get do not increase the budget, but rather your withdrawing money from your own account does, they will continue to enjoy getting the cuts that they sell as not increasing the deficit even tho that is what actually would be adding to the deficit, not your withdrawing your own money set aside prudently for the winter.

Don't fall for the con, the money spent was budget money, not SS money, budget money comes from selling savings bonds to many different types of buyers, collecting taxes, and easement (printing money). They are trying to con you into believing your savings account has no money in it, it most assuredly does, it is a con, don't fall for it.