Lsiten to those who know..........Jim Fleckenstein who when asked:
What do you think of the idea of investing some of the Social Security money into the stock market?
That is the greatest fallacy of all time. The idea that you can take money out of the Social Security Trust Funds and put them in the equity market is completely and utterly impossible. People don't understand there is no money in the Social Security Trust Fund, no as in "none". The money was spent to operate the government. When you send money to Social Security, it goes into the government's coffers. They spend it and they place an IOU in the Social Security Trust Fund. There is no money. If they want to take Social Security Funds, they will have to sell bonds and raise the money to put the money over there. Every dollar, prospectively, that you do not send to Social Security and Social Security forwards to the equity market, they'll have to borrow an additional dollar. The government finances are set up such that any program that generates revenues currently, like Social Security, gets counted on the budget. Anything that loses money is off budget. Therefore, you have certain nonsensical trial balloons like this and when the government comes out and says, "The budget deficit is 120 billion," that is also 100 percent false. The National Debt increases at about 150 billion. It's these different programs, like Social Security, that cloud the issue. |
