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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (130343)	1/3/2001 4:27:35 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1572507

1 - More of the money went to social programs then for the Vietnam war. 2 - There is no trust fund. Its all government IOUs to itself. There is and was no store of wealth to be looted" While number one can be argued, you are incorrect on your point 2. Do you have any supporting evidence for it? 1 - I made it easy on myself by specifiying just spent on Vietnam not the entire defense budget. Note I included medicare, medicaid, and social security as social programs. Anyone have a link to the 1968 or 1969 US budget? The evidence is that by law the social security "trust fund" can only be invested in US government securities (not regulate T-bonds but the effect would be the same if they were). All the proceeds from the US government bonds are spent on government programs each year so the social security trust fund is spent. All Treasury bonds and notes are loans to the federal government. If the federal government loans money to itself (and spends it on social security checks, or roads, or welfare, or a new aircraft carrier) can it legitimately count the debt as an asset? No. There is no money in a bank account or cash or gold in some government vault, the money is put into the checks to individuals, or roads or monuments or tanks. Some of these assets (like the social security or welfare checks) are no longer owned by the government. Others there is not much demand for (the market for large monuments is rather illiquid), and others depreciate in value over time, or would be stupid and dangerous to sell on the open market (like nuclear weapons). The money goes in to these things and the government can not sell them later to get it back. The only way the government can pay retires later is to have the "general fund" pay the "social security trust fund" back what the "general fund" has borrowed. The only way the general fund gets any money is from taxes. Tim