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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (21222)	8/9/2001 5:36:31 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Tim, that doesn't answer the question of why the current holdings of the ss trust fund are allegedly worth less than treasury bonds in private hands. If you own a government bond then you have an asset. The government has to pay you back. If the government owns a government bond (and the Social Security Trust Fund is part of the government) then no one else will pay it back. It has to pay itself back. If you pay yourself back your wealth does not go up on the repayment. As I said before I don't get an extra asset from moving my money from one pocket to another. I can not count money I owe myself as an asset. When Social Security starts to spend more then it brings in it in the government will have to increase taxes or decrease spending or decrease the surplus if we have one at the time or borrow money from other people by issueing regular government bonds. If there was no prefunding, no trust fund but rather a pay as you go system paid entirely from SS taxes and the SS taxes fell up short the system would not be any worse off then it would be when SS taxes fall short and it starts drawing on the "trust fund". In both cases there is no actual fund to draw on, just general tax money going to pay for social security. Tim