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

To: SilentZ who wrote (214465)	1/8/2005 11:06:02 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Respond to of 1572219

Z, What's wrong with long-term T-bills? They yield better than savings accounts, and they're as stable as anything. Wait, isn't that where SS money is now? Only the "trust fund" part of it. The rest is going straight toward paying the benefits of current retirees, a lot of whom already got back what they put into SS plus interest. Besides, T-bills just represent more federal debt, which as you know is already skyrocketing. You can already guess what the consequences of the debt are, but here's something else. Since the government is basically lending money to itself, that means the SS "trust fund" is a myth. Once expenditures outpace revenues, SS will start drawing upon that "trust fund" by having the federal government pay off those T-bills. Alternatively, the government could pay them off by selling more T-bills (e.g. to foreign creditors), but in either case there is no real "trust fund" to draw money out of. You talk about Social Security like it's some huge amount of money... it's basically just enough to keep its recipients out of poverty. IMO, NO ONE should be in poverty, I don't care if it's "their own fault" or not. Well, if that's your core philosophy, then there are better ways to redistribute the wealth than via the current SS "Ponzi scheme." For instance, you might want to turn the SS payroll deductions into a true system of "welfare for the elderly." The way it is now, it's a regressive tax because of the cap on benefits. Anyone making over $90,000 (up from $80-something thousand last year) will be paying a smaller percentage of their income toward SS. Of course, the way SS is set up, it can't decide whether it should be a forced savings account or welfare for the elderly. So it has evolved into the worst of both worlds, and the result is the coming SS crisis. Tenchusatsu

To: SilentZ who wrote (214465)	2/4/2005 12:24:47 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1572219

What's wrong with long-term T-bills? Low real yield. They yield better than savings accounts Which sometimes have negative real yield. You talk about Social Security like it's some huge amount of money... it's basically just enough to keep its recipients out of poverty. Its not like your passing on a fortune to each recipient but when you give many millions of people enough to keep themselves out of poverty for years or decades its adds up to a lot of money. Or to look at it another way right now three workers have to keep each retiree out of poverty. That might drop to two over the coming decades. Potentially it could even go lower. Unless your wealthy giving someone half of what they need to keep themselves out of poverty is a big burden. Tim