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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (2443)	9/17/2008 10:01:20 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

None of you guys think that social security is a real debt, because Congress can just legislate it away. Never said that.. I said it's an unfunded liability that becomes a debt when the SSTF goes into deficit. But it's not in deficit right now. It's in surplus. And the excess tax revenues being collected provide the government the ability to issue extra debt to a non-public entity, the SSTF. But the difference is that this is debt that it owes to itself, and which will require further issuance of PUBLIC debt, or a hike in taxes, to pay off so the proceeds can be distributed to beneficiaries. IMO, SS should never run in surplus. It should either be "pay as it goes", or slightly deficit based (financed by public government debt). But that's not what we have, so we need to figure out a better way of investing that surplus money. I would prefer major index funds, both stock and private bonds. In sum, they should be invested in a manner similar to a pension fund. Or it could be invested in infrastructure improvements via special trusts aimed at increasing economic productivity. But the moral hazard of having all that money being infused into the private markets has been a long-standing political and economic debate. But I don't see the logic in that argument since if we permitted people to apply that surplus FICA tax into private retirement accounts, it would amount to the same thing. We've become the Idiocracy. Not quite.. We still use water, not gatorade, to grow our crops and the president isn't a WWF champion.. But we're getting there.. ;0) Hawk